Green Bolide Bray

Just let the dogs out for a wee at about 10:10pm and looked in the direction of Bray head at just the right time to see a bright green bolide with a trail fall almost straight down.

Heres the thing.....

I have a feeling it landed between me and Bray head. I am near the Sealife Aquarium. From my line of sight it looked like it faded out just over a chimney along my line of sight. From my line of site IIRC the top of Bray Head is higher than over the chimney than the point the bolide extinguished indicating that the bolide fell between me and Bray Head. I can't be 100% sure till tomorrow because with some sea mist the transparency is lousy. On a normal sharp clear night one can see the silhoueete of Bray Head. May be recall of how much of Bray head is visible over the chimney is faulty but I'll know tomorrow. I guess a report from someone in Greystones to my south saying they saw the bolide to their north would confirm it.

Assuming it did fall in the general area I think it did, thinking about the search area radius makes me think its an impossible task. We're talkin a 500-700metre search radius....Which I think really highlights the publicity seeking wild goosechases another Irish astro organisation sends the public on via the media where there is a 50 or 100 mile seach radius!!! :bigshock:

Or perhaps you can tell me I am wrong and that it'll stand out like a sore thumb and we should organise search parties!!:laugh:

My geography of Bray is a bit hazy but it seems that the bolide would have been quite close and so wouldn't you have heard it?

Philip Lardner was setting up an all sky camera so if that is working perhaps he caught it.

Anyway, if it's cloudy on Saturday we can send all the people at the Glendalough star party down to you :laugh:

Michael.

Yeah, I fear my brain wasn't firing on all cylinders last night! :whistle: :blush:

As you said, if it was that close I would have heard it. I saw it from start to finish. ie. from it entering the atmosphere to extinction. It would have been well extinguished by the time it got to a few thousand feet above sea level and would be an invisible burnt out pebble long before it got down to the last few hundred feet and as low as Bray Head and below.

It was the mist meaning that Bray Head itself was invisible loosing me a frame of referance. I was pretty sure it was close to a chimney stack from my line of sight but in the daylight the top of Bray head is way above where I thought it extinguished. It was definately a bolide and not a flare or rocket/firework because of the short duration but bright streak behind it and the downward trajectory. A rocket/firework might look like that on the way up but not on the way down. That can only mean the brain playing tricks with perception and recal. It obviously extinguished higher from my line of sight than I thought it did and was much higher up and way behind Bray Head.

Still, pretty thrilled to catch it. While it didn't explode into pieces like the last bright white one I saw just walking in the door after the last Glendalough event I attended in '09, with this one I actually saw colour. It was a lovely bright green. I've never seen anything other than white bolides/meteors before while I would hear about others sightings of green ones. I thought there was a problem with my colour perception or something.

Why the difference in colours? Is it down to the chemical composition of the bollide. Does green tell us anything about what it was made of?

According to Wikipedia:

Some of the possible colors and the compounds responsible for them are: orange/yellow (sodium); yellow (iron); blue/green (copper); purple (potassium); and red (silicate).