Wed, Nov 23 0547 CST Due South 25 to 40 degrees high. Anyone recording the sky in that direction and time?

[cjura]

 I just want to report a most unusual observation during my morning jog in St.
Louis, Missouri USA Wed (about 5:47 am).  I was jogging directly south and
a star-like object caught my eye, noticeably increasing in brightness for
about ten seconds - I think it became brighter than Venus - and then it faded
gradually during the next 15 seconds until it was gone.  It was stationary,
so not a satellite.  If a small star has gone missing in the southern sky
 this could explain it, but I have no idea. 

[Leo S]

It sounds like you may have seen a flare (reflection due to sunlight) from a satellite. Not all move noticeably in the sky. There is a band of geo-stationary satellites in the south, in/around the area of Orion that is often the source for these type of flares.

[PrairieStarGazer]

A stationary meteor perhaps?

[Leo S]

8 hours ago, PrairieStarGazer said:

A stationary meteor perhaps?

A point meteor is already a very rare occurrence, and the majority of meteors last well under a second. A 15 second point meteor would be like winning the lottery.. twice.. in one day.

Reflections from satellites on the other hand occur every night, and some can be long. Here's a screenshot from Stellarium - I think I have the right location/time - there are quite a few potential suspects that are slow moving around that area:

[Leo S]

After thinking some more about the point meteor theory, I think that not only is it unlikely, it is probably physically impossible. Here's my reasoning:

Take this example of a long lasting meteor both my camera and I observed last year. It was also reported by others, and caught by NEMETODE cameras which gave us this analysis. It was an unusually long lasting and quite slow event at around 15+ seconds and 13.54 km/s - in fact probably the longest lasting meteor I've ever observed, although I missed the first half (it appeared from behind the house, and flew almost directly overhead)!

The problem with that is, in order to last that long, the meteoroid has to enter the atmosphere at a relatively shallow angle (see inset chart showing km altitude above the ground over the course of time in the NEMETODE analysis), and when the angle is shallow, you'd have to be 10's of km above the ground in order for the meteor to appear to be still/a point. Most meteoroids hitting at much higher angles than in this example (ie what would be necessary for the OP to observe it from the ground) could not physically survive an entry at such a high angle, where the forces become much more intense in a very short space of time since the meteoroid will hit extremely dense air (relatively speaking) at around 45/50 km altitude, which is were many big meteoroids break up in the atmosphere. The one exception might be a nickel-iron meteoroid, but they are rare, and we would know about it if one of those got below 40 km altitude (a sizable fireball with booms is inevitable).

There might be a small chance than an extremely slow meteoroid could cause a long lasting point meteor, but in order to do that, it would have to approach Earth from behind it's direction of travel in it's orbit around the Sun - the process of catching up to Earth can result in super-slow meteors, but the time and part of the sky are wrong for this to be possible, so super-slow meteors can be eliminated.