fireball in the sky (Sept 21st)

I also questioned whether this object would be man-made space debris due to
the east-west trajectory.
It certainly does look like multiple pieces of something.
Unless evidence to the contrary comes in I'm assuming that something to be of natural origins.

*If* it was man-made I'd put my money on an Israeli satellite as they launch retrograde to avoid a launch failure causing material falling on their neighbours and the "fall out" that that would entail.

From www.focus.technion.ac.il/Feb11/spaceStory1.htm :

"Israel became the eighth nation in the world to launch a satellite. It was called Ofek 1 (‘Horizon 1’ in Hebrew), weighed 155.5 kg (343 lbs), and like many of Israel’s achievements, it was done the hard way. Every other nation’s satellites, without exception, are launched from west to east — thus using the slingshot effect of the earth, helping rockets gain the speed needed to launch satellites into orbit. For Israel, this would send the launch rocket’s trajectory over hostile Arab territory. So Israel launches satellites from east to west over the Mediterranean, against the spin of the earth. Necessity has spurred invention. With tiny resources and major constraints, Israel has become a world leader in miniaturizing satellites, simply because it had to."


Mark C.

WOW, that is some meteor, we were out observing in the observatory from 9 Friday evening till 2 Saturday morning and didn't catch this. typical!
domes don't make good observing locations for meteor watching .
Does anyone know what constellations it was seen passing through from Ireland.??

Funnily enough, a group of us were out on Tuesday night and at around 11-11.15 we saw a very slow moving north\south meteor below Aquila, it was tumbling, lasted about 5 seconds and left a long duration trail, nothing as spectacular as the Friday event though.

Anyone willing to come live on air with me on Midlands 103 this morning (c. 10:30am) to talk about what you saw, text me on 087 6825910 ASAP!

Seanie.

(From Sonataco)

Based on that trajectory, I can now present some very first, very cautious conclusions about the heliocentric orbit of this meteoroid.The solutions strongly favour an identification as an Aten asteroid.
' sattrackcam.blogspot.nl/ '

Selection of Videos
' lunarmeteoritehunters.blogspot.jp/2012/0...e-videos-on-web.html '

How relieved I am it appears to have been an asteroid. Thank you, Graham for the link. Please keep us informed about any further developments.

Aubrey.

well, there is even more to this story then we thought, have a look at
www.skyandtelescope.com/news/Amazing-Met...Earth-172332451.html