Strange sighting...

[Michaelo]

Not sure where to put this but I've seen something I have no idea what... not so much an astro sighting as a strange sighting...

Was testing my latest purchase, a pair of second hand binoculars as it's one of the clearest night I've seen in ages...

I was looking at the moon to see how much detail I could as I have never used binoculars at night before...

Anyway, something fiery passed my vision to quick for me to focus I put them down and looked normally (without my glasses I might add)...

Whatever it was if was on fire but made no sound... could have been anything...

It did appear to be low down form what I could tell, it's path was pretty much across my field of view (I was looking west)... heading north, north/west or should I say falling...

Very strange... quite big but as I said I had taken of my glasses to use the binoculars so I can't give any more detail, save to say it was the strangest thing I have ever seen...

Time: 21:00 give or take...

Just in case someone else noticed it of perhaps in the course of time someone will identify it, I thought I post...

Still kinda hyper... it was big....

Mike

[Michaelo]

Well it was spotted by a lot of people: http://www.irishtimes.com/newspaper/ireland/2012/0922/1224324270462.html

[Matt Scunthorpe]

That is pretty cool, should count yourself lucky you were looking in the right direction. I often think while looking at Orion what it would be ike it Betelgeuse suddenly went supervova lol.

[Moonshane]

Well it was spotted by a lot of people: http://www.irishtime...4324270462.html

the cited article is old? "The Irish Times - Saturday, September 22, 2012Huge fireball seen in sky over IrelandA MASSIVE fireball was seen right across Ireland last night which may be “one of the best ever seen” in Europe and was a “huge event”, according to Astronomy Ireland.The trail of fragments passed across the sky at about 10.55pm with sightings reported from Dublin, Donegal, Cork, Sligo, Carlow, Longford, Antrim and across Britain and as far away as as The Netherlands........"the chances are though that what you saw was a meteor too.

[Michaelo]

It appears in my enthusiasm I failed to notice the date of the report assuming as I did it was the same object...

To further confuse matters further I chatted with a guy from Astronomy Ireland (mentioned in the article), he was apparently aware of it and asked for the time of my sighting.

I was convinced others had seen it and reported it.

Personally I believe it was space junk as the shape appeared to be irregular and not spherical as one would expect if it were a meteor.

It did not appear to have a long tail, perhaps about the size of the body of the object and not much longer...

Finally, it was very large suggesting it was close (but no sound)... many times bigger than and meteor I have seen in new reports...

The size was the thing that got me... still sends shivers down my spine...

Mike

[Michaelo]

Found a few reports here (including mine): http://arpc65.arm.ac.uk/cgi-bin/fireballs/search.pl