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Meteors & Meteoric Fireballs (Observed Aloft)

Those flashes over northern Scotland seem like Aurora Borealis - but surely the folks there would recognise that.
I've seen the Aurora Boealis from Arctic Canada, extensively, and (briefly) in Scotland. This was entirely-different from that. Not a shimmering glimmer, no fade-rippling irridescence...more of an off-white extended flash (still nothing like my long-ago report of the super-bright longflash from source unknown).
Possible meteor filmed in Scotland. Could it not just be lightning? Video at link.
Shall watch the video tomorrow. I say lightning's unlikely because of the following aspects (please, disagree, if you've a counter to these points)
  • Far too wide a geographic spread experiencing the effect simultaneously, thus rendering a conventional thunderstorm to being an unfeasible source
  • No reports of thunder
  • Rain/overcast, but no overall storm conditions as such (nor particularly high winds, to productively transport a putative storm-cell...and; if such a source theory were to hold true, it would've needed to have occured via the prevailing westerlies....predicating a massive storm-front, stretching the whole length of Scotland. An unreported (? presumably?) and remarkably short-lived one, too.
EDIT: I caved-in and watched the video. This was extremely-similar to what I saw, a loongish big flash, and then a notable double-flash. Which, had this occurred in 1991, would've resulted in false alarms from the now-binned AWDREY system (the former UK atomic weapon detection arrangements)
 
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There's an interesting approximation that demonstrates why these meteors rarely reach the ground. Newton's 'law' of penetration indicates that a projectile will penetrate into a target as far as the ratio between the density of the projectile divided by the density of the target, times the projectile's length. This is complicated a bit by the fact that the atmosphere gets increasingly dense as the meteor gets lower; but it does mean that there is a physical limit as to how deep the meteor will get, and most of the energy of momentum is released in the final instant when the meteor finally stops.
400px-Newton_Penetration_Approximation.png

This sort of explains why only the largest (i.e. longest) meteors hit the ground while going at full speed - most of them 'run out of steam' high in the atmosphere, then fall to earth like stones dropped out of a balloon. Big meteors are surprisingly common - and with dashcams, we'll see more and more of them, no doubt.
 
St Patrick's Day meteor lights up sky with green flash across UK
By WBGraeme | Posted: March 17, 2016

THERE have been reports across the UK of a fireball in the sky at around 3.20am this morning.
People have reported a bright white light with blue and green flashes – which is suitably fitting as today in St Patrick's Day.

The meteor, estimated to have been the size of a bus when it hit the atmosphere, was reported from the south of England up into Scotland.

It is believed that the green and blue colour is caused by traces of magnesium which burn as the meteor is incinerated by the friction caused as it hits the air at high speed.

http://www.westbriton.co.uk/St-Part...een-flash-UK/story-28941931-detail/story.html
 
St Patrick's Day meteor lights up sky with green flash across UK
By WBGraeme | Posted: March 17, 2016

Describing the meteor as "spectacular", Dr John Mason of the British Astronomical Association said it was bright enough to be categorised as a fireball.

He believes it was a piece of cosmic rock which almost certainly came from the asteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter.


http://www.westbriton.co.uk/St-Part...een-flash-UK/story-28941931-detail/story.html
How does he know that? Is he able, from a youtube video, to measure the trajectory in relation to the speed and relative orientation of it's origin? It could have come from any one of an infinite number of possible source trajectories before it arrived in the goldilocks zones. I wonder what those not of the British Astronomical Association think of of the origin of the piece of cosmic rock in question.

Every thread needs a theme tune.
The township is known as Noel Fields, NJ.
 
How does he know that? Is he able, from a youtube video, to measure the trajectory in relation to the speed and relative orientation of it's origin?

He might simply be relying on statistics for such a statement.
 
You can't tell much from one YouTube video, but it is possible to triangulate its height and trajectory from two, or several videos, assuming you know where they were filmed. from. This would take a bit of work, however, something this guy might not have had time for yet.
 
He said the green colour was caused by the meteor heating up the oxygen in the earth's atmosphere.
As I have often suspected. There is a green emission line from magnesium as well, which is brighter, apparently, but magnesium isn't really all that common in meteors (it's not really rare, either, but oxygen is always present in the flare for obvious reasons).
 
Huge Australian Meteorite Shows How Unsafe Earth Really Is

Climate change is cited endlessly as the most dire threat our planet faces, all the while fiery doom hurtles through space every day, narrowly missing our beloved blue planet. If you enjoy sleeping, it’s probably best not to think about it – until headlines like this one pop up, that is.

meteor2.jpg

NASA released this image of the meteorite taken from space.

Earlier this week, a massive fireball streaked across the sky above Queensland, Australia before apparently impacting the Earth or exploding above ground. Residents reported feeling the ground shake and being blinded by an immense flash of light. According to the Brisbane Times, police received multiple calls from concerned residentswho were frightened by the impact. While the exact nature of the falling object is unknown, astronomer Owen Bennedick at the Wappa Falls Observatory told Brisbane Times that reports of the impact spread across a 100-kilometre radius, showing that “whatever it was, it was big.” ...

http://mysteriousuniverse.org/2016/10/huge-australian-meteorite-shows-how-unsafe-earth-really-is/

 
Huge meteor blazes across US skies
2 hours ago

A bright meteor streaked across skies over US Midwestern states early on Monday morning.

Hundreds of witnesses reported seeing the glowing object, which was visible in seven US states and Ontario, Canada, according to the American Meteor Society.

The fireball was also reportedly accompanied by a sonic boom that rattled homes in the area.

http://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-38887748

Vid at link.
 
Smoking 'meteor' captured falling through the sky over Plymouth
By CMJacqui | Posted: April 11, 2017

These stunning pictures appear to show a smoking meteor falling through the sky in a spectacular red sunrise.

Ben Landricombe was on his way to work early when he spotted the unusual smoke in the dawn sky over Plymouth.
The council worker then raced back to his house in his car to grab his camera before the rare sight disappeared from the sky above Plymouth, Devon.

The spectacular sight comes in a month when the sunrises and sunsets across Cornwall have been stunning and there are lots of major sky events that can be viewed with the naked eye.

Ben, 36, told the Herald: "I was driving to work, then I saw a big spark in the sky. I thought I better get my camera. I missed the meteor coming through the atmosphere, but I saw the sparks coming down, travelling really fast."

Ben drove to a local high spot to get his pictures shortly after 6am as the sun still sat below the horizon.
The keen photographer saw the meteor - so named because it had entered the earth's atmosphere and broken up - at 6am today.
He put the pictures on Facebook where they have been shared hundreds of times.
He added: "I've never seen anything like it in my life, I showed everyone the pictures and they all said 'Wow!' I was late to work, but I think my boss was all right."
...

http://www.cornwalllive.com/smoking...ver-plymouth/story-30263476-detail/story.html
 
Burning fireball plummeting to Earth seen on Devon beach camera
Video: 22s.

A "very bright" light, believed to be a fireball, or meteor, has been seen by a beach camera in Devon.

Dr Robert Massey, deputy executive director of the Royal Astronomical Society, said it was an "impressive sight" and "almost certainly" a fireball, namely a bright meteor burning up in the Earth's atmosphere.
"It just shows that a lot of astronomy can be enjoyed without any special equipment at all," he said.

It was recorded at 11.38 BST on Friday.
05 Jun

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/av/uk-eng...lummeting-to-earth-seen-on-devon-beach-camera
 
Meteor shower sparks ship on fire alert off Caithness
  • 12 minutes ago


_99475953_meteorpa.jpg
Image copyrightPA
Image captionA fireball during the meteor shower may have been the cause of the alarm
A meteor shower is believed to have been the cause of reports of a ship on fire off Lybster on the Caithness coast on Thursday night.

Police Scotland asked the Maritime and Coastguard Agency (MCA) to investigate.

The coastguard contacted the crews of boats in the area who reported back to say that no vessels were in difficulty.

etc

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-scotland-highlands-islands-42578355
 
ROMAN FIREBALL
Eric Rucker
This happened in Rome in, I think, mid-June 1997. I was leaving the offices of a pharmaceutical company called Serono where I had been teaching English to one of the employees, and whose offices and some production facilities are in an enormous late 19th century building situated by the side of one of the main rail thoroughfares into Rome. The road connecting it to the city centre passes over the railway lines via a large bridge called Ponte Casilina. At about 11.00 I was crossing this bridge when I became aware of a movement in the corner of my eye...

http://www.forteantimes.com/happened/romanfireball.shtml

The cited link is long dead. Here is the rest of the story as once presented online at the FT site ...

... Looking round I was amazed to see something that looked like a woodcut of a comet – a ball of fire, surrounded by flames and leaving a visible trail of sparks and debris – appear from over the three- or four-storey building and begin to cross the sky.

This thing looked big, a lot bigger than the sun or moon, appearing to me about the size of a tennis ball held about 10 cm in front of the face, didn’t seem to be particularly far away (though I don’t know how I could have known this) and was travelling at about the speed a jet flying at high altitude seems to be travelling when viewed from the ground. It was also visibly on fire, flames licking round the edges like a massive ball of rolled-up paper burning, and my first feeling was that there had been an explosion inside the plant, but this seemed increasingly unlikely as I watched it progress across the sky without falling.

I couldn’t hear anything but, imagining it was an exploding aircraft or a meteor about to smash into the ground, I started looking around in panic. Romans not being great walkers or observers, there were no pedestrians about, and, the object being high in the sky, it would have been difficult for a driver, even an observant one, to see it. I just stood on the bridge and watched it cross the sky before disappearing behind the roof of a church hostel on the other side of the railway tracks. Expecting an explosion, I jumped on the floor, but nothing happened and presently I got up and spent about ten minutes in the same spot in stunned disbelief before calling my girlfriend and then absently continuing with my working day.

Nobody I spoke to later had seen anything of the kind, nothing was reported on TV or in the papers and some half-hearted enquiries led nowhere. Romans are not particularly interested in the non-Catholic supernatural and the bored reception I got when I told this story convinced me that I might as well stop telling it, and I had written it off as a hallucination until one day roughly a year later, a new teacher in the school where I now worked told me that about a year before he had seen, from an entirely different location, a ball of fire crossing the sky, on what, as far as we can determine, is the same day that I did.

Friends have told me they can remember me telling this story before I met this person, and my girlfriend can remember me calling her at work that day, very worked up, but more or less incoherent (she’s Italian and I’m English).

SALVAGED FROM: https://web.archive.org/web/2002120...teantimes.com:80/happened/romanfireball.shtml

index.php
 
Many thanks for the link. The Way Back Machine is a very valuable resource for just about anything a person might want to research.
 
Anybody else traveling to dark skies for this weekend's Leonids?

I'm hauling a trailer load of shrub offcuts north about 593.2km into the deepest Flinders Ranges on Friday evening. I should arrive around 9pm and have the lot burned off by 2am when the shower is predicted to peak. Looks to be a lovely weekend with days in the high 20s and nights chillycool. Cloudless. Half moon sets at 2am too. Will be a long and glorious session. Back Sunday arvo.
 
Anybody else traveling to dark skies for this weekend's Leonids?

I'm hauling a trailer load of shrub offcuts north about 593.2km into the deepest Flinders Ranges on Friday evening. I should arrive around 9pm and have the lot burned off by 2am when the shower is predicted to peak. Looks to be a lovely weekend with days in the high 20s and nights chillycool. Cloudless. Half moon sets at 2am too. Will be a long and glorious session. Back Sunday arvo.

Sounds good. How far are the Flinders Ranges away from you?
 
Anybody else traveling to dark skies for this weekend's Leonids?

I'm hauling a trailer load of shrub offcuts north about 593.2km into the deepest Flinders Ranges on Friday evening. I should arrive around 9pm and have the lot burned off by 2am when the shower is predicted to peak. Looks to be a lovely weekend with days in the high 20s and nights chillycool. Cloudless. Half moon sets at 2am too. Will be a long and glorious session. Back Sunday arvo.
We need an "envious" button. Spot one for me, will you?
 
Sounds good. How far are the Flinders Ranges away from you?
Technically I'm on them right now, as this uplift runs for up about 1000km. However, according to the designatii, the Flinders Range proper commences about 300km north of here. I'll be going into the northern reaches tomorrow. Halfway between Parachilna and Blinman right inside the Parachilna Gorge, not that that'll mean a blind thing to anyone apart from perhaps @Mungoman.

This is my poz - wide open sky. Devoid of humanity at night.
764a2961c392766844d4fe7ccc72d5f9.jpg

It is a most special place I try to get to a couple of times a year. Going solo this time. Bit of zen needed.
Heysen-Range1.jpg


We need an "envious" button. Spot one for me, will you?
Sure will.
 
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Looks a great spot & that sky in your first pic is fabulous. Lovely photo.
 
IHTM! I don't see it mentioned here, but there was a big meteor visible over the north of the UK and Ireland at 10:10pm on 26 April 2015. I know because I saw it!

What's most frustrating is that I was out doing night photography, had my camera set up and pointing in the right direction, but it was half-way through processing my previous 30-second exposure when the meteor chose to make its entrance.

Here's the pic that was processing while it happened. Hmph. Still pleased I got to see one though!

CDjLrvmWgAEtbsb.jpg large.jpg
 
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