Moon and Space Junk Reentry?

[Littleguy80]

Last night my daughter and I watched First Man, the movie on Neil Armstrong in the years leading up to the Apollo 11 Moon Landing. Very enjoyable. We took a quick peak at the rising full Moon through my binoculars. I also showed her the craters Aldrin, Armstrong and Collins in my Moon Atlas. A good history home schooling lesson I though

The main point of this post is that afterwards I stepped outside and looked up. There’s the ISS I thought, luck timing! Then I noticed that there was something much fainter just behind it. The more I looked the whole path it was following seemed to be lit up with fainter objects. I then thought Starlink satellites but there was too many objects and too close. At least based on previous experience of observing them. There was only one object that was really bright. The object was going roughly west to east. I observed this from Norwich around 11:50pm (5th June). 
 

Joining the dots, it appeared that something reentered the atmosphere and burnt up. I actually checked the news to make sure the ISS was ok! Did anyone else spot this? I can’t think of ever observing anything quite like this before. 

 

[Paul M]

Sounds very much like the 7th batch of Starlink gremlins that were launched a few days ago. The bright target will have been the "mothership" and the fainter targets the individual satellites having been recently ejected. 

ISS isn't currently making visible evening passes.

[Littleguy80]

12 minutes ago, Paul M said:

Sounds very much like the 7th batch of Starlink gremlins that were launched a few days ago. The bright target will have been the "mothership" and the fainter targets the individual satellites having been recently ejected. 

ISS isn't currently making visible evening passes.

Thanks Paul. Makes sense. I checked the ISS path afterwards and saw it wasn’t supposed to be there. It was certainly an unusual sight. 

[Paul M]

1 hour ago, Littleguy80 said:

Thanks Paul. Makes sense. I checked the ISS path afterwards and saw it wasn’t supposed to be there. It was certainly an unusual sight. 

I know they're not much loved but their post launch spectacle is a big talking point! Even though I've actively tried, I still haven't spotted any of the long chains.

They soon get boosted to higher orbits and scatter out.