I believe I saw a satellite flare for the first time tonight. I saw a light moving across the sky about the brightness of a medium bright star, a little off of north to south. It suddenly started to get brighter and brighter, until it got well brighter than any star. It actually got a little halo around it, perhaps indicating some haze in the sky. For a moment, I started to think it was a slow moving meteoroid. But it began to fade at about the same rate it had brightened, until it went back to its normal medium star brightness. It then just continued on across the sky.
I saw several other satellite objects. I was surprised how many. Probably at least one every few minutes, and once two at a time. They were all much fainter though, most being faint enough that I probably wouldn’t have noticed them if they weren’t moving. And none of the others had any flare or variance in brightness at all.
I don’t do a lot of star gazing these days, in part because the light pollution near my house is fairly strong and there’s often cloud cover anyway. Also, my back yard has a fair amount of tree cover. And the dogs don’t seem to want to spend much time out there at night. But I do like star gazing, find it relaxing, and may have to make a point to do it more often.