Bright white flash in vicinity of meteor immediately after it burnt up

[Richard]

Saw the strangest meteor yesterday (9th Jan 23) evening, not used to reporting these so bear with me!

The meteor had a bright, short fan-shaped trail (10 degrees long, quite wide, diverging by ~20 degrees?), yellow colour, relatively slow, seemed almost to be trailing sparks, like a cartoon meteor, but the odd thing was a brilliant white flash immediately after the meteor burnt out, in the region of the start of its trail. I almost wondered had I imagined the, but my partner saw exactly the same.

Leigh on Sea, Thames Estuary (51.542950N, 0.661130E), just to west of zenith, still too light to see reference stars, heading slightly west of due south. Didn’t have watch or phone, but time was about 17:00, still too light to see reference stars, other than bright stars like Capella, Vega, which it was not near. 

 

Anyone see similar, or any ideas what it was?

 

Richard

[StevieDvd]

Daughter sent me this link:

https://www.itv.com/news/2023-01-09/meteor-spotted-streaking-across-night-sky-over-uk

 

[Leo S]

Hi Richard,

20+ years specializing in meteors and fireballs here. Your description sounds odd for a natural meteor. "Fan shaped tail" sounds more like a satellite fuel-dump or rocket launch. Ten degrees is actually a long tail, and would be consistent with a reentry or perhaps a natural meteor, but I've never come across a case of a natural meteor with a wide or "fan shaped" tail. How wide was the "fan"?

Trailing sparks on the other hand is also a sign of something entering the atmosphere and fragmenting as a result. A bright flash can be consistent with an object breaking up as well, but if I understand you right, it occurred further back from where you'd expect the leading edge of the meteor to be - quite a bit further back? If that's the case, I have seen similar with artificial reentries, but I would not totally discount behavior like this occurring during a natural event either.

The main questions I have at this point are:

1. How long did the entire event take in total?

2. If you've observed and are reasonably familiar with the speed at which artificial satellites cross the sky, then would you say that this event was faster or slower?

This is quite a confusing report, with elements suggesting both an artificial launch but also that an object was entering the atmosphere. Much of your description suggests to me that this was quite a slow object, which would make it more likely to be artificial, but while most natural meteors are faster than artificial objects in orbit, occasionally they can be slower (when they have to catch up with Earth traveling along it's orbit), so it can be hard to separate the two. My suggestion would be to search youtube for reentries and launches, and you'll probably find something that resembles what you observed.

Either way, please consider setting up a camera/cameras to catch these kind of events - it makes things much easier if you have images/footage. My own cameras (started with one - recently added a 3rd) have caught many interesting events since I began operating them two and a half years ago - many natural fireballs, but also one reentry (albeit a long way off) and a still unidentified (but probably Russian Angara or Chinese Longmarch 2C rocket) space vehicle that passed overhead! That said, you'll always struggle to image events when the sky is not yet quite dark as in this case, but recording footage (short exposures) copes better with light polluted skies IME.

[Richard]

Many thanks for the response-

 

I’ve much experience in visual astronomy, > 30 years, but meteors are not especially my ‘thing’. I generally stay up for the maxima of the Perseids and Quadrantids (the latter more in hope than anything!). To try and answer your questions:

 

1. Regarding elapsed time, much less than a second, for sure.

2. It was not a typical artificial satellite, I’ve been looking at those since my teens, forty years ago.

 

It reminded me of a bright, slow Perseid, but with a short trail, more yellowish that white. It wasn’t like the videos I’ve seen of fireballs. The impression of ‘sparks’ was the nature of the trail - it was fleeting, and could also have been several discrete tracks, in a fan-shape. If you think isosceles triangle the ‘tail’ diverged from the head by about twenty degrees, I think. It was fleeting, but left that strong impression. The flash, immediately after, or maybe concurrent with, burnout was bright white, and close to where the trail started, but possibly a little further still, and definitely slightly offset.

It’s intrigued me, anyway, and I think a camera might be the way forward! Thanks again. 

[Richard]

8 hours ago, StevieDvd said:

Daughter sent me this link:

https://www.itv.com/news/2023-01-09/meteor-spotted-streaking-across-night-sky-over-uk

 

Many thanks for this - it was over much faster than this, I’ve not seen the like before. 

[Leo S]

2 hours ago, Richard said:

Many thanks for the response-

 

I’ve much experience in visual astronomy, > 30 years, but meteors are not especially my ‘thing’. I generally stay up for the maxima of the Perseids and Quadrantids (the latter more in hope than anything!). To try and answer your questions:

 

1. Regarding elapsed time, much less than a second, for sure.

2. It was not a typical artificial satellite, I’ve been looking at those since my teens, forty years ago.

 

It reminded me of a bright, slow Perseid, but with a short trail, more yellowish that white. It wasn’t like the videos I’ve seen of fireballs. The impression of ‘sparks’ was the nature of the trail - it was fleeting, and could also have been several discrete tracks, in a fan-shape. If you think isosceles triangle the ‘tail’ diverged from the head by about twenty degrees, I think. It was fleeting, but left that strong impression. The flash, immediately after, or maybe concurrent with, burnout was bright white, and close to where the trail started, but possibly a little further still, and definitely slightly offset.

It’s intrigued me, anyway, and I think a camera might be the way forward! Thanks again. 

If you saw obvious/fast movement then a natural meteor is a good bet in this case I think. With the sky not being quite dark, it's possible that the meteor dimmed below the threshold of visibility, and then brightened again. Sometimes meteors do strange things, or at least appear to do strange things. The best examples are elusive and tough to catch, even when running more than one camera, but it's always worth a go!