Fireball spotted on the night of May 20th

[hawaiiruss]

I happend to nip out just after 10pm on Wednesday 20th May and was just setting up my telescope, when I spotted a bright white shimmering light pass by overhead. My first thoughts are this was a large chunk of rock burning up in the atmosphere. It was on a constant trajectory, heading due North, directly over Colchester, Essex. The brightness of the object was about 3 times the brightness of Arcturus that night.

[dave1978]

Huumm, sounds like you saw the ISS to me! are you sure about heading? as if it was the ISS it would have been heading W to ESE taking about 5 minutes to pass over!

Human Space Flight (HSF) - Sightings

[hawaiiruss]

Definitely not the ISS, the object was viewable as being high in the Earth's atmosphere (not in Space) heading north/north east.

[arad85]

Funnily enough, I saw a meteor last night that was like a fireball.. Not the shooting star variety where you get a streak of light, more a tumbling ball of flame of definite size. Lasted about 1 second, and you could see it burning up. Both my partner and I happened to be looking up and see it. At a guess some space debris burning up in the atmosphere. Most impressive...