Possible shooting star

[jonnopfc]

Hi all was out in my garden this evening doing a bit of stargazing looking at Saturn when i decided to look at Jupiter. I turned my scope through basically 180^o and looked up to notice a very bright light shooting across the sky. It was that bright that at first i thought it was a white phosphorous signal flare caught in the wind as it was quite blustery. I then realised that it was going into the wind not with it and also it looked like it was disintegrating.I was wondering if anyone else saw anything similar this evening. The whole sighting lasted at most just over a second but it had travelled quite a distance in that time.

For your info i live on the south coast of the UK in Gosport.

[LukeSkywatcher]

Sounds like a standard meteor to me. Nothing to write home about but exciting to see.

[jonnopfc]

That's the thing Paul like most people I've seen hundreds of shooting stars but this was hundreds of times brighter. Like you said though it was exciting to see

[long_arms]

On twitter there have been loooads of reports of a very interesting fireball sighted across the UK around 21:45.

I'm gutted I wasn't out at this time.

Virtual astro on twitter here (scroll down a tad) has been coordinating an effort to get pics/video/locations etc: twitter.com/VirtualAstro

Dan

Oh and Mark Thompson as well: www.twitter.com/PeoplesAstro

[starman1969]

I just saw one reported on BBC Breakfast, probably the same thing. It did look very bright & travelled fast. Looks like you were very lucky to see it because it looked like a blink and you'll miss affair. Hopefully there will be many more to see.

[nephilim]

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-22460642 not ur usual meteor.

[Fergsmc]

I saw it, I saw it!! Sitting on the floor in my living room in the centre of Manchester! I was sat on my floor (as i do - I've got a really uncomfortable couch I can't afford to change) watching TV when I happened to glance up at the window and saw a quite bright object travel across the sky, (my big window faces southwest). I thought to myself, was that a meteor?, and immediately dismissed it (getting too carried away with all that Russian stuff lately, I thought) anyway it just seemed too near. I then thought it might have been a chinese lantern that had caught fire, but the trajectory was too lateral. I stared out the window for a couple minutes and then thought no more of it, until extremely busy at work this afternoon I read about it on the Beeb website. Can't believe my luck, sat indoors, on the floor in the middle of one of the largest urban conurbations in Europe watching Rubbish TV and I get to see one of the brightest meteors in the UK for years. How's that for armchair astronomy! The whole thing can't have lasted more than 1/2 a second and the funny thing is it appeared quite close and seemed to be travelling fairly slowly which is why I dismissed it as a chinese lantern on fire. I bet it looked blumming bright in dark skys!