Meteor curiosities

[Rick]

Every now and again something a little unusual turns up. Last night some of the UK GMN cameras (but not mine, as it's not pointing in that direction) picked up a meteor with a very long ground track. It was first seen over Basinstoke, and lost over Dartmoor. The analysis shows that its radiant was less than 5 degrees above the horizon, and that it only descended 13 kilometers in all that distance. It's possible it bounced off and what was left of it returned to space. There are charts, photos and movies in this analysis:

https://archive.ukmeteors.co.uk/reports/2022/orbits/202210/20221026/20221026_212547.299_UK/index.html

[Roberto]

Rick

You may have seen this one already?  Maybe too far north for your system but it seemed very bright according to this report:  https://www.cloudynights.com/topic/851726-hello-from-derby-uk-and-a-meteor-from-last-night/#entry12303030

Roberto

[Rick]

Just checked, and that one, sadly, hasn't been matched (yet) with any other cameras, though it would seem to be present on frames caught by several others. I suspect that, because of the multiple explosions along its trail, the automatic detections have been a bit patchy, and it will need someone to pick the paths manually. Explore on the UKMON search page if you're bored.

Here the sky was completely grey, so even if it had passed through my camera's field of view it wouldn't have done anything more than slightly change the brighhtness of the clouds...

[Rick]

Another bright one tonight. https://twitter.com/UKMeteorNetwork/status/1595179141128765443

Not seen by my camera. :/

[Rick]

A couple of nights back a number of Global Meteor Network cameras in the north caught a bright fireball. As sometimes happens with very bright events, the automatic orbit derivation couldn't handle the data, but Mark McIntyre of the UKMon group did some hand-picking of paths from the better-quality images, and managed to get an orbit from it. It turned out to be a slow-moving (relatively speaking, at only 18 kilometres per second) sporadic that came from the main asteroid belt. It was observed from 92km to around 28km altitude and slowed down to around 5km/s so it might just have dropped some meteorites, but unfortunately they'd have ended up in the sea. Also, it came in very steeply (at 77 degrees), So the dynamic pressure on the object would have been a bit higher than usual. Just before it went dark it appears to have broken into at least three fragments. If you want numbers and pictures, take a look at:

https://archive.ukmeteors.co.uk/reports/2023/orbits/202305/20230530/20230530_004425.562_UK/index.html