Ed Majden wrote:

How fast was this "point" (meteor?) moving? As quickly as a "normal"
meteor or slower? At first impression I would think it was a satellite
but
you seem to have considered that. I don't think the recent solar activity
would have anything to do with the ionization process of an entering
meteoroid. It may even enhance the ionization process. No all meteors
leave a train. This is often persistence of vision that gives you the
impression of a train.

I'd say it was travelling at the same speed as a normal meteor, or VERY
slightly slower, though that slight slowness may be to do with the unusual
( for me to witness) near vertical path.

The best way I can describe it is as a "shooting star", in a quite literal (
visually obviously) sense. It just looked like an object of slightly dimmer
magnitude than venus had decided to pop into existence, hurtle down for a
second or so leaving no trail or wake and then cease to be. The only other
thing to note was that it was VERY white in colour.
It did look more than anything like a satellite, quite a large one, or a
good reflection from big solar panels, but the speed was FAR too high, I
doubt even an object in the lowest possible stable orbit would travel that
fast, though I may well be wrong.


Perhaps the fact that the first glow of dawn was visible just rendered the
trail invisible, but that area of the sky was only just beginning to show
signs of not being night time any more.