Hello, I regularly read the list but I almost never post, but today I have a question on a weird sighting. It's possible that it's something trivial, if so I apologize. I've been seeing this "show" for several nights, several times per night, shortly after sunset. Basically in a point of the sky, with no visible satellite, I would see a very bright flash, that repeats every few seconds, maybe 4 or 5 times, then it stops. It doesn't look like an Iridium flash because 1) Iridium only flashes once, while here I see several flashes; and 2) Iridium flares get gradually brighter, then peak, then gradually get fainter. These here are instant flashes, like a camera flash. Very bright, easily negative magnitude. As an example, tonight I saw one, at 22:08 local time (I'm located a few Km North of Rome, Italy). It was near the Neowise comet. Four very bright flashes, spaced maybe 3 seconds from each other, then a fainter flash, then nothing for maybe 15 seconds, then another dim one. The Heavens-Above app didn't show any satellite in the sky at that moment, but maybe it only shows brighter visual satellites. Maybe 10 minutes earlier, I saw another "event", not far from Arcturus. Same kind of sighting, only maybe a bit fainter. Between flashes I can see nothing at all with an unaided eye, so it's hard to track the movement, but the location of the flashes seems to move at a slower speed than a regular LEO satellite. Is this a common, known sighting? I've never seen it before, except maybe once 20 years ago, but I can't be sure. Maybe something seasonal, or related to the specific time of day (shortly after sunset)? Oh, it was not an airplane. Totally different light, plus the sky was very clear so I would have seen it very well, and also Flightradar24 confirmed no planes in the area. Thank you for your attention, Cristian _______________________________________________ Seesat-l mailing list http://mailman.satobs.org/mailman/listinfo/seesat-lReceived on Tue Jul 21 2020 - 15:39:47 UTC
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