Frankly, I have no idea what it was you actually saw: there is so much junk being flung up there and out there these days it could be just about anything. Mr Musk launching a caravan to attach to his sports car, perhaps?

Sorry I can't be of more help on this one.

Thanks for that. I assumed it is junk, but it makes you wonder how much rubbish there is up there. And who exactly is Mr Musk? He would be hard to distinguish from all the other many caravanners we have here (aside from the fact that he would arrive sans car and caravan: they are both in space)
On a serious note, how can a layman tell the difference between a geo-stationary satellite, and a star, ro planet? Is there a simple way, or does it come down to knowledge and/or equipment.
Thanks again
Steve

On 2018, 6th Feb. 20-18 (or thereabouts) Elon Musk launched the "Falcon Heavy", the most powerful rocket since the Saturn V took Apollo astronauts to the Moon. The Heavy’s payload was Musk’s personal Tesla roadster, a $100,000 luxury car made by one of Musk’s other companies. Six hours after launch, the car and its passenger—an empty SpaceX suit dubbed “Starman”— were on an escape trajectory that Musk hoped would put the car in an elliptical orbit around the Sun and allow for some closes brushes with Mars.

In response to this I published the following in The Orcadian:

The Ultimate Conundrum?

May I offer your readers a little light entertainment from the world stage?

Online BBC News, 10th February 2018. "Elon Musk: The man who sent his sports car into space."

There followed a description for how Musk's electric sports car was sent on its way, concluding: ". . . Elon Musk, the South African-born billionaire entrepreneur and founder of Paypal, electric car company Tesla, and SpaceX, the manufacturer of the Falcon Heavy. The partly-reusable Heavy is the most powerful rocket on earth, and, if Mr Musk is to be believed, a stepping stone to a rocket to Mars.

"The sports car was one of Mr Musk's own Tesla Roadsters. Its stereo was programmed to play David Bowie's Space Oddity on repeat as it travels for millions of years through space. Or until the battery dies, anyway." (Musk appears to have overlooked the fact that space is a virtual vacuum and so the "stereo" would remain silent throughout its journey!)

Musk said: "It's kind of silly and fun, but silly and fun things are important." (Presumably Mr Musk is unaware of the countless, starving individuals across the world.)

There are certain rules and restrictions in some societies over the control of litter, which, if contravened, could lead to a fine. Yet a guy with the necessary may chuck his sports car out into space and get away with it. Conclusion: if you are a billionaire, you are free to do more or less as you please.

All this would appear to support my maxim that "you'd need to be mad to want to be sane in a mad world." (The ultimate conundrum?)

End of quote.

Possible distinguishing features for a geo-stationary satellite?

Assuming, initially, the object to appear as bright as, or brighter than, the Pole Star, and to have an altitude above the horizon of at least 15 arc-digress, the colour of reflected sunlight to ground level will depend upon the satellite’s position in relation to the Earth’s umbral shadow. Being geo-stationary the object would partake of the apparent diurnal motion thus appearing to move in company with the surrounding stellar background.

The satellite’s elevation in km above the Earth’s surface will determine the rate at which the object’s brightness fades, again due to entering the Earth’s shadow. Many of these changes will be gradual, the rate dependent upon a number of variables impossible to predict with certainty.

And so the safest way to confirm that this is a “freak” object would require one to have some knowledge of the star formations (constellations), at least to apparent stellar magnitude 3.0. (Polaris has a magnitude of 2.0.)

Those of us who have observed the night skies over decades, going back to before our ability to place objects into Earth orbit, find this intrusion from artificial objects irksome.

James Maynard
(for John C Vetterlein)