Satellites can do lots of funny things!
The other night I picked up a series of bright 'stars' in my subs. While there was no satellite trace showing (too dim), the apparent movement of the 'stars' was entirely consistent with them being flares off a geosynchronous satellite. The area was about 7-deg off the Celestial Equator.
Because there is no trailing, the flares must have been no more than a second or two in duration, essentially flashes. If you were observing from the ground you would have seen a bright naked-eye flash (I missed it, bloody cameras!), followed a minute or so later by another in the same apparent position, etc (but there appears to be irregularity in the timing of the flashes). Here's an animation - each of the 4 consecutive subs was 75 sec in duration, followed by 75 sec ICNR, and three of the 4 subs picked up a flash. Zoom was 200mm and the naked-eye would pick up no apparent movement between the satellite & the starfield across the exposure time:
http://i727.photobucket.com/albums/w...5to12-34UT.gif
By contrast, here's another flaring geosynchronous satellite I picked up on 10 Aug 2013 (presented at wider scale than previous animation). This time there are trails. Exposure time was 60 sec for each sub so the flare lasted around a minute. It may have been naked-eye, hard to tell - probably not terribly bright. If you were looking skywards in the right spot, you may have seen a star appear and then disappear around a minute later, with no apparent movement.
http://i727.photobucket.com/albums/w...tanimation.gif
Cheers -
