The Fireball of 21 September 2012
Did you see it? Plenty of UK-based stargazers did; a huge, bright, long-lasting fireball streaked through the sky last night, 21 September, at 2255BST (2155UT).
The fireball was caught on meteorlog’s meteor cam
I saw it as I was driving home from a stargazing trip to Loch Tay in the Highlands of Scotland. The first glimpse I caught was behind some trees, and I clearly saw the very bright (estimated magnitude -5), yellow fragments of a space rock that was disintegrating as it burned up in our atmosphere. It was traveling westwards from the SW, and look to be about 40° above the horizon. I lost sight of it as I drove, but once I’d turned a bend in the road, a full ten seconds later, I caught the last few fragments burning it.
Straight away I pulled over and tweeted to see if anyone else had seen in, and very soon a flood of observations came in. The team at the Kielder Observatory actually had a group of people up observing, who all saw it.
Huge fire ball from east at 9.55 UTC heading west mag -6 to -7
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Kielder Observatory (@kielder_obs) September 21, 2012Mike Alexander, who runs the Galloway Astronomy Centre, had a group of guests out stargazing then too, and they also saw it, but even better they heard it!
@darkskyman @virtualastro Still buzzing from fireball. Can't get over hearing sonic boom minutes later - beauty of a silent rural location
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GallowayAstro (@Gallowayastro) September 22, 2012By the time I got home, around 0030BST this morning, only an hour and a half after it happened, there were reports of it on BBC Radio 4, with people all over the northern UK and Ireland reporting the same thing, a disintegrating fireball burning through the night sky for around 20 or 30 seconds.
By the time I woke up this morning it had made it onto BBC News.
So what was it?
A few people suggested that it might have been man-made space debris, an old satellite burning up as it de-orbits, but this isn’t the case, for a couple of reasons. First it was traveling east to west, and satellites don’t orbit in that direction. Secondly, Mike (above) reported hearing a sonic boom approx 150 seconds after it faded. Both of these observations point to the fact that it was a large chunk of space rock, a meteor. When meteors are as bright as this one we call them fireballs.
Great blog, I was one of the visitors to Kielder Observatory. Initially, we thought it was a plane but as soon as Gary saw it, he informed us it was a Meteor. Fantastic to watch, looked so big. Lasted for circa 30 seconds and watched it break up, didn’t hear a noise though. Fantastic!
i seen a orange “fireball” in southern new york state approx. 9pm last night???
Hi Christina,
Looks like you might have seen the same fireball as us!
http://bit.ly/V5KqAt
Steve
We saw it as we were leaving the house on our last dog walk. It had a white central core with green sparks coming off. A piece broke off which faded to red as it burned out. It was, as you say, heading east to west, and disappeared over the houses opposite.