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Amazing Meteor tonight

Alan_B

By Alan_B
in The Astro Lounge

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RichardL

RichardL

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I was out last night looking at Mars. The seeing was awful and the moon too bright so I gave up at 9.00, packed up, and was indoors by 9.20. Bother!

Anyway, I have just gone through some of the posts with a UK map in front of me. Based on those who have posted information about their site and the direction of travel of the fireball, it seems to me that it was travelling in a line from Sunderland (assuming the person who lives in Washington means the one near Sunderland and not the one in Sussex) to Nottingham and onwards to Portsmouth. It would be interesting to hear from people either east or west of this line - do you agree with this as a possible trajectory?

What is interesting is that this is almost directly north-to-south. I am no expert in meteors, but I wonder if that means that this one was a long way out of the ecliptic plane. The other possibility is that it was a bit of junk falling out of a polar orbit.

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scuffer

scuffer

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I saw it , had just gone out as brother in law came round to see my new scope , his lad noticed it through the trees , couldn't make out what it was at first , thought it was a lantern then a rocket and still didn't know what it was till today. It was on fire and didn't seem that high , only as high as a bonfire night rocket but it kept on at a decent speed and stayed in a straight line parallel to the ground and then the flames went out ,but you could make the outline out as it went, I'd have said it went overhead just a few houses up the road and probably landed somewhere down the road , can't believe it went down south and was seen so far apart. Must have been higher ,faster and further away than I thought. That's Jupiter Saturn and a meteor in my first fortnight !!

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ixalon

ixalon

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It would be interesting to hear from people either east or west of this line - do you agree with this as a possible trajectory?

In Musselburgh, it was definitely in the eastern sky (traveling pretty much N to S).

If anyone else has a photo showing the path with the star field visible, and the lat/long/altitude the photo was taken from, we should be able to use parallax to calculate its trajectory.

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Slim

Slim

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I was out last night looking at Mars. The seeing was awful and the moon too bright so I gave up at 9.00, packed up, and was indoors by 9.20. Bother!

Anyway, I have just gone through some of the posts with a UK map in front of me. Based on those who have posted information about their site and the direction of travel of the fireball, it seems to me that it was travelling in a line from Sunderland (assuming the person who lives in Washington means the one near Sunderland and not the one in Sussex) to Nottingham and onwards to Portsmouth. It would be interesting to hear from people either east or west of this line - do you agree with this as a possible trajectory?

What is interesting is that this is almost directly north-to-south. I am no expert in meteors, but I wonder if that means that this one was a long way out of the ecliptic plane. The other possibility is that it was a bit of junk falling out of a polar orbit.

I saw it from Newcastle which is obviously west of Sunderland. It was almost directly overhead but a little to the east. It came from due North and was heading due south.

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RichardL

RichardL

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In Musselburgh, it was definitely in the eastern sky (traveling pretty much N to S).

If anyone else has a photo showing the path with the star field visible, and the lat/long/altitude the photo was taken from, we should be able to use parallax to calculate its trajectory.

If my suggested track is correct, it passed a bit east of Berwick-upon-Tweed, so it certainly would have been east of Musselburgh.

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RichardL

RichardL

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I saw it from Newcastle which is obviously west of Sunderland. It was almost directly overhead but a little to the east. It came from due North and was heading due south.

... and my line passes neatly east of Newcastle and a little west of Sunderland. A few more fixes should enable us to pin it down.

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scuffer

scuffer

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I saw it , had just gone out as brother in law came round to see my new scope , his lad noticed it through the trees , couldn't make out what it was at first , thought it was a lantern then a rocket and still didn't know what it was till today. It was on fire and didn't seem that high , only as high as a bonfire night rocket but it kept on at a decent speed and stayed in a straight line parallel to the ground and then the flames went out ,but you could make the outline out as it went, I'd have said it went overhead just a few houses up the road and probably landed somewhere down the road , can't believe it went down south and was seen so far apart. Must have been higher ,faster and further away than I thought. That's Jupiter Saturn and a meteor in my first fortnight !!

Forget to say I live in NE Manchester and was to the east , though didn't seem very far away

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Ben W

Ben W

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Saw it here in Sheffield. We were really lucky as we decided to turn the tv off as there was nowt on!

Our living room looks north over a large country park, we saw it approach and thought it was the police helicopter at first. I soon realised it wasn't and got great view as it seemed to streak directly over head.

We ran to the front of the house to see it fade away then realised most of the neighbours had seen it too!

As they have seen me with the scope and I had shown some of them the ISS last week,I felt like the Brian cox of our street lol!

I have seen large fireballs before but nothing like that! Feel very lucky to have seen it, as someone said earlier...once in a lifetime..

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RichardL

RichardL

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Thanks Ben. We now have a line stretching from Washington to Sheffield and on through Newbury. Washingtom is at longitude 1 deg 31 mins west, and Newbury at 1 deg 19 mins. This is awfully close to being due north-to-south!

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YorkieGraham

YorkieGraham

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See my post earlier, but I am in York and I would say that the meteor rose just to the West of North, tracked through Draco through the zenith and broke up after it passed Gemini to the West of Castor and Pollux.

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malc-c

malc-c

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Gutted - we were out with friend early Saturday night, but returned home at around 8:45pm - we were all in the observatory drinking wine etc looking at the moon and Mars, but popped in around 9:30 to make coffee !!!!

Only ever seen one fireball back in 1983, whilst out in my parents garden setting up an old tasco 11TR - heard a crackle overhead and the ground lit up as it passed over East to west... not seen anything like it since.... Looking at the videos Saturdays one was a good'un ! :)

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Adrian

Adrian

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I'm doubly gutted now. I was all set to have a go at photographing all the easy planets over the course of Saturday night (Mercury approaching max elongation, Venus, Jupiter, Mars & Saturn) :) Forecast good, no work... Brother in law phones to say he is having his birthday party Saturday night :icon_scratch:

And now this :)

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