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It does seem very unlikely doesn't it?
So I thought about it...the pack looks to be no more than 1m x 1m in size. At an altitude of 350 km the apparent size would be approx 1/350000 deg or about 0.6" unless my maths is off. This is about half the resolving power of the scope in question. If he used the 50mm lens it is less likely. No chace of resolving surface details then...It looks like the object is about mag 8 or perhaps more (should be visible in binos!!!) if that really is Beta pictoris in the frame...
I have no way to estimate absolute magnitude of the pack - but for comparison consider a sattelite that is mag 2.5 at is brightest, max visible x section 260 m2 (big as a bus) but at 780 Km (this is data from Heavans above for Envisat). If it shrank to 1m2 and moved down to 350Km it would be 4/260ths as bright or 1/85 as bright let's round it down to 1/100th of the brigthness. So it would be Mag 2.5+5 = Mag 7.5 now it does not sound so unreasonable any more....
Maybe it is real....or maybe my maths is all wrong...fun either way.
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