ISS + something else

Thanks for that Mike.
I emailed Terry a few nights ago and suggested that
it may have indeed been a 'Geo Sat' flare that he saw.
On the first night I saw something (which was a night or
two before Terry) I saw a constant Mag -3 object moving
at speed around 40deg in altitude West to East.

The second odd one was last night and to me It looked like
a head on or nearly head on meteor.
It flared up maybe to -1 and then dipped then flared again slowly
(all took around 5 / 6 seconds)
I observed this in Shannon and I was on the phone to my
Mother who observed it also from Limerick.

I recently saw a photo on Space weather where someone
taking a star trail photo caught one of these geosat flares.
He was able to confirm it as he had a photographic record
of the area.

Hi Frank, I was observing from my backyard at 00:02 on 13 Jul , which is about 6 miles south of Limerick and I captured this image of the ISS rising.
I had seen Fox news at 10pm and it looked like there was a good chance of a launch. I was afraid to go inside to check tv/web in case I might miss a pass. So, I have the camera ready and pointing at the area of sky where the ISS rose and I am totally focussed on just this area of sky.
At about 12:15 I observed about 3 /4 ‘blips of white light’ about 1 second apart but the ‘blips’ appeared to come from just one point in the sky and it seemed as if it was coming in a line towards me and had no movement across the sky. An aircraft I thought? But no, it stopped as suddenly as it started there was no aircraft sound. Was it the Shuttle just coming in to view from behind some scattered cloud? Obviously not.
Over the years I have, on at least 3 separate occasions, observed what I believe to be a particular type of satellite that tumbles and certain panels on the craft reflect more sunlight as it tumbles. Was it one of these and was it travelling towards my observing point and therefore the angle meant that I would only see just a few of the tumbles?
Anyway, one image is of the ISS rising (I have brightened it to show star positions)and the superimposed circle is approx. where I saw the ‘blips’ of light. The other image is taken from starry night to give a wider fix on where the circle is.
url:http://farm3.static.flickr.com/2449/3717899957_41aa75f50e_o.jpg
url:http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3512/3717923901_4c726bb89d_b.jpg

Hi Conn,
nice to chat again.
Thanks for the report after reading it
I rang my Mother again today to recount what we saw and more
specifically what she saw.
She actually used the term 'Blips' also and said she saw 3 or 4 bright white ones.
I only saw 2 as she saw them first and alerted me to them.

At first also I suspected that it was the lights of a plane
(living in Shannon you can imagine I'm quite used to this)
but I am 100% it was not. Also the fact that she also saw it in Limerick
and you at your house confirm it.
The area you circle is the same area we saw them as we were
also waiting for the ISS to pass.

If Terry saw this kind of thing a few days previously then
maybe indeed it is a satellite that happens to be in a similar
orbit to the ISS and just simply flares....an oddball as it were?