Meteor Over the United Kingdom

reply to post by angelchemuel


Wow!! What a sight! Certainly worth the wait.. TY angel.....

Originally posted by PinkPoinson31
ok so had to go back out and do a video dont think u can really hear it on vid compared to the voice recording i got earlier .... i cant get that to upload onto utube as it not a video so not supported ... any ideas on that b fab maybe email it to sum1 ... heres the vid link maybe amplifying it will help ..

Some interesting commentary on Twitter from the Kielder Observatory.

Link: twitter.com...

Huge fire ball from east at 9.55 UTC heading west mag -6 to -7

Any other observers? this was big, trajectory went from east, south east and headed to the west, broke up over west coast, many fragments

Definite up surge in meteor activity now, seen many before and continuing after, may suggest more than space junk or may be trivia

No real active showers of note...will research more in the morning but what a night.

Missed it here but as i live by the coast i took a walk down to look out over the North Sea. Didn't see anything, too cloudy anyway.

Good reason to keep looking out over coming days and weeks though.

Awesome videos and photos tonight, collected from ATS members and around the internet, just shows how much we can gather in such a small space of time and in such a small area of the globe, to be honest.. Cool.

Originally posted by UKWO1Phot
I was looking on casperflights a minute ago, and there aren't any planes in northern airspace?

Linky

That was interesting.

There was nothing in the northern UK airspace since your post until about five minutes ago and a sudden flurry of activity again.

Here is another one I found... love the accent
www.youtube.com...#!

Deleted - OLD news!

Originally posted by Ramcheck
Yes, very much so. Dalbeattie is like 100 miles north west of Liverpool.

edit on 21/9/12 by Ramcheck because: (no reason given)

Thank you. I appreciated being answered

A BBC camera team also captured the event from NI. Click here to see it.

Originally posted by j.r.c.b.
reply to post by angelchemuel

 

Wow!! What a sight! Certainly worth the wait.. TY angel.....

Thank you...looked really impressive on his phone, and he and his friend said his phone capture didn't do it any justice...it was HUGE apparently as others who physically saw it have also reported

Rainbows
Jane

reply to post by FireballStorm


That looks weird how all the pieces are side by side??

Sent everything to a BBC and 'rag' contact, who was very interested. Might see something in print, might not..

One has just been seen in Eastern Ontario about 20 mins ago. What is going on? I'm going outside to look

Originally posted by Xquizit
One has just been seen in Eastern Ontario about 20 mins ago. What is going on? I'm going outside to look

Let us know, now that would be interesting!

Any news on the ontario sighting as well or was that just a copy cat?

reply to post by crazyguy2012

Apparently not. Quite a few reports.
thelatestworldwidemeteorreports.blogspot.com...

Originally posted by Tardacus
Is it normal for meteors to travel such a long distance at such a low altitude and low speed, before hitting the ground?

Firstly, speed, distance, and especially altitude are extremely difficult to estimate accurately in cases like this. It's well documented that people often under estimate the distance/altitude of bright meteors (see the thread: How good are we at estimating the distance and altitude of UFOs?)

Most meteors become visible at altitudes of around 100 km, and in extreme cases can stay luminous down to around 20 km. At these kinds of altitudes a bright meteor can easily be seen for 100's of miles in every direction.

Secondly, yes this is normal. Meteors can be very slow, and although angle of entry does not affect this (as a previous poster to this thread claimed), perspective (the angle between the meteor's direction of travel, and an observer) can make a meteor appear to be traveling slower than it actually is. In extreme cases (eg a meteor heading directly towards an observer) a meteor will not appear to move in the sky at all, which is why it's called a "point-meteor".

In this case, we are seeing exactly the opposite, which is known as an Earth Grazing Meteor (scroll down to the bottom of the page):

These grazers can traverse unusually long paths through the atmosphere because they are skimming horizontally through less dense portions of air , rather than penetrating downward to denser layers. These meteors are quite spectacular to observe and can occasionally cover more than 100 degrees of arc for an observer below.

See the following web pages for more info on the subject:
How Fast is "Swift": An Exploration of Meteor Angular Speeds
The Meteor Meniscus: Meteor Distance verses Meteor Zenith Angle

Thirdly, not all meteoroids that enter the atmosphere make it down to the ground, even when they are quite big/bright. In this case however, it may be possible since there is at least one report of booms/rumbling being heard, witch is usually a good indicator that something made it down low enough to survive. Unfortunately, the fact that this was an earthgrazer makes it less likely that where any meteorites may have landed can be pinpointed, even if they did fall over ground.

Fourthly, it's still not certain that this was a natural meteor - it may have been a satellite/junk reentry, which can easily resemble a slow/long meteor that is breaking up. I personally think either is a possibility at this stage, although I think a natural meteor is a slightly better possibility at this stage.

What are the chances of two events like this occurring on the same night in two different locations?

reply to post by majesticgent

Reasonably high.

Several thousand meteors of fireball magnitude occur in the Earth’s atmosphere each day. The vast majority of these, however, occur over the oceans and uninhabited regions, and a good many are masked by daylight. Those that occur at night also stand little chance of being detected due to the relatively low numbers of persons out to notice them.

www.amsmeteors.org...

reply to post by majesticgent


I don't see it being impossible for something which was originally one object breaking into two pieces and traveling through space together, and hitting the Earths atmosphere at the same time, in two slightly different locations.