Maat already said it all.Terence.drew wrote: Johathan. How can a Satellite be a bright light when it is supposed to be traveling through and in the shadow of the Earth?
What is illuminating it? The sun?
Satellites are seen by the reflection of sunlight off of them.
Consider their altitude and path - they are in sunlight much longer than we are in daylight down here.
This can also be observed: they are often seen as appearing suddenly already high up above the horizon - that is when they come out of earths shadow (or it is when their reflecting surfaces are at the right angle to mirror sunlight at your location).
They also disappear like that - often not by going below the horizon but by going into shadow or by not reflecting the sun to your location any longer - then they are observable elsewhere.
These things are easily observable and at least one big question would arise which was already stated:
never in the history of astronomy where these things described though they seem to behave so strangely.
Has nobody speculated or even asked what those would be?
If taking into account that these objects did not exist until about 50 years ago you have one very good reason as to why such things where never described...