This was not an Iridium flare, but I'm wondering if it was some other Iridium phenomenon. At about 1:17 UT on 5 Nov (6:17 PM CST Tuesday 4 Nov local -- possible time error not certain), my father, in San Antonio, Texas (29.40N, 98.64W), "saw a bright satellite moving north to south. It passed by Jupiter by two finger widths to the east and was maybe twice as bright at Jupiter," my sister tells me. The closest to the time and position given appears to be Meteor 3-3 (20305, 89-86A), but it was over 1,600 km away with Quicksat predicted magnitude of +6.4. Has anyone ever observed it flash, flare, or glint to about 9 magnitudes brighter than that? The brightness made me think Iridium, and it turns out that Iridium 15 (24869, 97-34A) was in the ballpark, although it went about 30 degrees east of Jupiter. Its flare went from 30.6N by 94.4W to 27.1N by 94.2W between 1:16 and 1:17, with the MMA angle for my folks being about 20 deg. I'm wondering if my dad might have seen a reflection of its solar panels. (By the way, aside to Paul Maley -- with reference to the solar panels, what's the "Beta angle"?) Or maybe it was from the panels of Meteor 3-3. By the way, my dad's pretty good at spotting satellites; his vision is excellent. My folks pretty regularly watch for Mir, HST, GRO, Shuttles and other bright ones and also have seen at least one monster Iridium flare so far. My sister is now running her own Quicksat predictions for them. Ed Cannon ecannon@mail.utexas.edu Austin, Texas, USA