Thanks for the coherent and detailed report, it is clear you know enough astronomy to be able to make one.

A specular sun reflection off a geostationary satellite sounds like the best explanation for this, especially since the object did not seem to share in the rotation of the celestial sphere, but the geometry is marginal. According to the May Sky and Telescope (I avoid getting up before daybreak as much as possible), Jupiter in late May is in the vicinity of Mu Cap, about 13 degrees S of the Equator. Perhaps someone more familiar with satellite orbits can tell us if geostationary birds stray this far off-station.

Your observation really hit home with me because I witnessed very similar events on the successive nights of 12/31/99-1/1/1/00 and 24 hours later at 1/1/00-1/2/00. The time was about midnight, local time) for both (I live in Florida). The observations were very similar to your report, several stationary 1st magnitude, strobelike flashes, several minutes apart, spaced out over about an hour, in the same part of the sky, on my meridian, just south of Rigel in Orion. Again, south of the equator, but near enough to make geostationaries a prime suspect.

Because of the timing of the millenial new year, I suspected these were some sort of laser ranging, calibration or even military assaults on spy satellites, using the much-touted Y2K event as cover. The geometry was not consistent with solar reflections, but I did read that that location is a sweet spot in the equatorial gravitational field where satellites are stable, and need not expend fuel to remain on station. There is one another one over the Indian Ocean, so I don't think this relates to you. I speculate these sweet spots would be in high demand for geostationary SIGINT birds.

As usual for UFO reports, even intelligently reported ones, we just don't know what you saw. But thank you for reporting this to us, and again, thanks for the careful and precise observations. This is a good forum for reporting this sort of phenomenon, events which are unconventional in nature, but almost certainly have a conventional explanation which will turn up if enough technical people can get involved to comment without being overwhelmed by breathless anomalists. I also suspect you are getting a feeling very similar to mine right about now: "Hey, I'm not the only one out there who's seen one of these. And no one's laughing at me."

Next time you go to your local library, check out the Feb '98 issue of Sky and Telescope. It has a "Focal Point" article on Irreproducible Phenomena you may find interesting.