Strange Sighting Skies Over Donegal Town 8th Jan 2010

rudedog

Hi,

did anyone else notice anything strange over the sky in Donegal last night (8th Jan) between around 8:30pm and 8:40pm?

I have seen many meteors and satellites etc in my time but i have never seen anything like what i observed tonight.

It was a fireball moving slowly for approx. 5 minutes across the sky from east to west. It appeared to stop overhead for around 30 seconds and the fireball died out and it spun in circles for some time. It then continued to the west over Donegal bay without any illumination. You could still see its outline when the fireball went out, it was a light grey in colour and appeared to be spinning around and was rectangular in shape through binoculars.

Would be very interested to hear if anyone else seen this and if anyone could offer a logical explanation. I have read about lanterns that can sometimes be seen as fireballs http://www.astronomy.ie/lanterns.html. Not too sure if it was one of these though, it appeared to be extremely high up in the atmosphere and had a very strong fireball effect for some minutes before going out. Also it appeared to be quite large in size considering the altitude of it.

Definitely not IIS, Iridium Flare or any other satellite as i am very familiar with all of these.

Any explanation/suggestions would be appreciated.

Cheers

gitman

rudedog wrote: »

Hi,

did anyone else notice anything strange over the sky in Donegal last night (8th Jan) between around 8:30pm and 8:40pm?

I have seen many meteors and satellites etc in my time but i have never seen anything like what i observed tonight.

It was a fireball moving slowly for approx. 5 minutes across the sky from east to west. It appeared to stop overhead for around 30 seconds and the fireball died out and it spun in circles for some time. It then continued to the west over Donegal bay without any illumination. You could still see its outline when the fireball went out, it was a light grey in colour and appeared to be spinning around and was rectangular in shape through binoculars.

Would be very interested to hear if anyone else seen this and if anyone could offer a logical explanation. I have read about lanterns that can sometimes be seen as fireballs http://www.astronomy.ie/lanterns.html. Not too sure if it was one of these though, it appeared to be extremely high up in the atmosphere and had a very strong fireball effect for some minutes before going out. Also it appeared to be quite large in size considering the altitude of it.

Definitely not IIS, Iridium Flare or any other satellite as i am very familiar with all of these.

Any explanation/suggestions would be appreciated.

Cheers

just saw something very similar this evening at round 10pm in westmeath but was going very fast east to west. it was orange in color Ive never seen anything like it

dlofnep

It was probably a lantern.

boghopper

Hi Rudedog
I think these are def chinese lanterns. I have seen two of these in Mountcharles just before Christmas. The first one I saw, i couldn't understand what I was seeing and thought it was some type of UFO then just before Christmas I saw another and the glare from the streetlights lit up the outline of the lantern and I figured out what it was. I heard someone was selling these on the diamond in Donegal town.

Hauk

Has to be aliens. No other plausible explanation.

rccaulfield

lanterns alright! dont let the different colour fool u!

rudedog

boghopper wrote: »

Hi Rudedog
I think these are def chinese lanterns. I have seen two of these in Mountcharles just before Christmas. The first one I saw, i couldn't understand what I was seeing and thought it was some type of UFO then just before Christmas I saw another and the glare from the streetlights lit up the outline of the lantern and I figured out what it was. I heard someone was selling these on the diamond in Donegal town.

Thanks for the info boghopper, i had suspected it was one of these alright, but had never seen one before so was unsure what to think.

I think this is mystery solved!

Cheers.

Delphi91

I saw around 15-20 of them crossing the sky over Cobh on Saturday night. The first three of them threw me 'cos they were in a straight line, one behind the other all equally spaced apart.

rudedog

The sighting in Donegal even made the newspaper!

http://www.donegaldemocrat.ie/donegalnews/Goodness-gracious-great-ball-of.5982708.jp