Society for Popular Astronomy

Why do i always see great fireballs when im driving?!

tonight, going west on M62, passing castleford. Looked up because i thought i saw a dim meteor, a moment later, from just above Venus, a meteor appeared, going S to N at a downwards angle of around 45deg, became a very bright, long lasting fireball, ~5sec by my reconing. Didnt seemt o leave an ionized trail, adn burnt out without any fragmentation.

Very bright, white, with a hint of green in the nucleus, about twice as bright as venus (i would estimate magnitude but my minds gone blank on that score at moment!)


did anyone else see this who can give better details?

Hiya mate, i was driving home from work, i would say 6.45 so yea, i seen this, i live in s.wales small town called abertillery, it lite up the and i as seen went from east to west amazing site

barf & jas123: I appreciate the problem that you were both driving at the time, but any further information on your sightings would be most welcome.

Anyone else who spotted this fireball, or any others - meteors of magnitude -3 or brighter - from the British Isles or nearby is welcome to send a full report to the Meteor Section as soon as possible. The minimum details I need from you are:

1) Exactly where you were (name of the nearest town or large village and county if in Britain, or your geographic latitude and longitude if elsewhere in the world);

2) The date and timing of the event; and

3) Where the fireball started and ended in the sky, as accurately as possible, or where the first and last points you could see of the trail were if you didn't see the whole flight.

More advice and a fuller set of details to send are outlined on the "Fireball Observing" page of the SPA website, at: http://www.popastro.com/sections/meteor/fireball.htm .

Alastair McBeath,
Meteor Director, Society for Popular Astronomy.
E-mail: <meteor@popastro.com> (messages under 150 kB in size only, please)

Hi there

I'm not much of an astronomer im afraid, but had been scouring the internet for information about this as i saw it last night aswell.

I saw this from Preston in Lancashire heading in a Westerly direction (sorry, i cant be any more specific!). I've never seen anything like it and i would say it was both larger and brighter than the moon in the sky last night, and it lasted about 3 - 4 seconds.

Sorry i cant be of more help, but i'm glad someone else saw it as i was beginning to think i had imagined it

Codz, great that you saw it, there amazing sights that stick in your mind, leaving you thinking whether it was real or not!

from these reports, it seems the path was SE to NW.

Alistair - I was passing the Castleford/Normanton M62 juntion 31, heading west. Origin was close and above venus, path ~45deg downwards S to N, maybe 15degress wide. It was bright for perhaps 10deg

i always seem to see fireballs while driving on the M62!

I've had five reports of this event now from NW England and S Wales, the timings clustered within 8 minutes of 18:47 UT on January 9. Although the information is not well-established as yet, the fireball seems to have been about magnitude -5 to -8, and may have been moving on a roughly NE to SW trajectory, starting somewhere high above northwest or central-western Wales, moving out over Cardigan Bay towards St George's Channel from there. Most witnesses described it as slow-moving, and it was visible for probably 3 to 4 seconds or more. Colours reported have included red, orange and yellow, plus green perhaps in the object's tail. Another sighting can be found in the UK Weather World's Space Weather Quadrantids topic at: http://www.ukweatherworld.co.uk/forum/f ... =1&start=1.

All further detailed observations of this event (or any other near-UK fireballs) would be much appreciated!

Alastair McBeath,
Meteor Director, Society for Popular Astronomy.
E-mail: <meteor@popastro.com> (messages under 150 kB in size only, please)

See an Ursid fireball early this Evening almost due North moving slowly from the bowl of Ursa Major-possibly -4 at the most but was certainly brighter than all the stars in the Constellation-the time I see this was around +/- 17.40 U.T and was possibly yellow white in colour-moved slowly and faded slowly just underneath the bowl-worth looking at to see these phenomena-Maximum for the Ursids was on the 22nd December 2008 but is still active almost a Month later...

_________________
Colin James Watling
--
Astronomer and head of the Comet section for LYRA (Lowestoft and Great Yarmouth Regional Astronomers) also head of K.A.G (Kessingland Astronomy Group) and Navigator (Astrogator) of the Stars (Fieldwork)
Web: http://lyra.freewebsites.com/
www.lyrandgyastronomers.blogspot.com/

Colin: Thanks for your fireball report from January 18-19. Sadly, I've had no other sightings of it reported from elsewhere in the UK as yet.

It definitely wasn't an Ursid however. Instrumental and visual observations have confirmed the Ursids form quite a narrow meteoroid stream, and the shower is detectable from Earth for only about ten days, typically between December 17 to 26. Its shower meteors radiate away from a point a few degrees from Kochab in Ursa Minor (Beta UMi) then. If the Ursid radiant were still to be active by January 18-19, it would have moved on to be a few degrees from Thuban in Draco (Alpha Dra). As your observation was of a meteor moving towards UMi-Dra from UMa, it was moving in roughly the opposite direction to a potential Ursid, even had the shower still been active.

Alastair McBeath,
Meteor Director, Society for Popular Astronomy.
E-mail: <meteor@popastro.com> (messages under 150 kB in size only, please)