Possible Fireball 02/01/22 5PM GMT.

[LukeSkywatcher]

I'm sat in my kitchen. My doors face South. I swear that I think I just saw a very bright white fireball heading from NW to SE. It wasn't a direct view, more of a peripheral view. It was travelling extremely fast. 

I'll wait to see if any reports come in here and elsewhere.

It was probably linked to the Quadrantid meteor shower.

 

Edited January 2, 2023 by LukeSkywatcher

[andrew63]

Hopefully one of the all sky cameras around may have recorded it.

[Leo S]

No sign of anything this evening on the UKMON live site, but there are not too many cameras covering that part of the sky, and they may have been clouded out. One of my cameras points that way, and might have caught something if it was not too far west. What time did it occur? My camera was running by 17:12.

I would not get hopes up too much though. In my experience, it usually turns out to be nothing. It happens all the time with me, probably due to me wearing glasses (reflections) in the majority of cases!

Edited January 3, 2023 by Leo S

[LukeSkywatcher]

On 03/01/2023 at 00:09, Leo S said:

No sign of anything this evening on the UKMON live site, but there are not too many cameras covering that part of the sky, and they may have been clouded out. One of my cameras points that way, and might have caught something if it was not too far west. What time did it occur? My camera was running by 17:12.

I would not get hopes up too much though. In my experience, it usually turns out to be nothing. It happens all the time with me, probably due to me wearing glasses (reflections) in the majority of cases!

I'm in Ireland. It was definitely a meteor or fireball. 

[Leo S]

On 04/01/2023 at 19:02, LukeSkywatcher said:

I'm in Ireland.

I realized that.

Never the less, a fireball can be observed from many 100's of km (given clear horizons/sky). The furthest events I have caught have been 500+ km away. Depending how high it was in the sky for you, and if the location of the event was biassed a bit more to the east than the west, one of my cameras should be able to capture events in that direction. Here is a composite image I've created using data from another recent fireball my camera caught that occurred in December last year. I've overlayed the ground track of the event over google maps, and to give a rough idea of the north western limit of the FOV I've drawn a long red line - I've been conservative, and that line should probably be further N. As you can see, it covers a good part of the Irish Sea/Atlantic to the S/SW of Ireland.

However it's a moot point now since all the footage from that night has been deleted (I have to delete footage or else I am soon overwhelmed).

On 04/01/2023 at 19:02, LukeSkywatcher said:

It was definitely a meteor or fireball. 

If you say so, fair play to you. I don't disbelieve you, or rather I do think you believe what you observed was a fireball or meteor, however, what we think we see is often not the same as what actually happened. I've been observing fireballs for almost 2.5 decades now, and as I mentioned, on multiple occasions I've thought that I've seen something, and it has often (though not always) turned out to be nothing.

The problem (that we/humans make bad observers) gets worse when there is a lack of information (and/or "visual cues"), for example when you only get a brief glimpse of something, which it very much sounds like was the situation here. When little information is available, our subconscious will make assumptions that are often wrong or misleading.

For example, a meteor or fireball is essentially a moving light in the sky, but there are other moving lights in the sky, so how do we tell what is what? Obviously, by it's characteristics (eg. meteors are far away, usually travel quickly, but not always, may have colour, or leave trains, or may fragment/explode, etc.).

Now just take of these characteristics, that "meteors are usually far away". How can you tell that they are far away? The answer is it's virtually impossible for an observer, even under ideal conditions, to tell if a light in the sky is far or close, mostly because of the lack of visual cues, like if the light went behind an object, we can see that it must be further away than that object, but otherwise it is impossible to say how far an unknown light source is under these kinds of circumstances.

The trouble is, if you get this one aspect wrong, everything else is wrong. The object might have the correct apparent speed for a meteor, but so could a relatively slow/close object. So how do you tell the difference between the two? When you perceive such an event it's your subconscious that makes the decision weather it's far or close, so irrespective if it is far or close, you "see it" as one or the other depending on what your subconscious chooses, which is in turn based on previous experience/expectations as well as/or some degree of hard wiring. It is an example of an optical illusion - one of many we live with on a day to day basis, but which most are blissfully unaware of.

I have come across many many cases where people have misjudged the distances involved (in fact it is almost like a hallmark in cases where a bright meteor/fireball is involved) by massive margins. People will swear blind that it was close, when we know it was actually a long way off. This might be a case of the reverse being true.

Unfortunately, as human observers, these are just the limitations we have to live with. It's one of the reasons why I like to record the sky whenever I can - it's often an eye opening experience to see the difference between what you thought you saw and what the camera captured!

Once again, I don't disbelieve you when you say that you saw something, but given the circumstances, the possibility that it may not have been what you thought it was should at least be acknowledged, especially given that there are no independent reports of an event (I'm still unsure what time?). Perhaps it's just me, but the IMO fireball report database seems broken, so I have been unable to pursue that avenue.

Edited January 7, 2023 by Leo S
aditional coment

[LukeSkywatcher]

20 hours ago, Leo S said:

I realized that.

Never the less, a fireball can be observed from many 100's of km (given clear horizons/sky). The furthest events I have caught have been 500+ km away. Depending how high it was in the sky for you, and if the location of the event was biassed a bit more to the east than the west, one of my cameras should be able to capture events in that direction. Here is a composite image I've created using data from another recent fireball my camera caught that occurred in December last year. I've overlayed the ground track of the event over google maps, and to give a rough idea of the north western limit of the FOV I've drawn a long red line - I've been conservative, and that line should probably be further N. As you can see, it covers a good part of the Irish Sea/Atlantic to the S/SW of Ireland.

However it's a moot point now since all the footage from that night has been deleted (I have to delete footage or else I am soon overwhelmed).

If you say so, fair play to you. I don't disbelieve you, or rather I do think you believe what you observed was a fireball or meteor, however, what we think we see is often not the same as what actually happened. I've been observing fireballs for almost 2.5 decades now, and as I mentioned, on multiple occasions I've thought that I've seen something, and it has often (though not always) turned out to be nothing.

The problem (that we/humans make bad observers) gets worse when there is a lack of information (and/or "visual cues"), for example when you only get a brief glimpse of something, which it very much sounds like was the situation here. When little information is available, our subconscious will make assumptions that are often wrong or misleading.

For example, a meteor or fireball is essentially a moving light in the sky, but there are other moving lights in the sky, so how do we tell what is what? Obviously, by it's characteristics (eg. meteors are far away, usually travel quickly, but not always, may have colour, or leave trains, or may fragment/explode, etc.).

Now just take of these characteristics, that "meteors are usually far away". How can you tell that they are far away? The answer is it's virtually impossible for an observer, even under ideal conditions, to tell if a light in the sky is far or close, mostly because of the lack of visual cues, like if the light went behind an object, we can see that it must be further away than that object, but otherwise it is impossible to say how far an unknown light source is under these kinds of circumstances.

The trouble is, if you get this one aspect wrong, everything else is wrong. The object might have the correct apparent speed for a meteor, but so could a relatively slow/close object. So how do you tell the difference between the two? When you perceive such an event it's your subconscious that makes the decision weather it's far or close, so irrespective if it is far or close, you "see it" as one or the other depending on what your subconscious chooses, which is in turn based on previous experience/expectations as well as/or some degree of hard wiring. It is an example of an optical illusion - one of many we live with on a day to day basis, but which most are blissfully unaware of.

I have come across many many cases where people have misjudged the distances involved (in fact it is almost like a hallmark in cases where a bright meteor/fireball is involved) by massive margins. People will swear blind that it was close, when we know it was actually a long way off. This might be a case of the reverse being true.

Unfortunately, as human observers, these are just the limitations we have to live with. It's one of the reasons why I like to record the sky whenever I can - it's often an eye opening experience to see the difference between what you thought you saw and what the camera captured!

Once again, I don't disbelieve you when you say that you saw something, but given the circumstances, the possibility that it may not have been what you thought it was should at least be acknowledged, especially given that there are no independent reports of an event (I'm still unsure what time?). Perhaps it's just me, but the IMO fireball report database seems broken, so I have been unable to pursue that avenue.

I get what you are saying. Due to only getting a peripheral glance, I can't say will 100% certainty that it was a fire ball. At most, I can say it was the brightest,fastest meteor that I have ever seen.

[Leo S]

On 08/01/2023 at 18:55, LukeSkywatcher said:

I get what you are saying. Due to only getting a peripheral glance, I can't say will 100% certainty that it was a fire ball. At most, I can say it was the brightest,fastest meteor that I have ever seen.

Unfortunate that it was not caught by any cameras this time around. As they say though, plenty more fish in the sea. If you have good views were you are (not too many obstructions on the horizon in at least one direction), it's always worth spending time observing if you are able to. I get the impression most people underestimate how frequently fireballs occur. I probably put in 100-200 hours observing every year currently, and I catch between ~5-10 fireballs per year. The cameras catch many more since they observe near constantly (when it's clear and I've bothered to set them up). The last year has been crazy for fireballs.bright meteors - have yet to total up, but 2 cameras caught perhaps 40-50 that were borderline fireball or brighter.