My wife, daughter and I watched Iridium 13 glint up to an amazing mag -9, drawing gasps from everyone. This is the brightest object I have ever seen in the sky -- other than the sun and moon, of course. The glint occurred on Oct 12, 1997 at 0206 UT in twilight. Skysat listed a sun-mirror divergence of only 0.05 degrees. Range was only 979 km. 51 deg above the horizon. I assume that the max theoretical brightness occurs when the divergence is 0 degrees and the range is small. The glint was much brighter than the two space shuttle reentries I have seen, which tend to be estimated around mag -6 or -7. From that I put Iridium 13 at mag -9. It was so bright that it did not look like a point source. It looked like an intense ball of bluish white light, with an apparent diameter of maybe 10 minutes of arc. Incredible. __________________________________________________ Jim Varney 121.398W 38.458N 8m Sacramento, CA jamesv@softcom.net, sat_watcher@rocketmail.com The following tagline is added against my wishes. _____________________________________________________________________ Sent by RocketMail. Get your free e-mail at http://www.rocketmail.com