Fireball seen over UK confirmed as meteor after day of confusion

[Roberto]

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-scotland-62891265

Any further news as to whether is extra-terrestrial or spake junk?  It looked to move rather slowly.

Roberto

[Rick]

UKMON has been following it on Twitter ( https://twitter.com/UKMeteorNetwork ) since very shortly after it happened. The first decent bit of video I saw was this one:

https://twitter.com/_vangal/status/1570170588294938624

There's quite a good set of reports here:

https://fireballs.imo.net/members/imo_view/event/2022/6109#video_box

My initial suspicion, based on the speed at which it appeared to be travelling and the way it disintegrated, is that it was a large chunk of space debris.

[Rick]

To add to the confusion, there was an almost exactly simultaneous bright meteor rather further south. Once the obvious Western Scotland event detections were removed from the data, that one's orbit could be determined:

https://archive.ukmeteors.co.uk/reports/2022/orbits/202209/20220914/20220914_205934.136_UK/index.html

They're still working on the orbit of the bright Western Scotland event, but at present the suspicion is that both events were caused by falling space debris, for a variety of reasons:

• The one they've been able to analyse is rather slow for a meteor.
• Its altitude is also very low
• Its path is very curved
• The brighter event shows gradual disintegration, which is unusual in meteors, but very common in space debris.

My camera was mostly under cloud, and only detected cloud edges and flying critters last night. It is also probably pointed a bit too far above the horizon to catch an event as far north as the Western Scotland event, and enough round to the east that it'd miss something over Wales or the Irish Sea.

[Rick]

Had a chuckle at the comment over a photo of the lesser of last night's 10pm events:

https://twitter.com/UKMeteorNetwork/status/1570407392390643712

"Hey @elonmusk is this one of yours?"

[Rick]

...and a follow-up in https://twitter.com/UKMeteorNetwork/status/1570432483837022208 says:

Fireball update: We have checked the Starlink de-orbit and it would not have come anywhere near the UK. At this point we cannot find any known space junk or satellite de-orbit that could account for this fireball. We are looking at the data again.

[Hugh]

Just chatting to my Son and grandchildren in Ireland (near Limerick Travelling North/North-East on the M7) and they saw the fireball on their way home from the cinema.  They report is as fairly slow and would have had time to record on a phone if they had wanted.  Green tinge to sky as well as some of the vids on the links show.

Lucky them!

- Hugh

[Rick]

Yep, definitely a sight to remember.

A bit more positional data has been found, including from a GMN camera in Ireland, and they're now reasonably confident that it was a small piece of asteroid in an orbit not going out much past Mars...

[Rick]

There's a series of Twitter postings from UKMON explaining the event:

https://twitter.com/UKMeteorNetwork/status/1570461868019392512

The fireball over NI and Scotland last night was definitely a meteor. The fireball observed yesterday (Sept 14, 20:59:40 UT) above the UK lasted over 20 seconds and traveled NW, passing directly over Belfast.

https://twitter.com/UKMeteorNetwork/status/1570462014987767808

The end was not observed on our cameras, but it definitely ended over the North Atlantic Ocean some 50-100 km west of the Isle of Islay.

https://twitter.com/UKMeteorNetwork/status/1570462232261103616

It came on an asteroidal orbit and entered the atmosphere at 14.2 km/s. The observed portion of the trajectory covered over 300 km. If any meteorites did fall, they ended up in the ocean.

https://twitter.com/UKMeteorNetwork/status/1570463887010447360

We have a great deal of more data thanks to @meteordoc Denis Vida and we are now 100% confident this was a small part of an asteroid.
See the latest UKMON data here https://archive.ukmeteors.co.uk/reports/2022/orbits/202209/20220914/20220914_205933.213_UK/index.html

[Rick]

Fireball seen over UK confirmed as meteor after day of confusion

A fireball seen over many parts of the northern UK has been confirmed as a meteor after a day of confusion about its identity.

The fireball was visible above northern England, Northern Ireland and Scotland as it blazed across the clear night sky just after 10pm on Wednesday night.

It travelled 300km above Wales, the Irish Sea and Belfast before crashing into the Atlantic near Islay, according to new calculations by the UK Meteor Network.

The network's initial calculation suggested it was space junk that could have come from Elon Musk's Starlink satellite programme. But it withdrew that theory after collecting more data.

More: https://www.theguardian.com/science/2022/sep/15/fireball-seen-over-uk-confirmed-as-meteor-after-day-of-confusion

[Rick]

Queen's shooting star was actually meteor, not SpaceX junk

The fireball spotted charging through the night-time skies of Scotland and Northern Ireland this week, initially thought to have been some fallen SpaceX hardware, was a meteor after all, according to the UK Meteor Network.

Skywatchers were shocked by a bright object whizzing by overhead late on Wednesday. A video capturing the unusual sight shows the light from the object flickered like a sparkler and had what looked like a green glow and a dusty tail.

More: https://www.theregister.com/2022/09/16/uk_meteor_spacex/