Possible Satellite Sighting - Not sure though

Hello,

At approximately 8:04 PM Eastern Daylight Time (which I believe would be
0:04 UT) on the
evening of September 10th, 2004 I was cruising approx. North in my 23' boat
on the Upper
West Niagara River, between Grand Island and Navy Island.

The Sun had set recently (The observation time was approx 30 minutes past
sunset.), and the sky was still somewhat bright to the west. Only a 1/2
dozen
starts or less were visible at this time, and I had a very good view of the
entire sky. There appeared to be
NO clouds at the time. The air was very clear and crisp, and the temperature
was dropping quite quickly at the time. There was a slight breeze.

I looked almost straight UP and saw what I am pretty sure was Vega slightly
to the east, not twinkling.
In the West I could see Arcturus and it was twinkling a little. I could see
a few more stars, including what
I believed to be Deneb and Altair.

About a fists width at arms length (I believe approx 5 degrees) towards West
NORTH West or so from Vega,
I saw a very bright (white) object that at first looked like a dim star. At
first this object didn't even exist (wasn't visible), it sort of "popped
in", as all stars do at this time of sunset, as the sky is getting darker by
the minute.
The object started out dim, but then began to brighten.
I started trying to see if I knew which star it was. I assumed it was part
of the northern cross/Cygnus etc.

This "star" then started to brighten quickly (it started out maybe a
magnitude or 2 less than VEGA) to quite a bit brighter than VEGA (maybe what
VENUS might look like at this time in the west). It seemed very "round" and
white, and not twinkling at all. I was very excited since it was so
uniformly brightening, it looked much
like what a supernova MIGHT look like if one saw one in the almost daytime.

It then appeared to dim much like a satellite might, but maybe a little
faster. For maybe 30 seconds
it seemed to dip in and out of being observable with the naked eye, and then
it was finally "gone" for good.

The thing that bothered me was that this "star" didn't appear to move. I
don't know of any satellites
at this location that would not be moving, but maybe I mis-understand how
satellites move and
function (or some of them).

My girlfriend gave the approx. same description, bright, white, non-moving,
looked like VENUS,
but it was almost directly at the zenith.

I didn't think the HST or ISS got that high up in the sky at my location,
and I must admit, I'm not
sure where to look on-line to see if there was a satellite at this position
at the time. Those also
move fairly quickly, as do many of the other satellites I've seen.
I thought and Iridium flare would be much much shorter, but I only think I
saw one in the daytime
very quickly, it lasted less than 2 seconds.

I've used Microsoft's Tera server to guess the location from which I was
observing at the time to be approx:
43.055 degrees NORTH, -79.0 degrees WEST.

Any guesses as to what this could have been? I'm very curious what this
might have been, I've never
seen anything like it before.

Any help in identifying this object would be appreciated.

"john jamulla" wrote in
news:qy63d.1314$HH5.44@trndny05:

Snipola of description

Sounds like an Iridium flare to me. Go check out the Heaven's Above
website where you can get predictions for these flares. Put in your
location and check the flare predictions. You may need to go back in
time to see past events.

http://www.heavens-above.com/


Brian
--
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