Society for Popular Astronomy

I was operating my scope tonight and as my wife was sitting on the sofa watching me on the patio with the living room lights turned off, she suddenly called out 'wow look at that!'. By the time I turned around all I saw was momentary slight background brightening of the sky.

I asked her what she saw and she says it was a bright white streak of light with a yellow fireball at the bottom. Following some discussion she was further able to describe the path as starting from around the location of star Zosma that forms the back of Leo and heading roughly downwards at approximately 45 deg towards and to the left of Denebola and right down to the horizon.

We are located in the villlage of Newbold Verdon in the UK Midlands, Latitude 52.37.47 and Longitude -1.19.25

Did anyone else see this? It this classed as a firevall or was it just a meteor?

Further to the above, both of us have also been seeing yellowish and reddish short streaks of light, low on the horizon, no higher that 20deg and due south, most of them travelling almost horizontally in either direction and being very short, perhaps no more than one or two moon widths. We have been seeing these every few minutes since around 7.30pm and we are still seeing them.

Although Orion has now moved from due south to south east, we are still seeing these flashes of light in the same place, due south, so I suspect that maybe its a terrestrial source, but we see not laser like beams emanating from the horizon.

We're not aware of any meteor shower due tonight (which are usually to the west anyway) so we're both puzzled.

Again, has anyone else see these?

At what time was this? I live in east Ipswich and at approx 2056 UTC whilst working in my study I saw an extremely bright double flash near/between Alkaid in Ursa Major and Nekkar in Bootes heading towards the horizon in a NE-NNE direction. I only saw it for a second and I couldn't see any trail but it's a bit misty here.
One for Alastair I believe.

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Hawk (yes, that's my real 1st name)
Skywatcher Explorer 150P
Nikon D2x

Your sky seems to be going backwards as well. Seriously though, it does sound like a terrestrial source, as you say.

They are?? Well, no, to answer my own question, they're not really. They can be anywhere.

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200mm Newtonian, OMC140, ETX90, 15x70 Binoculars.

At about 9pm tonight, I was sitting in my chair, looking at my cat scratching at the window outside when I saw a bright ball of light arc, relatively slowly, down to earth outside. I was so excited I sent my husband out to look in the garden - it seemed that close. We are in Monks Risborough in Bucks

Ah! I knew I meant south-west really.
My mistake.

Not to worry, I'm just pulling your leg.

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200mm Newtonian, OMC140, ETX90, 15x70 Binoculars.

Was around 9.00pm, but I can't be exact. The timestamp on my post is 9.19pm. By the time I had ascertined the position of the event (laser pen came in handy!) and wrote, corrected and finally submitted the post, 20 minutes or more may have elpsed.

Tne one slight problem is that my wife could not have seen Alkaid from where she sat, and she says she saw the fireball disapear behind the trees. It is quite possible for it to have passed through Bootes though, which for us would have been very low as our horizon is obstructed by the garden fence.

Hi

Yes, the same thing seen from my location also.

My wife also says that this was moving quite slowly, although it must have been gone in two or three seconds since I responded immediately to my wifes 'look look!' but still managed to miss it!

My wife drew a sketch of what she saw. I've taken a photo and converted to a rough artists impression in Paint Shop Pro.

http://jchaj.trancell.org/images/astro/fireball2.jpg

She says that the tail was quite short so my describing it as a streak may not be quite accurate. What she seems to have clear in mind though is the bright glowing dome shape of the leading edge of the head and the trails of flame at the edges.

I still can't believe I missed it!

Yesterday evening Radio 5 had several callers reporting unexpected Meteor shower sightings from the UK.

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Regards.

these reports are all over itv yorkshire/calendar news today, 'an unexpected meteor shower'

sounds like a couple of sporadics to me, just happens that we had a clear nights and people bothered to look up

Yesterday evening, I was observing Saturn from my garden in South West London, when I saw something which I believe could be a fireball.
It started like a bright white moving object, similar to the ISS at magnitude -2.5, but only for a couple of seconds. Then it exploded! I could see some green and orange colours and I heard a faint noise (very different from fireworks).
It was around 22.40 (British time). I saw the object initially in Monoceros and it exploded just below Alphard (in Hydra).

Was it a fireball? Has any body else seen it?

I've had a look at the website, but I don't see any mention of it there.