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08/19/97

Preliminary Scan of Sprite Photo

08/18/97 ~9:30 PM EST

Saw Mir. M1 = -2. Mir brightened significantly before entering the Earth's shadow. Images with a CCD shot into a rounded mirror. I'll post the image later today. Also bagged a nice meteor!

08/16/97 ~10:00 PM EST

Preliminary Scan of Sprite Photo and the whole story.
Last night 08-16-97 between 10:30 and 11:15PM EST, I observed several "sprites" associated with some major electrical storm activity that was occuring somewhere over south central/western Pennsylvania.

The "sprites" were actually a very *easy* naked eye objects although lasting maybe only 1/4 - 1/2 second. I dont know how to estimate the brightness in terms of magnitude. If one defocusses the eye slightly on Vega, the blurryness of Vega would accurately represent the brightness of any equal size portion of these observed "sprites". No kidding! These would be easy for the unskilled observer to see too!