Based on data acquired in 1982 with the Stimulated Emission of Energetic Particles payload on the low-altitude (170--280 km) S81-1 spacecraft and the Space Environment Monitor instrumentation on the NOAA 6 satellite (800--830 km), a study has been made of short-duration nighttime electron precipitation bursts at L=2.0--35. From 54 passes of each satellite across the slot region simultaneously in time, 21 bursts were observed on the NOAA 6 spacecraft, and 76 on the S81-1 satellite. Five events, probably associated with lightning, were observed simultaneously from the two spacecraft within 1.2 s, providing a measure of the spatial extent of the bursts. This limited sample indicates that the intensity of precipitation events falls off with width in longitude and L shell but individual events extend as much as 5¿ in invariant latitude and 43¿ in longitude. The number of events above a given flux observed in each satellite was found to be approximately inversely proportional to the flux. The time average energy input to the atmosphere over the longitude range 180 ¿E to 360 ¿E at a local time of 2230 directly from short-duration bursts spanning a wide range of intensity enhancements was estimated to be about 6¿10-6 ergs/cm2 s in the northern hemisphere and about 1.5¿10-5 ergs/cm2 s in the southern hemisphere. In the south, this energy precipitation rate is lower than that from electrons in the drift loss cone by about 2 orders of magnitude. However, on the basis of these data alone we cannot discount weak bursts from being a major contributor to populating the drift loss cone with electrons which ultimately precipitate into the atmosphere. ¿American Geophysical Union 1987