Spectacular Fireball Lights Up UK Sky

The Bad Astronomer writes "An extremely bright meteor burned up over Ireland and the northern UK around 22:00 UTC on Friday night, and was apparently witnessed by thousands of people. It traveled east to west, and was moving relatively slowly. It may have been an actual rock, or it may have been some human-made space debris — a satellite or rocket booster — burning up. Space junk tends to move more slowly, so that's a potential suspect, though orbiting debris usually moves in the opposite direction. I'm collecting pictures and images on my Bad Astronomy blog."

Comments

Once saw a great fireball from Melbourne

[MichaelSmith]

It started out much like these videos. A bright head with a trail behind it, but then the object exploded, spraying material in all directions and burned out very quickly.

Saw this

[hinchles]

I was watching this went out for a smoke saw something bright and green coming directly towards me. I live close to an airport so thought it was just a plane coming in to land at a funny approach. After a minute or 2 it started getting bigger and brighter still coming directly towards me then a piece fell off it with a massive trail and I realised what it was (late night i was being slow). Continued to watch it as it kept getting bigger and bigger. Almost directly overhead and it split into loads of little pieces from green to orange they all developed massive trails and then just vanished there was nothing blocking my view and I was looking almost vertical at this point so I must have just caught the end of it. Would be nice to know where it actually impacted as by the time it vanished it was bright enough it was actually lighting up the fields around me.

Saw it in Sweden too

[MindPrison]

I saw this over Sweden as well, exactly that time yesterday.

I thought it was party fireworks from our neighbors that had a party that night, so I didn't think about it until I thought it was a bit funny that there where no firework sounds, no explosions.

But that red ball that floated around was sure big and bright. I really honestly just thought it was your average red flare.