Slashdot Mirror

← Back to Stories (view on slashdot.org)

Fireball Over Wales

Posted by timothy on from the blame-the-cia dept.

nagora writes "After last weeks meteor strike on an Indian village, Astronomy Picture of the Day has a spectacular photo of a fireball over Wales. Come home to a real fire..."

4 of 51 comments (clear)

  1. Green fireball by ballpoint · · Score: 5, Interesting

    On a summer evening in the center of Belgium some five years ago my brother-in-law and I saw a very bright, green-glowing (slashdot color, but much brighter) object zooming overhead from the south to the east. We thought a crash was imminent; it was quite threatening even if it didn't make any noise.

    Unfortunately I haven't found any references to it anywhere. I'm pretty sure others must have seen it too.

    This Wales fireball seems even more impressive though.

    --
    Flourescent (adj): smelling like ground wheat.
    1. Re:Green fireball by Strange+Ranger · · Score: 2, Interesting

      Reminds me of an event in my back yard about a month ago (in north eastern US):

      I was looking for mars but found it on the opposite side of the sky from where it really was. This object didn't move, but grew very bright, brighter than the real mars a month ago. It grew extremely bright over the period of about 30 seconds. Maybe 5x the brightness and size of Mars's best showing this year. Then it quickly faded to nothing. Only thing I can think of is a meteor that was coming directly at me, as it didn't move at all, only grew and shrunk.

      I'd love to know what the heck it was.

      --

      Operator, give me the number for 911!
  2. Bolides by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Interesting

    Ah yes, I remember it well... My wife and I were driving in DC 2 years ago in the daytime and we stopped at a red light. Looking north, I saw something out of the corner of my eye and turned to see a giant fireball headed east to west over the city. It had the most vivid hues of red and orange and was quite bright. It turns out that it was a rather large bolide that came in from the Atlantic, travelled over New Jersey, and exploded in western Pennsylvania. So what initially looked to be right over DC was really several hundred miles away. Impressive.

  3. During the 2001 Leonids, by JeanPaulBob · · Score: 4, Interesting

    I saw one meteor flash so brightly, a friend of mine saw his silhouette on the ground (he was adjusting the blanket he was sitting on at the time). The meteor left a debris trail visible for minutes afterward. A NASA image gallery has several pictures of the trail, including one animated sequence.