Burst of light - Supernova maybe?

[maroon bells]

At about 2146 tonight I saw a burst of light that looked like a star appearing then slowly fading over a second or two. It was a couple of degrees esat of due north and about 20 degrees up from the horizon. Could I have seen a supernova? It did'nt look like anything else that I've seen, satellite, plane etc.

If it was a supernova no doubt in will be reported in the astro press.

I wonder if anyone else spotted it?

Anyway I'm off to bed now and will look at replies tomorrow.

[MartinB]

Much more likely to be some other phenomenon. A super nova wouldn't appear and disappear within that time frame. A gamma ray burst could but extremely unlikely (unheard of) to be that bright. There was an exceptionally bright gamma ray burst recently which got to something like mag 6 but that was a very rare event indeed.

[thing]

Wouldn't have been a supernova but an interesting observation non the less. There's always a chance of course it could have been a massive GRB.........hey you might become famous!!

You beat me to it Martin!

[maroon bells]

hey you might become famous!!

You never know!

Thanks for the advice anyway.

Matthew

[trevboyd]

It could have been an Iridium flare - they last a couple of seconds. Check www.heavens-above.com for your location.

Trev

[Talitha]

It could have been a tumbling piece of space debris, too...

those flares can't be predicted like iridiums can.

[maroon bells]

I will probably never know.......oh well.