Spectacular Fireball Lights Up UK Sky

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Spectacular Fireball Lights Up UK Sky

Posted by timothy on Friday September 21, 2012 @07:31PM from the see-something-say-something dept.

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."

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I'm not saying it was aliens... by atomicxblue · 2012-09-21 19:38 · Score: 5, Funny

... but it was aliens...
1. Re:I'm not saying it was aliens... by Longjmp · 2012-09-21 19:48 · Score: 4, Funny
  
  Emphasis on was.
  Anything entering the atmosphere at 50 km/sec definitely belongs to the category "was". ;-)
  
  --
  There are fewer illiterates than people who can't read.
2. Re:I'm not saying it was aliens... by Longjmp · 2012-09-21 19:58 · Score: 3, Funny
  
  Agreed.
  However, if it had the size of a little moon, you'd belong to the category "was" by now.
  
  --
  There are fewer illiterates than people who can't read.
3. Re:I'm not saying it was aliens... by lister+king+of+smeg · 2012-09-21 21:15 · Score: 1
  
  they already took out the ga'oul it was obviously the Lucian Alliance, or wraith
  
  --
  ---Saying gnome 3 is better than windows 8 not so much a compliment as it is damning with light praise.
4. Re:I'm not saying it was aliens... by K.+S.+Kyosuke · 2012-09-21 22:08 · Score: 5, Funny
  
  Hey, get your facts straight. SG-1 fought against the Goa'uld, Julius Caesar fought against the Ga'ouls.
  
  --
  Ezekiel 23:20
5. Re:I'm not saying it was aliens... by K.+S.+Kyosuke · 2012-09-21 22:15 · Score: 2
  
  Why would immigrants do this? Esp. if they're illegals.
  Because the spaceboat people are dumb. I've heard the some of them were even found dead after trying to swim over the space in a Lunokhod tyre.
  
  --
  Ezekiel 23:20
6. Re:I'm not saying it was aliens... by atomicxblue · 2012-09-21 22:23 · Score: 1
  
  Jeez.. try to make one little crack at Ancient Aliens and I get modded down as a troll.. pfft
7. Re:I'm not saying it was aliens... by DaveyJJ · 2012-09-21 23:10 · Score: 1
  
  Emphasis on was. Anything entering the atmosphere at 50 km/sec definitely belongs to the category "was". ;-)
  Keep believing that humans; just keep believing that.
  
  --
  DaveyJJ
8. Re:I'm not saying it was aliens... by danocorno · 2012-09-22 01:50 · Score: 1
  
  It was the city of Atlantis returning to Earth from the Pegasus galaxy.
9. Re:I'm not saying it was aliens... by mcgrew · 2012-09-22 02:56 · Score: 5, Funny
  
  You mean if it was a meatier meteor?
  
  --
  Free Martian Whores!
10. Re:I'm not saying it was aliens... by Longjmp · 2012-09-22 14:17 · Score: 2
  
  Yes. The impact would be a giant flesh light.
  
  --
  There are fewer illiterates than people who can't read.
11. Re:I'm not saying it was aliens... by tzot · 2012-09-22 19:40 · Score: 1
  
  “Meatier Meteor”? What does Ubuntu 23.10 have to do with any of it?
  
  --
  I speak England very best
Once saw a great fireball from Melbourne by MichaelSmith · 2012-09-21 19:54 · Score: 4, Interesting

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.

--
http://michaelsmith.id.au
1. Re:Once saw a great fireball from Melbourne by Anonymous Coward · 2012-09-21 20:18 · Score: 1
  
  A bright head with a trail behind it, but then the object exploded, spraying material in all directions and burned out very quickly.
  Yep. Reminds me of my Ex.
  Captcha: chubbier
  can't make this shit up...
2. Re:Once saw a great fireball from Melbourne by SeaFox · 2012-09-21 21:06 · Score: 5, Funny
  
  A bright head with a trail behind it, but then the object exploded, spraying material in all directions and burned out very quickly.
  That's what she said.
3. Re:Once saw a great fireball from Melbourne by DaveyJJ · 2012-09-21 23:11 · Score: 3, Funny
  
  A bright head with a trail behind it, but then the object exploded, spraying material in all directions and burned out very quickly.
  That's what she said.
  SeaFox, ladies and gentlemen! He's here all week.
  
  --
  DaveyJJ
4. Re:Once saw a great fireball from Melbourne by fa2k · 2012-09-21 23:40 · Score: 1
  
  In the civilised world, we call that 'fireworks' ;)
5. Re:Once saw a great fireball from Melbourne by mcgrew · 2012-09-22 03:11 · Score: 1
  
  I once saw one while I was traveling across the US. It looked similar to the one in the video, except it appeared to shoot straight up and was bright green.
  No mention of it in the news the next day, but they did mention that the Russians had thrown a big computer they had replaced out of Mir. That would explain it, even the bright green color.
  
  --
  Free Martian Whores!
Was that you, Sir Richard Branson . . . ? by PolygamousRanchKid+ · 2012-09-21 20:01 · Score: 3, Funny

I didn't hear about his Virgin Fireball project yet.
Was that, by sheer coincidence, around pub closing time . . . ?

--
Schroedinger's Brexit: The UK is both in and out of the EU at the same time!
Saw this by hinchles · 2012-09-21 20:51 · Score: 5, Interesting

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.
1. Re:Saw this by Anonymous Coward · 2012-09-21 21:04 · Score: 3, Funny
  
  If you are now blind and being attacked by plants, I may have a theory....
2. Re:Saw this by cheesecake23 · 2012-09-21 23:02 · Score: 4, Informative
  
  After a minute or 2 it started getting bigger and brighter still coming directly towards me.
  You need to share this info. A few more people like you and we'll be able to triangulate the site of impact (if there is one). To quote the Bad Astronomer:
  
  And if you did witness it, you should file a report with the IMO, so they can collect all the info - it may help lead to finding meteorites, pieces that have made it all the way down to the ground!
  Or at least contact the BadAss himself, see links in TFS.
Ireland saw it too... by Kiffer · 2012-09-21 21:02 · Score: 5, Informative

I wish I hadn't gone to bed early last night...
Here's a little video from Ireland.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O6BZF8dhYJI
human-made? I don't think so... by pe1chl · 2012-09-21 21:28 · Score: 5, Insightful

When it travelled east to west, it most likely wasn't human-made space debris.
Saw it in Sweden too by MindPrison · 2012-09-21 22:22 · Score: 3, Interesting

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.

--
What this world is coming to - is for you and me to decide.
Everyome who looked at it... by GameboyRMH · 2012-09-21 22:37 · Score: 4, Funny

...will go blind and be eaten by ambulatory carnivorous plants. Sorry to deliver the bad news.

--
"When information is power, privacy is freedom" - Jah-Wren Ryel
hypothesis #1 by Crypto+Gnome · 2012-09-21 23:35 · Score: 1

Aliens testing asteroid bombardment,

Seriously folks, prove me wrong. --- I dares ya.

--
Visit CryptoGnome in his home.
1. Re:hypothesis #1 by MickLinux · 2012-09-22 01:01 · Score: 2
  
  Actually, I have wondered whether perhaps the moon came out of asteroid bombardment, not by aliens, but by Permian/ordovician intelligent life.
  The reasoning behind my speculation is as follows:
  (1) According to an article in Science News and others referenced from Slashdot, the Moon appears to be from 2 moons, both from the mantle, no major asteroid content, thus no mars-sized asteroid.
  (2) If that is the case, then the best explanation is de Meijer's critical georeactor theory: calcium bergs blew up in the mantle. But...
  (3) the de Meijer theory falls down based on the fact that the uranium/calcium bergs would create enough vapor pressure in going critical, that they wouldn't go sufficiently supercritical to blow out a major fraction of the moon, unless a *small* asteroid knocked one of them into the center of a group, or if another blast created shockwaves that compressed a collection of U-Ca bergs together. So it *does* require a small asteroid.
  (4) If that is so, then due to the neutron bombardment, the U-Th, U-Pb, Pb-Pb dating of rocks is going to be off, but there will be great scatter in the estimated ages, and the event will be more recent than the dating indicates (2.3- billion years). But
  (5) we have earth rocks that date older than that, too. So we should have evidence of the locations. That is, the Earth's crust should show evidence of the blast.
  (6) Such a blast would shatter the Earth's crust, leaving rings of Kimberlites around the blast zone, that dated younger (because the rings are structural failures, and less contaminated by neutrons), while the center would date older, being more contaminated.
  (7) Two such locations exist: the 850 mi-radius ring of Kimberlites around the Hudson Bay (search Canada kimberlite, and Greenland kimberlite), and the ring of Kimberlites around Vredefort that stretches from Brazil, through Africa, through North India, and into Austrailia.
  (8) According to plate tectonics, both rings align correctly at the Permian extinction. Both rings have central rocks dating to about the age of the moon,
  (9) At the site of the Vredefort blast, you have an area called the African Karoo. The lava sills (light gray in this picture) are excluded from a region which is heavy in Kimberlites, and indeed includes the city of Kimberly. The shape, size, and location of the excluded zone, at 230 ma ago, exactly matches the shape size and location of the Scotia plate, which remains volcanic to this day.
  What this makes me think happened, is that an asteroid hit at an oblique angle at the location of a collection of georeactors, near the South Sandwich islands. The blast went supercritical, and blew out a close to half of the moon. most of the blast going back through the asteroid scar, but a lot of it going straight out. Crustally speaking, the blast destroyed whatever continent existed to the west.
  The blast also sent shock waves through the earth. 1/3 of the way around the globe, another collection of georeactors was forced supercritical, creating a symmetrically round blast (the Hudson and its k
  
  --
  Correct Horse Battery Staple: 72 bits of entropy. Enter "Correct H" into google. When it generates the phrase, that's
Re:human-made? I don't think so... by trout007 · 2012-09-21 23:38 · Score: 2

Very true. Odds are against it but...http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Artificial_satellites_in_retrograde_orbit

--
I love Jesus, except for his foreign policy.
Re:Endtimes 21 Sept 2012 people and all that... by Crypto+Gnome · 2012-09-22 00:00 · Score: 2

It's supposed to be the 21 of December 2012 according to local kooks. But I found 21 of September by searching google...
Remember
Remember
The Something-st of Octember!

--
Visit CryptoGnome in his home.
I've read about this before... by SamBeckett · 2012-09-22 00:03 · Score: 1

The next day, everyone who saw it is blind. And suddenly--walking, intelligent, deadly plants.
1. Re:I've read about this before... by MickLinux · 2012-09-22 00:13 · Score: 1
  
  Not at all. Those triffids were developed as a reasonable alternative (and renewable) source of oil. They were first identified in 1951. wikipedia Google Images
  
  --
  Correct Horse Battery Staple: 72 bits of entropy. Enter "Correct H" into google. When it generates the phrase, that's
It's a sign from G.O.D. by Anonymous Coward · 2012-09-22 00:17 · Score: 1

It's a sign from God to all those Christians that they should drive Islam out of their country.
It's a sign from God to all those Muslims that they should drive Christianity out of their country.
It's a sign to atheists that cool shit happens.
Obligatory Post is Obligatory by Crypto+Gnome · 2012-09-22 00:37 · Score: 1

Goodness Gracious Great Balls'O Fire!

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Visit CryptoGnome in his home.
Video Monitoring by ISoldat53 · 2012-09-22 02:54 · Score: 1

Kind of off topic but,I wonder how much storage one would need to monitor the sky horizon to horizon for a 24 hour period?
Re:human-made? I don't think so... by mcgrew · 2012-09-22 03:16 · Score: 1

From your link: Most commercial earth observing satellites use retrograde orbit[4], and almost all communication satellites use prograde orbits.[5]

--
Free Martian Whores!
so you're saying ... by plurgid · 2012-09-22 04:06 · Score: 1

it was a champagne supernova in the sky?
lol.
The 21st Century is when everything changes... by cstacy · 2012-09-22 07:01 · Score: 1

....and we've got to be ready!
Saw it by illtud · 2012-09-22 12:01 · Score: 1

I saw it (or the last bits of it), out on the verandah reading slashdot here in West Wales. Only caught it from the corner of my eye, seemed yellow to me and travelling NE-SW, and as I can only see about 15' of the sky between the roof of the verandah and the apple trees next door, it was gone before I looked. I thought it was a particularly bright shooting star (ie, not a notable event), though not much of it until the morning radio news mentioned it.
Yeah, not an interesting contribution, but a datapoint of sorts.
Re:human-made? I don't think so... by SandorZoo · 2012-09-22 20:11 · Score: 1

Earth observation satellite orbits are typically polar and only slightly retrograde, with an inclination of around 100 degrees. If it was one of those coming down, it would been north-south or south-north, not east-west like this was.
Space debris are watched and known. by xof · 2012-09-23 00:17 · Score: 1

Their atmospheric entry is expected and recorded.
Re:Look for the Tardis by doccus · 2012-09-23 04:41 · Score: 1

Yeah.. about that.. why do these aliens only keep attacking the UK?
Re:Look for the Tardis by riT-k0MA · 2012-09-24 23:32 · Score: 1

Simple, old chap: The aliens scan Earth for civilized life and only find it in Britain.
*Gracefully sips tea with pinky pointing out*