Day time satellite (?) sighting

I made my first possible day time sighting last friday (3rd june, 4pm), as i was watching a plane fly overhead i saw a bight white dot appear one side of the plane, then i then poked my father who was on his cell phone at the time and pionted up at it, it then shined a few more times (i mean flickered brighter) before disapearing, must have only been viewable for a 10-15 seconds in total before disapearing. Father saw it too luckily so i know it was there, disapeared before i could make a snapshot attempt with my phone.

Problem is this: I checked a web sites tracking of claimed 360 satellites ( link ) and it claimed not a single one, including the iss was over my area of sky at the time.

Presumably only a few large satellite can been seen on a VERY clear blue sky day due to the atmophere and sunlight, if it wasnt the ISS, could have been a normal satellite and i just happend to be looking exactly in the right place at the right time? Night time sightings of satellites usualy last a while, a few minutes as they wizz overhead this was very breif.

If anyone thinks its relivant i could find out the direction it was moving, as i remeber clearly where i was sat at the time.

reply to post by Biigs


You didn't say what time it was. That would be crucial to ruling out a satellite.

It may have been an iridium communication satellite "flaring." those are visible during the day, but they're fairly rare. It could have also been a satellite flare that wasn't listed on the tracker you checked because it is small and has a normally high magnitude like Nanosail-D which is hard to see unless it's flaring

reply to post by Biigs


There are other sites you can check for all satelites:

Satellites, ISS:
Heaven's Above
Spaceweather

There are also many satelites (top secret/classified) that will never show up on the trackers

Originally posted by disownedsky
reply to post by Biigs

 

You didn't say what time it was. That would be crucial to ruling out a satellite.

Op said 4 p.m.

Sometimes satellites are visible during the day from an iridium flare, where they reflect the suns light for about 10 seconds, sometimes shorter, sometimes longer.

reply to post by greeneyedleo


Im currently checking against these other sites.

I have managed to work out the directon it was traveling, the plane was flying amost perfectly south and the abject passed accross it at a slight angle that i belive was the direction of WWN (just off west)

I will read up on flares from smaller satellites and see if i can match what i saw to any videos or pics.

It was very odd with the contrast against the very blue (directly above me) sky and the shining effect, certinly never seen anything like that before.

Brief chat with my father after the event, we were thinking either extremly high altitude plane or satellite flare. We had assumed the ISS till the checker said 'nope'. Since it was a little white dot and luckily pass right over a plane (guessing the plane was at around 25-30k feet, fathers an ex RAF airman so hes pretty good at guessing this stuff) i suppose a high altitude plane is possible at double or more the altitude than the plane it passed over.

thanks for the replys so far