The UK meteor: something unusual

reply to post by djyorkie


DJYorkie... This is the thing that holds 'wrong' with this for me. The reports don't entirely add up with sound science. I heard it was green, and reports range from 15 seconds to 2-3 minutes. I'm positive a report came in that it changed direction too, but I'll have to dig for that again.

Yahoo News 'it then changed direction'

Sure, it's only an eyewitness account, but that's all we have to go on. A 15 degree bend in path. It's about half-way down the article.

FireballStorm... Excellent update, and thanks for that. It's all very sound information, and makes perfect sense.... Excepting the asteroids being knocked out of the ecliptic from the asteroid belt. It would take tremendous energy to knock one out on a path that saw it pulled back in on a north to south vector; energy in both the ejection and the gravitational pull back in.

It's hard to explain what I'm trying to say, but it would have to go WAY out in the perpendicular to come back in at that angle if it wasn't extra-solar. Incidentally, are we approaching the galactic plane from under it (our perspective), because I don't know at all.

You are forgetting that the Earth is moving in its orbit around the Sun. A meteor could appear to be moving from north to south as viewed from the surface of Earth, but this doesn't mean that it has an orbit perpendicular to that of our planet. In fact, the orbital inclination could be a lot shallower than you might think.

Originally posted by djyorkie
The thing that struck me as unusual about his account of what he saw, is that he remembers seeing clouds, and that the object "looked" to be below cloud leve, and lasted about 15 seconds.
So could this really be this low, and still travel the length of the uk?

Yes, in theory, but this is certainly not what happened here.

In some cases, and I am sure that is what we have here, it could be hard to tell if a meteor is passing behind or in front of relitively thin clouds. Meteors are bright enough that they can shine through thin clouds, and give the impession that they are in front of the clouds when they are actually behind.

If it had passed under the clouds for a significant portion of it's flight, we would have had houses shaking from the sonic booms produced over a widespread area, very shortly after the fireball was observed.

Interestingly, there were at least a couple reports of booms (rumbling) heard by some who had witnessed the fireball itself, but they were consistent with the object being at high altitude, since there were long delays (well over a minute) between the visual occurance of the fireball and the sounds being heard. For booms to be heard, it's generally accepted that the object needs to make it below roughly 50 km altitude, which suggests in this case that it was not far off that.

As I posted above, preliminary investigations by Alastair McBeath suggest the lowest it got was about 61 km altitude, which is not that far off the 50 km mark.

Booms also suggest that pieces of meteorite have made it to the ground (in most cases), although in this case there is probably only a slim chance of anything being recovered due to the very low angle of entry.

Originally posted by Mogget

FireballStorm... Excellent update, and thanks for that. It's all very sound information, and makes perfect sense.... Excepting the asteroids being knocked out of the ecliptic from the asteroid belt. It would take tremendous energy to knock one out on a path that saw it pulled back in on a north to south vector; energy in both the ejection and the gravitational pull back in.

It's hard to explain what I'm trying to say, but it would have to go WAY out in the perpendicular to come back in at that angle if it wasn't extra-solar. Incidentally, are we approaching the galactic plane from under it (our perspective), because I don't know at all.

You are forgetting that the Earth is moving in its orbit around the Sun. A meteor could appear to be moving from north to south as viewed from the surface of Earth, but this doesn't mean that it has an orbit perpendicular to that of our planet. In fact, the orbital inclination could be a lot shallower than you might think.

edit on 7-3-2012 by Mogget because: (no reason given)

Exactly as Mogget said.

It's very difficult to guage the true direction/heading of a meteor, unless you have a good grasp of the subject.

Most people forget to take into account perspective, which can throw estimates off by a long way if not taken into account. That's why it usually takes the event being caught on multiple cameras before a reasnobly accurate orbit of the object can be worked out. It's hard to work out an acurate orbit by averaging out witness reports, because most are usually off by quite a way, though rough orbits can be worked out if there are lots of reports.

Sorry I missed your post boyg2004.

Originally posted by boyg2004
This is the thing that holds 'wrong' with this for me. The reports don't entirely add up with sound science.

Reports never will be considered "sound science". It's not that they are not useful to science. They are but only if you know how to interpret the data, and weed out the noise.

Originally posted by boyg2004
I heard it was green, and reports range from 15 seconds to 2-3 minutes.

No two people will ever make exactly the same report, and that is due to a myriad of factors, including familiarity with the type of event in question (experience), perspective, because each of us look at the world in a slightly different way, and the state of mind the observer is in.

That is a general statement, and applies to many things, but to meteors in particular, because most people are unfamiliar with them, and when they see a relatively spectacular meteor for the first time, they are often not entirely sure what they are seeing (Did you notice how many people reported thinking it was a plane, firework, or missile, ie. considerably (at least a factor of 10x) out since we know the fireball was certainly not below 50 km altitude).

Misleading, and mistaken reports occur with virtually all cases which involve many people seeing a bright fireball (search this forum for similar events/examples and you will find many). We know that natural meteors/fireballs are traveling too fast to be visible for longer than a minute (although a satellite/debris re-entry can, where as the fireball was a bit too fast to be a re-entry), so the person who reported seeing something probably saw something else entirely different.

Most people make bad witnesses, to put it bluntly, and meteorite hunters/researchers have been aware of this for a very long time. Not much has changed over the last 100 or so years.

In the Mineralogical Society of Great Britain and Ireland Journal from April, 1879, the author writes:

My purpose, as I have said before, is to collect everything that is known on the subject of British Meteorites ; to establish by means of copious references every fact relative to each recorded fall ; and to inquire into all doubtful instances, so as to ascertain, if possible, whether their authenticity can be proved, and to expunge them from the list if they can be shown to be the results of errors.

The doubtful instances of meteoric falls may be classed under four general heads :-

1st. A meteor has been seen apparently to fall, and a search has been made where it seemed to descend. The results of those searches have included nodules of pyrite, fragments of scoriae, hematite, and ordinary pebbles, all distinctly terrestrial, but which have been described as "Meteorites"
(continued at the source)

Source: www.meteoritehistory.info...

Originally posted by boyg2004
I'm positive a report came in that it changed direction too, but I'll have to dig for that again.

From the report:

"It then reappeared as it continued across the sky, seemingly changing directions slightly - as if around a 15 degree corner.

"It then also seemed to go lower down in the sky and then passed out of our vision after another 10 seconds or so.

I've bolded the key words in that report.

A meteors actual direction/heading can be very hard to judge by eye, and a meteor that enters at a very low angle can seem to do strange things as I explained here.

Initially, when people see something that they don't instantly recognize, the brain looks to past experience of known phenomena to try to explain what seems to be something "unidentifiable".

"If it is apparently shooting up like a firework, then it must have changed direction to be able to pass overhead like a plane passing overhead horizontally" - an observer might subconsciously reason.

This is certainly true of objects that are relatively close to the observer, but when we are talking about things like meteoroids entering the atmosphere, they can appear to do this, whilst not significantly changing direction. The photographic and video evidence also backs this up.

I've seen it in action myself, and it's very cool to see

I also saw a shooting star tonight (21st Sept 2012 22:40 approx), It was a large mass giving off a green 'tail' It went over the north of Sheffield in a south-south easterly direction. It was visible for around 3 minutes, but during the 3 minutes it seemed to have 'explode' fracturing into 7-8 pieces.

If it went north to south then there was 2, because one of them came over hull going east to west and that one has been seen in manchester and ireland. work that out

Also one comment on my fb says it was sting ray shaped and blazing when it passed over here, and it was very bright.

Couple of threads on tonights sighting, here is mine www.abovetopsecret.com...

reply to post by ThePeopleParty


I wish I could work it out. By the sound of it, 1 was spotted over Scotland as well.

Also, on my FB, many of my friends commented on the intensity of the light (fire) emitting from it.

reply to post by brendansheffield


It was probably the same meteor if it was seen at the same time.

Meteors usually first become visible at around 100km altitude, which makes them visible for many hundreds of km in all directions. I wouldn't be surprised if people in parts of France saw it too.

reply to post by boyg2004



When I seen the BBC video...1 of the videos showed something lit up w/ a tail, but the other video looks like a UFO. There's no tail to it...it looks round...and it's just flying over our skies like it looks like it knows where it's going...

I have to agree w/ your comment

Originally posted by tracehd1
When I seen the BBC video...1 of the videos showed something lit up w/ a tail, but the other video looks like a UFO. There's no tail to it...it looks round...and it's just flying over our skies like it looks like it knows where it's going...

Firstly, the footage showing the tail looks like it's filmed with a telephoto lens which gives a more "close up" view of the meteor, where as the others were filmed with wide angle lenses which don't reveal much detail in the object, and specifically, the object's tail

Secondly the other clips appear to be filmed with less sensitive cameras, which are barely showing the meteor itself, let alone the tail which is always dimmer than the head of the meteor itself.

Either way, why should a meteor always have an apparent tail? Who says a meteor can't not have a tail?

...and what exactly does a "UFO" look like anyway