Shooting stars seen last night in England.

Hello I posting this as a naive person who doesn't know anything about shooting stars or when your supposed to see them or even where to find out this information. I did a google search and come up with this: www.guardian.co.uk... Its about shooting stars being visible in august so I don't know if thats got anything to do with it.

I was round a mates last night and upon leaving at around 1-2 AM me and one of my friends (Who was also leaving at that point) noticed 3 shooting stars in the space of about a minute (I saw the first one and pointed out where to look and my friend saw the other 2 with me) . The longest lasting one lasted for about 2-3 seconds. I was looking at the brightest star in the sky because it was stood out amongst everything else straight away. It was also a clear night with lots of stars. I saw these flying stars quite close to this bright star (Which my friend told me was Pluto , but he could be wrong).

We only hung around for a couple of minutes because we had things to be doing but I thought that I would post it up here. It probably doesn't deserve a thread but I was just wondering if I was meant to be seeing shooting stars last night and whether in the right place. We were facing south towards the sea and looking at the brightest star in the sky. I live on the south-east coast of England.

I hope I haven't just posted something stupid, if I have I apologise but it is the first time I've seen shooting stars in my life and I know almost nothing of this kind of thing and am not having much luck in Google researching it

Was it normal to be seeing these shooting stars in such quick succession?

Edit to add: Sorry no video, I don't have a mobile phone at the moment and I'm not even sure if a mobile phone would pick up things in the sky to a decent enough level.

reply to post by TechUnique


Hullo mate.

Yeah, it's normal to see shooting stars in rapid succession.

We go through plenty of shooting star 'phases' throughout the year. The leonids are just one...there are loads of others.

I have to say though, ever since i read 'The day of the triffids' as a kid, i was always a little bit worried about gazing up at a shower of shooting stars, just in case i got blinded...even now, i still remember that bit of the story, every time i see a SS!

The power of the pen over impressionable young minds eh!

the invasion has begun! ...

reply to post by TechUnique



Erm… you can't see Pluto with the naked eye, it was probably Jupiter, that's really bright at the moment, where are you roughly in England because I live in Oxfordshire and it was white out last night, cloud cover from about 9 onwards, and shooting stars as you call them (meteors) are very common

Meteoroids

reply to post by spikey


Haha I understand, a lot of stuff has stuck with me since I was a kid
Cheers for clearing that up for me I am at a complete loss when it comes to the sky, goes straight over my head To be honest I was a little bit worried at the time but I'm assuming that was partly down to me being intoxicated at the time and also having no knowledge of shooting stars whatsoever.

Thanks again for clearing it up, I was expecting a troll to get there first

reply to post by Majestic RNA

Oh ok, I'm sure he probably said Jupiter but I wasn't exactly sober at the time


But yeah, I live in Hastings in East Sussex and I remember it being extremely clear last night. I'm gonna have to look out for meteoroids more often now. I guess at least I've learnt something from this thread even if it is kinda common knowledge ^^

reply to post by TechUnique



Cool, you were quite lucky to have clear sky's last night, I was going to go out with my telescope but couldn't see a dam thing due to clouds!

and just so you get the terminology right: meteors are shooting stars and don't hit the Earth, they burn up in our atmosphere, meteorites, actually hit the Earth so there is a big difference, your best bet is to call them shooting stars

The aliens are attacking! The aliens are attacking!

Run. Scream. Panic. Shoot people. Rob shops.

WE ALL GONNA DIE!!!! YASARDARGARSARG!!!!

reply to post by Majestic RNA


Oh ok cheers mate =]
I'm gonna have to ask someone I know if I can use his telescope because the sky is beautiful enough without enhancements to the naked eye. It amazes me every time I try to grasp how many stars there are in our universe. And then the possible of parallel universes. I consider myself quite spiritually awakened but most of this does go completely over my head. And the fact that a lot of generally accepted scientific "Fact" is most likely completely wrong (As proven in the past) then it confuses the matter even more...

reply to post by 547000


Ok, 1 is maybe slightly laughable but the second comment of the exact same nature is generally a bit tedious

reply to post by TechUnique


I like being redundant. I'm retarded like that.

reply to post by TechUnique


Heh, if you’re the master of '___' & Acid I'm not surprised your spiritually awakened

If you do get a chance to look through your friends telescope try looking eastwards in the early evening sky, you'll see a really big bright twinkling type star, that's Jupiter, it can be wondrous when you see it for the first time through a telescope, depending on the type of scope your friend has you may well be able to see the moons of Jupiter too, they look like small points of light either side, depending on where they are at any given time you can usually see two or three of them...

Hey where in the south east of the UK are you? Im in essex and i tend to go out at night to have a walk and look at the sky and i havent seen anything yet most night i look up wanting to see somethin but i never do .. wait ive seen a few shootin stars

There was a report of a meteortie the size of a double decker bus due to have a near miss with Earth yesterday, might be connected with that.

www.metro.co.uk...

reply to post by ThePeaceMaker


Soon will be a good time to go out and look, Orionid meteor shower generally begins on October 21st and ends on October 22/23rd, so your bound to see some then if you have a clear sky.. and I think TechUnique lives in Hastings in East Sussex as he said in a previous post..^

Orionid meteor shower

reply to post by Majestic RNA


Thanks for the link I'll have to look out at night on that week, I'll also have to check out Jupiter when I convince my mate to get his telescope out (No innuendo intended..)

reply to post by Tykonos


I checked out that link and I must say its sounds rather amazing and a little bit scary to me
What would the effects of an asteroid this size hitting earth be? Would it noticeably effect the whole planet? Or just local effects?