I was expecting BW3's emergence to brighten quickly into a brilliant star but no such thing happened. I was growing uncomfortable seeing nothing appear, but then I noticed an anomalous faint star south of Alphard in Hydra that was moving SE along BW3's path. The timing was right (I had a red-light clock keeping track of time on my iPad on a table, as was the path map), so that had to be it. So BW3 may be highly reflective but it wasn't aimed in our direction on this pass. I'd estimate it as somewhere between mag. 3-4, closer to 3.

I also had 2 cameras running. One (the GX8) just took a normal sky shot, and it did catch the moment of reappearance even if I didn't--cameras have no expectations, unlike humans. Subexposures had to be kept short (15 seconds) to avoid washout from the nearby Moon.

With the other camera (G9) I tried to more rigorously estimate BW3's brightness by taking a series of shorter and shorter exposures ranging from 30 to 1/60th seconds. Stars and satellite would get fainter in each exposure. The satellite's movement would also trail less and less until it essentially became a star itself, making it easier to compare with. If satellite and star disappeared in the same exposure, the two must be nearly the same brightness. (Note: in actuality I took the exposures in the opposite direction, from short to long.)

I lost BW3 between 1/15th and 1/30th seconds. In the moonlight I barely reached mag 4.0 at 1/15th sec, so the satellite was definitely brighter than that. The best matching star I could find was omicron CMa at mag 3.0 or maybe nu Hya at mag 3.1. I don't have photometry software for a numerical check, but it jived with my visual estimate that it was clearly fainter than Alphard (mag 2.0) but was still visible to the naked eye while all the stars around it had been washed out by the Moon and hence no mag. 4 stars were to be had.

From the series I created an animated GIF that swaps between the 4-second sub annotated for reference and the 1/15th-sec sub. Yes, that's BW3's trail in the 4-second photo as it exits to the SE (lower left); the 1/15th-sec sub shows it only as a dot. (Another note: The circle show where to look for BW3. But in the short sub the only thing visible inside the circle is the satellite itself. The long sub shows some stars in the circle that were too faint for the exposure time of the short sub; meanwhile BW3 has moved out of the circle to create the trail.)

Maybe this scheme was no better than the visual estimate, and the analysis took longer, but they yielded similar results, which was comforting. Certainly, night sky photography has come a long way from film days when one can record stars through 3rd magnitude in the presence of moonlight with a 1/15th second exposure!

Images:
#1: BW3 emerging from Earth's shadow
#2: magnitude comparisons (animated GIF)
#3: event map from Heavens Above website

Event data:
- Date: Nov 14, 2022 before dawn.
- Mid-waning gibbous Moon near zenith.
- BW3 reappears from Earth's shadow at 5:22:10am MST.
- Magnitude comparison photos taken 5:23:?? MST (seconds not available in EXIF).
- Beginning of astronomical twilight at 5:42am MST.

Photo data:
#1: Panasonic GX8, Rokinon 12mm f/2.0 lens
Stars and Moon composite.
... stars: 16 x (f/2.8, 15 sec, ISO 1600) = 4 minutes
... Moon: 1 x (f/2.8, 1/60 sec, ISO 1600) = 1/60 sec
... N up, W right. FOV = 72° x 57°.
#2: Panasonic G9, Leica 10-25mm f/1.7 lens @ 12mm
Stars have been enhanced for better visibility.
Near pixel-sized stars are hard to find in a sea of black.
... (f/2.8, flip between 1/15 and 4 sec, ISO 1600)
... N up, W right. FOV = 72° x 57°.
Processed in Paint Shop Pro X2, DeepSkyStacker, SSuite GIF Animator.