fireball in the sky (Sept 21st)

If I can talk to Dr. Marco Langbroek for a moment. What suggests to me it was man-made space debris, it looked identical to the terrible Space Shuttle Columbia tragedy. As it was re-entering the atmosphere the shuttle was breaking up very similar in appearance to last night's event.
Also Dr. Langbroek, can you explain the various colours that people witnessed, i.e., orange, red and green. Could meteors or disentigrating asteroidal fragments show such colours?

Aubrey.

flt158 wrote: If I can talk to Dr. Marco Langbroek for a moment. What suggests to me it was man-made space debris, it looked identical to the terrible Space Shuttle Columbia tragedy. As it was re-entering the atmosphere the shuttle was breaking up very similar in appearance to last night's event.
Also Dr. Langbroek, can you explain the various colours that people witnessed, i.e., orange, red and green. Could meteors or disentigrating asteroidal fragments show such colours?

Aubrey.

Sorry Aubrey - I lifted Marco's quote from the Minor Planet forum...

I've only seen the images and video footage of this event myself and the similarity to the Columbia tragedy is striking. However, a few years back, I witnessed a fireball and saw at least two colors myself - orange and green.

I think where Marco is coming from is that a man-made retrograde orbit is extremely rare and no objects of that size are on the tracking list. Bear in mind that certainly NASA track all space debris (and satellites too) of just a few centimeters and above. If the object that caused this event was man-made, I think NASA would certainly have been on the wires already - unless it was a classified object.

Columbia was a huge object - so large that its shape could be resolved by earth-bound telescopes when docked to the ISS. If such an object was responsible for last night's event, I thinbk that even it it were classified, we would know by now.

If anything else comes up on the MP list, I'll post it here.

Dave

This guy got it on his meteor camera!! Would have loved to have seen it!!!

In more than a quarter of a century observing the skies it is by far the most spectacular thing that I have ever seen.

If the object was natural, it's a reminder that the solar system is a very dangerous place.

Paul

Graham wrote: This guy got it on his meteor camera!! Would have loved to have seen it!!!

That's an excellent video!
Great to see that Robert caught it.
Hopefullly the cameras in Armagh Observatory also got it.

Michael.

We've all had nights were we've looked out and seen a clear night, and said to ourselves, "maybe I'll give it a miss tonight."

Can we afford to take the chance, and potentially miss another spectacular object. :dry:

Paul