My brother recently returned from Africa and told me had seen a rather impressive shooting star. He wanted to know if I could identify it (which I couldn't) so now I pass the question on to you.

He described it as passing almost directly overhead, on March 17th between 19.00-20.00 GMT. This would have been in central Mali (14N, 6W). He said it was larger and brighter than a normal shooting star (he has spent a lot of time outdoors in clear skies, so has seen many of them). It passed slowly across the sky (presumably a consequence of passing overhead) and broke up into several visible trails.

Can anyone tell me what this was? Just a slightly larger than normal meteor, a piece of debris re-entering, or something I haven't thought of?

Thanks in advance.

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"Last Thursday, in a major breakthrough for the science of astrology, everyone born under the sign of scorpio was run over by milk trucks...."

Passing slowly across the sky sounds like it was a re-entering spacecraft or
rocket stage. Because of the large number of satellites in geosynchronous
orbit, re-entries of boosters are more common than in higher lattitudes.

-- Jeff, in Minneapolis

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http://www.FreeMars.org/jeff/

"I find astronomy very interesting, but I wouldn't if I thought we
were just going to sit here and look." -- "Van Rijn"

"The other planets? Well, they just happen to be there, but the
point of rockets is to explore them!" -- Kai Yeves