Meteor Over the United Kingdom

Thanks for that Phage...appreciated...

Meteorites making a bee line for fundamentalist religions' most holy gathering points would be a more interesting new story...

Good Nat Geo link showing the amount of crap up there:
science.nationalgeographic.com...

They said there's an average of one object a day incoming.

Here's a link to monitor satellites and space debris that's in a deteriorating orbit and coming down sometime soon:

www.satview.org...

meteors, it's crazy.

Originally posted by Phage
reply to post by FireballStorm

 

Predictions for large objects can be found here:
www.aerospace.org...

Going by that, does this mean there was no re entry of any space debris expected?
This was a big surprise?
Is that common to not know within the 5 day timeframe?
It seems as if it was space debris or an unknown object that broke apart.
I've seen a meteor or fireball and it didn't look like this, but I'm no expert.

reply to post by violet

Going by that, does this mean there was no re entry of any space debris expected?

Yes. Nothing major anyway.

This was a big surprise?

Yes. Sort of. Not necessarily. That site lists large objects. Many are under the impression that this was a very large something (debris or meteor). In fact, it doesn't really take a very large object to put on a spectacular display.

Some of the video's I have seen reminds me of the Phoenix Lights.

email update from BAA which hopefully adds something to the discussion;

BAA electronic bulletin
======================================================================
BRILLIANT FRAGMENTING FIREBALL OF 21 SEPTEMBER 2012

Hundreds of eyewitness reports are coming in of a brilliant fragmenting
fireball, visible at about 22:55 BST (21:55 UT) on Friday, 21st September
2012. This is clearly one of the most dramatic events reported to the BAA
Meteor Section in recent years.

On Friday evening, there was scattered and more continuous cloud cover over
much of South-East England, but the rest of the UK and Ireland were largely
very clear, with transparent starry skies. This, coupled with the fact that
many people were out on a Friday evening and the truly spectacular nature of
the fireball itself, are clearly the main factors in it being reported by so
many thousands of people over such a very wide area. This extends northwards
and westwards from a line roughly linking Norfolk in the East to Devon in
the South-West, with the majority of sightings so far received coming from
Wales, the North-West, Central and North of England, Scotland and much of
Ireland.

When first seen the fireball appeared as a single very brilliant object but
it then fragmented into a very large number of bright secondary fireballs,
all travelling along roughly parallel paths across the sky.

One highly unusual feature of this fireball is the length of time for which
it was visible due to its apparent very slow speed of movement across the
sky. This has led some people to speculate that the fireball was due to the
re-entry of a large fragment of space debris. However, there are several
aspects of the event, at this very early phase of the investigation, that do
not appear to fit with this hypothesis and it would be unwise to rule out
other possibilities at this stage.

The undersigned has received many reports of the fireball, but these
extracts from the following two more detailed accounts (which have, of
necessity, been shortened here) give a very good general idea of the nature
of this most unusual event.

>From David Stewart, Observing Coordinator of the Irish Astronomical
Association (IAA), observing from Delamont Country Park, one mile south of
Killyleagh in County Down.
"At 22:54 BST, a group of 12 IAA members spotted an amazing group of
fireballs rising from trees at the eastern horizon to the right of Jupiter
as seen from the main car park. It was immediately thought they might be
fireworks but they continued to rise at a steady pace and fan out slightly
as they approached us from distance with their numbers increasing and their
brilliant intensity remaining unchanged. We estimated approximately 20-30
fireballs were seen following the same east to west trajectory each with an
estimated brightness between mag. -5 to -7 and each left a medium trail as
they travelled almost directly overhead. No noise was heard except for the
excited astronomers. A larger group of 4 or 5 fireballs were at the front of
the group and differences in size were apparent but each burned with a
similar brightness and a distinct orange hue. We were able to observe the
fireballs for 2mins from the trees in the east to the trees in western
horizon and we had particularly good views in that direction. As the
fireballs approached the western horizon their numbers dwindled, possibly
due to burning up and atmospheric extinction, at least 2 or 3 were seen
disappearing behind trees. They were travelling at a speed somewhat faster
than the ISS but not as fast as a typical meteorite on entry into the
Earth's atmosphere."

cont....

[cont...]

And from Paul Buglass, reporting on behalf of 10+ members of the York
Astronomical Society (YAS) who were observing at the YAS Observatory, 4
miles west of York. Conditions were totally clear, and a very transparent
night.
"At approximately 10:56ish (BST), a group of us were talking outside
and I noticed a very bright light low down over York (due East) . very
bright with a slight green tint.. It seemed to be moving very slowly,
flickering slightly, and at first I thought it was a low flying aircraft .
then I thought perhaps it was a helicopter. It still hadn't moved much, but
as the seconds ticked by it slowly started to show more movement to the left
and slightly gain elevation .As its angular velocity increased, the bright
green light started to show a slight tail as it passed through the bottom of
Auriga, and then as its apparent angular speed increased more, a longer
trail of darker red/orange trail formed, with bits coming off, as it
approached the Plough. It then started to lose more distinct fragments
downstream, with a orange almost ember like appearance, then the main bright
white/green head puffed explosively and lost many more orange fragments
which trailed off downstream as it passed through the Plough.. It continued
West in a very flat trajectory, gradually losing the bright head as it moved
to the West, and . faded to about 6 or 7 glowing orange points . The
direction it was finally lost from view was directly under Hercules.. Total
observation time was possibly 60+ seconds from first sighting low in the
East to fading from view in the West."

Most of the reports received so far are either quite brief or contain a lot
of descriptive information about the fireball's changing visual appearance,
BUT we urgently need more positional information relating to the fireball's
trajectory across the night sky. Photographs which show background stars,
and even video clips or still images from mobile phones could prove very
useful in this regard.

PLEASE could local society secretaries or other officers who receive this
e-bulletin circulate it to all of their members and any other interested
parties.

Clearly this was a very major fireball event and any BAA members who saw it,
or who may have been contacted by non-astronomers who witnessed it, are
asked to collect as much information about the sighting as possible and send
it either to the Meteor Section Director at [removed] or to [removed]

Useful information will include the name and location of the observer, the
precise time of the event, the altitude and azimuth of the start and end
points of the visible track, the position of the observed track against the
background stars, and a description of the fireball's visual appearance,
colour, etc. together with any unusual features.


This e-bulletin issued by:
Director, BAA Meteor Section
2012 September 22

Looks like it was a meteor moreover man made space debris imo.

Surprised no one has mentioned Transformers (the films) yet

The videos posted were pretty damn awesome. Would have loved to see it, have been taking heaps of long exposures at night of the stars in the hope of capturing one.

So is there are genuine footage/images from this event at all?

Yikes and right after I'd listened to War of the Worlds for the first time in ages.

why do we make contact with so many meteors and yet we are not wiped out yet?

Originally posted by blupblup
So is there are genuine footage/images from this event at all?

This is actual footage of the meteor filmed in the streets of Sunderland, UK, which was posted on Facebook..........nice piece of film........

www.facebook.com...

did it hit the stadium of light ?

I saw it at around 11pm as me and my girlfriend got out of the car-

Me: "Aliens!!!!!"

Girlfriend: "It's a chinese Lantern..."



It was very impressive, I would describe it as about 10-15 bright lights seemingly connected, looked very large and moving very slowly across the sky. Not what I expected a meteor to look like, all the pieces looked like they were moving together.

It was massive though, never seen anything quite like it to be honest!

reply to post by Wonderer2012


They probably were Chinese lanterns, this thing was 6-7 fragments with a long burning trail behind it......

Originally posted by woogleuk
reply to post by Wonderer2012

 

They probably were Chinese lanterns, this thing was 6-7 fragments with a long burning trail behind it......

Ha ha I know what I saw, it was moving slowly across the sky.

Looked like a bunch of stars all moving together-

Originally posted by violet
I've seen a meteor or fireball and it didn't look like this, but I'm no expert.

Not all meteors look the same. How they look will depend on size, speed, angle of entry, and composition.

Keep in mind that this event was probably a satellite/junk reentry, or it may have been an exceptionally slow moving meteor. Either way, not your average fireball class meteor.

See the following meteor compilation for examples of different meteors, none of which look exactly alike:

Originally posted by aerial
why do we make contact with so many meteors and yet we are not wiped out yet?

Because our atmosphere is very good at stopping them. Even quite large meteoroids (the size of a large van), will usually break up (as we are seeing in this case), and if anything remains it falls to the ground relatively harmlessly.

You only have to look at the Moon to get an idea of what Earth would look like if it did not have a dense atmosphere.

Also, even quite small objects can cause very big and bright fireballs.