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Meteors & Meteoric Fireballs (Observed Aloft)

Thanks Rynner for all that info, I haven't quiet understood the after midnight bit.

But I did see the link on BBC to the Russian meteor, and it is weird to have two large meteors in a week. Or is it?

Lutz
 
There's more!

This time over Colorado last weekend.

It does seem we may have strayed into a new stream.
 
rynner said:
Interestingly, some meteorites (= meteors that make it to earth) can appear covered with frost, despite their fiery passage through the atmosphere! This is because most of the rock is still at the intense cold of deep space, and the heat from the outer burning layer doesn't get time during its brief fall to Earth to warm up the inside. This would tend to happen more with large meteors that have a steep angle of descent.
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Yes, that is really strange. Apparently what you see in the sky is the shockwave in front of the meteor glowing, and the meteor is not affected by friction so much as by the heat of the shockwave-most of which is dissipated behind the meteor.
So, apart from a small surface layer heater by the glowing bow wave, the meteor stays at space temperature and can land cold.

BTW I saw a brilliant daytime fireball 20 years ago over London, it can't have lasted more than five seconds (and to the best of my knowledge no-one else saw it) so yes, I think they are less rare than people think.

steve b
 
From the description I would say this was almost certainly a large meteor (bollide). I saw one way back in around 1966 (showing my age here) when I lived in upstate New York. It was so bright that, even though the sun had almost but not quite set, it cast shadows on the ground! It had small pieces breaking off the main body and falling downward, cooling from white hot to yellow to red as they fell. And I too was convinced that it was very close by - I thought it was perhaps a mile distant from where I was standing, and I took off running hoping to find the place where it impacted. After running a good distance I realized that the vapor trail had not moved at all in the sky, so the thing must have been much farther away than I thought. Later, I found out that it was actually out over the Atlantic, a good thousand miles away!
 
meteorite

did anyone else happen to see the fireball that scooted over west essex and north london on the 19/12/02 @ 0630.
It was huge, i saw it in harlow and i know three people who saw it over palmers green, yet it wasn't reported in the press.are we mad?
 
I have had a report of this too:
I hope you can help me, this morning at 06.28 hrs I saw an object burning up in the Western sky above Southampton Hampshire. It was not a shooting star as I have seen a number of those. This lasted for aprox 4-5 seconds and was visably burning up, it then seemed to stop burning and continued on its a way for a second or so just as a red speck. The burning phase was very large indeed, if you hold your arm outstretched and put your forefinger and thumb a quarter of an inch apart thats how big it was in the morning sky. As I said it was in the Western sky but probably going North to South if you know what I mean. If you take the sky from horizon to horizon it travelled about a quarter of it and was at the top of the view. I haven't made myself very clear have I? but thats the only way I could discribe it to you. I know you are probably very busy with more important things but if you have any idea please let me know, I would be very grateful.
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Anyone else?
 
There was a story and pic in a paper very recently ( I don't have it ) about a plane whose contrail caught the sunset in such a way that it looked like a flaming meteorite . I can't give any more details than this but I'm sure it was in the last week.
 
This story refers to UK, early morning, Thursday 19th Dec. Since this was nearly 3 hours before local sunrise, I think we can discount aircraft reflections.

And since it was seen from Essex and Hampshire, it was presumably high in the atmosphere, so 'twas probably a bolide or re-entering space debris.
 
Surely not a bolide, or am I reading this wrong.

What is a bolide? There is no consensus on its definition, but we use it to mean an extraterrestrial body in the 1-10-km size range, which impacts the earth at velocities of literally faster than a speeding bullet (20-70 km/sec = Mach 75), explodes upon impact, and creates a large crater. "Bolide" is a generic term, used to imply that we do not know the precise nature of the impacting body . . . whether it is a rocky or metallic asteroid, or an icy comet, for example.
 
meteorite

i actually live below the flightpath to stansted so there was no way this was an aeroplane, but it was probably the same thing the guy in hampshire saw, as it was also going north to south.
if you draw a line between harlow, palmers green(nr tottenham)and southampton its nearly dead straight.
does anyone else reckon it could have been a meteorite that i found on some french website called asteroide 3200 phaeton? it was meant to have buggered off by the 16th but who knows.
french site: assoc.wanadoo.fr/planetica/gazette/information.html
 
p.younger said:
Surely not a bolide, or am I reading this wrong.

What is a bolide? There is no consensus on its definition, but we use it to mean an extraterrestrial body in the 1-10-km size range, which impacts the earth at velocities of literally faster than a speeding bullet (20-70 km/sec = Mach 75), explodes upon impact, and creates a large crater. "Bolide" is a generic term, used to imply that we do not know the precise nature of the impacting body . . . whether it is a rocky or metallic asteroid, or an icy comet, for example.
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Blimey!
That is an unusually strict definition of Bolide
I would have said a bolide was anything larger than a family sized tin of beans
(which would have made a respectable fireball if it entered the atmosphere at the right angle and speed...)
I saw a daylight fireball once
it lasted maybe 2 seconds, so it wasn't quite like the object described,
but I'm sure that you all saw a largish meteor
they often go on and off if they are disintegrating or hitting different layers of the atmosphere
they can do a ducks and drakes type skipping effect

sometimes it is re-entering satellites

but it's not Phaeton
you wouldn't even see that with binoculars IIRC
 
Another report of Thursday's object.

The thing must have been very high to be seen over such a wide area.
 
re:- fireballs

when i was living (grangetown) carrdiff(3-4 yrs ago) i was walking from town along penarth rd (the was lightish) crossing penarth rd brigde (it was about 6ishpm) the eveing was clear i looked up sw/w direction(towards the inn on the river locally known as the "pub on the mud" looking for the first star (to make a wish!) when i saw a bright yellow "teardrop?" ball of fire @about 45-50 degs from horizin there was no sonic bangs and it maybe took about 5-6 secs to cross the open sky and it appered to head to the bottem of butetown"the docks/tigerbay" after dissappering behind the foundry nothing mentioned either in paper or on the news following day


i felt priviligded to see a "fireball"


and yes i did make a wish!!
 
Shooting Stars

Just seen a massive shooting star off the south coast of england.
From west to east reasonably low on the horizon. Very bright and large enough to leave a trail visible for around 2-3 seconds.
Out of interest did anyone else see it too, is this a common time of year for it? If anything made it through the atmosphere i'd guess it fell in northern europe ( maybe France )
 
i always seem to catch them out of the corner of my eye. i never get to behold them in their brief existance.
 
Me too normally synth, but as i say this bugger was BIG !:eek!!!!:
There's a lot of light pollution here from the garage and 24 hour supermarket etc....even one of the rabbits outside looked up from eating... I wish i new more about astronomy could be more exact about where it went to & from :(
 
Great balls of fire over Japan (With photo.)
Observatories throughout western Japan were swamped overnight with calls from people claiming to have spotted a UFO, the Mainichi learned Friday.

Dozens witnessed the phenomenon at around 8:30 p.m. Thursday night, and though what they saw may have shook their nerves, there was little need for them to rattle their brains as it appears to have been great balls of fire caused by a falling meteor or comet.

Moving from west to east across the sky, the initial fireball split into three before disappearing.

"It was white at first and then turned yellow. It was like watching the headlights of a truck from a long distance. I thought it must have been a meteor, but I was shocked as I'd never experienced anything like this before," said Yoshitaka Hazenoki, a member of the board of education in the Wakayama Prefecture city of Arita.

Shinya Narusawa of the Nishi Harima Observatory in Hyogo Prefecture's Sayo told of receiving many reports about the phenomenon.

"We've received information of sightings in Tanegashima (Nagasaki Prefecture)," he said. "For the moment, we think it was a meteor that dropped into the Pacific Ocean."

Observatories around Fukuoka also reported seeing the flaming balls of fire streaming through the sky. Fukuoka Observatory officials said the fireballs were either a meteor or comet.

Reports from Kitakyushu of a bright red light with a tail traveling across the sky in an easterly direction over Kitakyushu were also forwarded to the Mainichi. (Mainichi Shimbun, Feb. 7, 2003)
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Used to go and lie on our backs in the middle of Goonhilly Downs about the time of the Perseids (adders all asleep!:eek!!!!: ) and be regularly rewarded with an amazing display. The downs are pretty flat with very little light pollution, tho' it has increased a little from the satellite station in recent years.
 
An outbreak of ghost activity that struck Lesotho last year has been found to have been the result of a spectacular meteor shower.

On 21 July, a loud noise in the sky was heard over most of the country.

Then in the village of Boqate Ha Sofonia, objects began to fall on the roofs of houses.

'Malino Mantsoe, one of the village residents, saw a large stone smash into the low-walled cooking area in front of her house, before knocking over and cracking a plastic container.

She blamed a "thokolosi" - a poltergeist - and sprinkled holy water around her house and on the stone. No more stones fell.

'Matukule Khoeletsana, another resident, also had stones bounce on her roof - and kept them to prove it was no bad dream.

Investigation

Now the cause of the mystery rocks has been found to have been a meteorite.

A rock weighing perhaps a tonne, which had been circling the sun for 4,600 million years, had finally intercepted another body in the solar system - the Earth.

It arrived at perhaps 50 to 100 times the speed of sound, and hitting the atmosphere at this speed, exploded into thousands of pieces which had fallen to earth over nine different villages.

A team from the National University of Lesotho went to investigate, and with the help of schoolchildren and local residents collected over 400 different stones ranging from just a few grams to over a kilogram.

There were a number of champion collectors, including a well-known local youth nicknamed Ramanaka, or "Father of Horns", because of his head-dress decorated with horns and a portrait of Nelson Mandela.

The Thuathe meteorite, as it has been christened, has ensured that Lesotho will now have a place in the science of meteoritics.
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From The BBC
 
Made me wonder if satellites melt when they fall down to the earth? Are there traces left over after it enters atmosphere?
 
phgnome said:
Made me wonder if satellites melt when they fall down to the earth? Are there traces left over after it enters atmosphere?
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Have we forgotten Columbia so soon? :(


And other satellites have come down in Canada and Australia, but most fragments land in the oceans.
 
A woman I used to work with told me about the time she was on holiday (I forget where) when she and some friends found a suspect device on the beach which police initially thought was a bomb.

When it was analysed, it apparently turned out to have been the battery unit from a satellite.

Marie
 
PIC - fireball over Wales

http://antwrp.gsfc.nasa.gov/apod/ap031001.html

Jon Burnett, a teenager from South Wales, UK, was photographing some friends skateboarding last week when the sky did something very strange. High in the distance, a sofa-sized rock came hurtling into the nearby atmosphere of planet Earth and disintegrated. By diverting his camera, he was able to document this rare sky event and capture one of the more spectacular meteor images yet recorded. Roughly one minute later, he took another picture of the dispersing meteor trial. Bright fireballs occur over someplace on Earth nearly every day. A separate bolide, likely even more dramatic, struck India only a few days ago.
 
I can't quite put my finger on it but the photo looks 'wrong' somehow.
 
Can imagine seeing something like that would be quite frightening. Your first thought isn't gonnabe 'Oh, look at that everyday occurence, a space rock disintegrating on entry to the earth's atmosphere'. Prob more likely 'Fuck! End of the world! Yaarggghhh!'
 
I know what you mean Yithian.

Looking at the second picture taken a minute later I don't understand why the fireball's trail hasn't continued further along the sky. :confused:

Floyd
 
McAvennie said:
Can imagine seeing something like that would be quite frightening. Your first thought isn't gonnabe 'Oh, look at that everyday occurence, a space rock disintegrating on entry to the earth's atmosphere'. Prob more likely 'Fuck! End of the world! Yaarggghhh!'
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I saw something very similar in size and appearance walking home with my brother on a winter evening, in the late 60s.

Being a nerdy kid who read a lot of SF and astronomy books my first reaction really was 'Hey, look it's a giant meteor That's amazing..'
 
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