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Interesting that someone mentions this... the past two nights, when I have been setting up on Jupiter, there has been a "flasher", right next to Jupiter. At first I thought it was an Iridium satellite, but none of the tracking sites suggested one at this altitude and azimuth. Tonight it came up at about the same time as yesterday, roughly 19:20 or so, and passed right across my view, it flashed 3 times at a rate of every 4-5 seconds, moving about the same speed as a slow satellite. This one was also moving west to east, and was only visible for 15-20 seconds.
I did not have a high enough magnification to see anything other than the flash, but I would guess it is a tumbler by the way it flashed. I can't help but wonder if it might be the Japanese observatory that was recently lost. I only mention it because it is the first time I've seen anything like this. Have seen an Iridium flare, and many, many known satellites. But this just looked like something out of control.
Will be watching for it again tomorrow night, maybe get the binos on to it.
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