At around 23:00 BST on September 21st, following a very entertaining meeting of the York AS, around a dozen members found themselves at the observatory, being treated to a spectacular show.
What started as a very bright green dot in the eastern sky, became an orange coloured fireball with many pieces breaking away from it. It travelled across the northern part of the sky and eventually faded away well over to the west. In all it probably took over a minute to complete its show.
Despite what is being reported on the BBC news shows, this was NOT a “Meteor Shower”. A meteor shower is made up of a number of smaller particles that become meteors (shooting stars) over a period of hours.
This was a Fireball. It was one object that broke up in to many bits as it entered the Earth’s atmosphere. The fact that there were different colours on display suggest a melange of different elements being burned up. This means that it could have either been a meteoroid from the depths of space, or a simple piece of man-made space debris that re-entered.
The York AS members all stood and watched in amazement at this spectacle. Thankfully one of our members, Kevin O’Connor was quick enough to grab his phone and take this picture.
I’m sure that lots of footage will appear across the internet in the next few days. Look out for it.
Typical
I missed it.
Sound like a real gem… how did it compare to the one earlier in the year?
I am sure that if our skies were not so clouded out these sightings might be more common place. It seems to be not uncommon that if you spend several hours out under the stars (and not the clouds) that you will see something a little more interesting like this….maybe it’s time to emigrate!
Roo
It was amazing, we were just having a look at Jupiter in the east, then suddenly this dot started to rise very slowly, we were contemplating chinese lanterns and low flying aircraft, then it started to travel across the shy and we could see the trail behind in, after about 35 seconds from the first sighting it began to break up quite quickly, and we could see between 10-15 pieces glowing from red to white and gradually faded into the distance in the west.
It was a beautiful sight, and i feel very lucky to have seen it with good friends at the obs, after only starting 2 months ago!!!