Fireball tonight

Just an enquiry if anyone else saw this on a wonderful dark Friday night

At 11.27pm I saw a brilliant fireball due north, starting above and slightly east of UMa it decended until disappearing below my northern horizon in Lynx. IIt left a bright orange-white trail and lasted several seconds. Estimated magnitude was -9 to -10, as was much brighter than a -8 typical iridium flare and also lit up that portion of the sky.

Has anyone else seen it?

Ronan Newman
GalwayAC

Me too !!! :shock: It was brilliant, I watched it grow from magnitude 2 or so to about -4 or -5 in a few seconds, this was slow moving, northwest of ursa major from where I am in Cavan, it left a fantastic orange tail before breaking up a little and disappearing.....

I was photographing at the time, but not in that direction though

Keith..

Shannonside saw it also.
We were holding an observing session at our site and
3 or 4 of the lads saw it.

I'll be setting up an all-sky ultra low light (0.0003lux) bolide camera when I get home from holidays (next week, some time) to automatically record fireballs and other transient sky phenomina - the camera and other hardware are already winging their way to me from across the pond.

Once I get it set up and running, the automated frame-grabbing software will feed the images into a central computer (along with images from many other cameras) to form part of a bolide detection network that spans the globe and can triangulate the trajectories of meteoroids as they fall to Earth or skip through the atmosphere.

If it is successful, I would like to set up a second camera in the west or south of the country - preferably away from light pollution. Would anyone out there be interested in participating? It would require you to keep a PC running 24-7-365 with an internet (broadband) connection also running 24-7-365, so serious callers only!

Phil.

Keith, like myself camera always is facing the wrong way when something spectacular appears, would have made an amazing image.


Ronan Newman
Galway AC

It would have made a super image - imagine a bright orange meteor streak across the sky...pity...may be next time?

Keith..