Recent UK 'Meteor'- something doesn't add up

Originally posted by wylekat

Originally posted by FireballStorm

Originally posted by Wonderer2012
He believes it was space junk, like a satellite or some other piece of 'space junk', yet if it was 80 miles up then it must have been huge!

Why must it have been "huge"?

Because it was bright?

Again, I think you are ignorant of how meteors work, and the physics of hypersonic objects entering the atmosphere.

A normal "shooting star"/meteor can be caused by a particle the size of a sand-grain, seen at 100 km altitude, and in the case of a reentry, a small (inch long) screw can cause an impressive fireball-class meteor.

Whilst size/mass does matter, the reason a small object can be so bright, and be seen from such a long distance is because it's traveling very fast. High velocity translates into high energy, which in the case of meteoroids entering the atmosphere is expended in the form of light.

High velocity is why a rife bullet weighing only a few grams will easily kill you if it hits you, but in the case of meteoroids, they are traveling so fast (100's of times faster than bullets) that the air around them glows brightly due to the ionizing collisions with air-molecules.

After reading your above post- I am curious- where was the ISS during these fireballs (I ask of everyone who's on here BTW- someone can come up with the info, I am sure)? It makes me wonder if they didnt jettison trash and it did this.

edit on 26-9-2012 by wylekat because: My train of thought had a derailment.

edit on 26-9-2012 by wylekat because: Stupidity!

Do they do that? Just open a window and throw the garbage out? Sounds rather irresponsible dont you think?

reply to post by karen61057


It's not quite as simple as "opening a window", but yes they do sometimes "dump" waste, although it's not as irresponsible as it seems at first glance.

It completely "burns up" when it reenters the atmosphere without there being any danger to the environment.

Originally posted by Wonderer2012
So we've all read the reports and seen the videos of the recent UK 'meteor', however, there are a few strange things to this story that do seem not add up.

When I saw the object, my first reaction was "Aliens", my girlfriend said it was a "Chinese Lantern"

But seriously, the official direction of the 'meteor' is that it was heading westwards. I live right by the coast so I know which way is east and west and the 'meteor' I saw was not heading west, it was heading east. So was there more than one instance of this 'meteor'?

Are we looking at the same event?

I saw it at pretty much bang on 11pm. Other people claim to have seen something an hour earlier at 10pm.

www.bbc.co.uk...

One person who contacted the BBC said it was "kind of a mass of light, gold light. Everything moving in unison".

"It wasn't diverging... I thought it was a plane at first. It was quite low on the horizon and moving much slower than I'd expect to see a shooting star, but it was amazing."

"The best way I can explain it is that it looked like a train with all different carriages on it... it lasted about 25 to 30 seconds.

"I've never seen anything like it - it was really, really bright," he said.

It was all moving in unison, like a carriage and certainly doesn't seem to be a meteor shower which would flash across the sky.

According to Tim O'Brien from the Jodrell Bank Observatory-

"[The object was] probably 80 miles up or so, high up, moving very fast, actually, 18,000 miles an hour, probably, at least."

If it was 80 miles up and travelling at 18,000 miles an hour, and it wasn't a meteor, then think about just how big it actually was. He believes it was space junk, like a satellite or some other piece of 'space junk', yet if it was 80 miles up then it must have been huge!

Here's another video, which looks completely different to the other two-

This video shows 5 seperate lights travelling horizontally along the sky, seemingly seperated a lot more than as is seen in the other videos.

I think there is a good chance people saw and recorded different sightings and there were multiple instances.

Here are photo grabs from the 3 videos-

They look different, the top image has a 'fireball' above the rest of the seeming line, whereas the 2nd image seems to all be in line. The third image shows the sources of light much further apart.

So I'm not saying this is evidence of an alien invasion, but I think there is a good chance that many of the sightings were of a different event. It seems to be too slow to be a meteor, if it is 'space junk' then it seems very large to be a satellite or something like that.

UFO seems to fit the ball quite nicely, what do you all think- more than one event or just camera tricks and all 3 videos are of the same event?

edit on 24-9-2012 by Wonderer2012 because: (no reason given)

This is my first ATS post so be gentle

I saw this "event" first hand and was rather surprised at the constant references to this being visible in the North-West and nowhere else, as I was in Hull at the time. I had just played a gig and was sitting in the beer garden outside (although it was bloody freezing cold), when suddenly my friend said "what the **** is that".

When I looked, there was a crowd of other patrons pointing up at the sky, and what I saw was something very similar to the third youtube video although I would say that it was either much lower than people have gauged, or it was much larger than people believed as it was as it was huge.

To me, it resembled a large fireball with a trail however at the end of the trail there seemed to be another ball of flames, with periodic "sparks" flying off it.

I didn't see it for long, maybe about ten/fifteen seconds, but a got a great view of it.

Don't know how relevant this is, but I remember that the trajectory was dead straight-and it was travelling fast. (i.e. it wasn't spiraling, juping around, breaking up etc..), just shooting across the sky as though it was following a predetermined path.

Whatever it was, it was pretty phenomenal to see.

Forgot to say, this was probably around 23:00hrs when I saw this.

reply to post by Sunraged


You missed providing the most crucial information.
1) What direction were you looking when you observed the meteor?
2) What direction was the meteor moving? (left to right or right to left?)
3) What time did you observe it?

But the rest of your description was interesting.

Originally posted by bluestreak53
reply to post by Sunraged

 

You missed providing the most crucial information.
1) What direction were you looking when you observed the meteor?
2) What direction was the meteor moving? (left to right or right to left?)
3) What time did you observe it?

But the rest of your description was interesting.

Sorry, still new to this.

Ok, the object was moving right to left, I saw it around 11pm UK time, as for direction I was looking, I'm sorry other than saying the local kebab shop was in front of me, I couldn't tell you any more than that.

However, an educated guess would be that it appeared to be heading in the general direction I would have been heading home, which would be from east yorkshire to south yorkshire.

Hope that helps!

reply to post by Wonderer2012

I thought about adding this to my own thread but this is where it belongs.
I had a sighting that night around 9pm. I put the kettle on and looked out of my door, I do that a lot since I had my own sighting of a light on the 1st of that month.

I could see 2 or 3 little red lights dancing around way up high in the sky, I couldn't make out what I was looking at so I made my cup of tea then looked out again. They were gone but a few houses down it looked as if there were flames sticking out the sides of a chimney, I'm guessing this was some distance away and my view was blocked by the houses.

Did you know that kielder observatory had a sighting at 9:20pm that night?
It all adds to the strangeness of it.