Flash in the sky last night?

element05

Howdy,

Was outside talking to a mate last night, somewhere between 22:30 and 23:30 (sorry, don't have a more exact time), when just over his head I caught a distant flash of light in the sky. I was looking at my mate at the time, and wasn't focussed directly on it.

It was literally like a distant camera flash; single point origin, which appeared, expanded to a glow about the same size as the moon, and faded again, all in the space of about 0.1 to 0.2 of a second. Didn't light up the surrounding area or anything like that, the source was definitely above the ground. Looking at the spot immediately afterwards, I could see nothing else (satellite, aircraft lights, etc).

According to the compass in my phone, the flash was at about 345 degrees north, and I'd estimate between about 25 and 35 degrees elevation. Observation point slightly outside the village of Camolin in Co Wexford.

Just curious... anyone have any ideas what it might have been?

Cheers,

John

Mr Benevolent

Cuuld have been a transformer going nova.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZabpkFPJ3NY

Sounds like an Iridium flare. I'd be pretty certain this is what you spotted.

Failing that, it could have been a bolide.

Bolides are particularly rare, whereas bright Iridium flares are slightly more common.

If you want to know for sure go to Heavens Above, create an account and plug in your exact latitude and longitude. Under the Satellites section on the main page you'll see "Iridium flares," then a link under that titled "previous 48 hrs." That'll give you the times, directions, altitudes and magnitudes of any Iridium flares visible from your area over the last two days. If it's not listed, then either your location is listed slightly incorrectly, you witnessed a bright meteorite/bolide, or it was a flare or firework or something of the sort.

newmug

Any meteors expected in our solar system, or near Earth in the next few months?

newmug

newmug wrote: »

Any meteors expected in our solar system, or near Earth in the next few months?

I'm guessing you meant to say comet instead of meteor, since meteors are extremely frequent (on any given night you'll likely see dozens if you've enough patience), but absolutely unpredictable (apart from predictions of increased frequency due to meteor showers). A simple mistake.

Assuming you're thinking about comets, a good site for upcoming ones is here. It's a little technical, but easy to follow once you understand the layout and symbols. There are four main columns, "Month" is self explanatory, and "Evening," "Midnight," and "Morning" just give a particular comet's magnitude (Mag) and altitude (height above the horizon) for a location at 35 degrees latitude (h) for that time of the day. The "Mag" column lists the comet's highest magnitude in that particular month, for evening, midnight and morning times (sunset, midnight, sunrise, essentially). Anything with a number below about 5 or 6 will be visible with the naked eye, but the lower the number the brighter (and more visually stunning) the comet will appear. A Mag of 2 or 3 or 4 is good, but, as I said, the lower the better. "h" is the highest altitude (number of degrees above the horizon) of the comet that month for a location at 35 degrees of latitude (so, very roughly, Lisbon, Portugal or Athens, Greece).

You can essentially ignore any comet with a magnitude (Mag) of higher than 5 or 6 (unless you're using a telescope or binoculars) and any comet with an altitude (h) of lower than about 25 degrees. (25 degrees is a rough cut-off point, since Ireland is further north than the value that h is based on.) You'll see that there are no midnight sightings that meet this criteria for the listed years. There are some morning and evening sightings, but these are harder to predict because it may be bright when the comet is at a visible altitude for Ireland, making it difficult or impossible to see.

You can be sure if there is going to be a good opportunity to view a comet it will be posted in this forum.

And if you were indeed talking about meteors or meteor showers (meteor shower dates here), then you can ignore the above as it's absolutely useless information when it comes to meteors. Though it might make an interesting read, all the same.

jfSDAS

According to the compass in my phone, the flash was at about 345 degrees north, and I'd estimate between about 25 and 35 degrees elevation. Observation point slightly outside the village of Camolin in Co Wexford.

After a bit of sleuthing I strongly suspect you saw a bright flash from the Japanese H-II Transfer Vehicle (HTV) as the reflective surfaces/solar panels just caught the sun at the right angle.

The HTV undocked from the International Space Station on September 11th and re-entered the Earth's atmosphere on September 14th when it burnt up.

I based this guess on plugging in Camolin's location to www.heavens-above.com and using the altitude/azimuth directions you gave. The HTV popped up straight away as the prime suspect.

More details on the 3rd HTV mission at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HTV-3

atb,

John

TURRICAN

Strange as I saw a meteor? Enter the earths atmosphere last night too.
I'm in Campile south Wexford and it was north aswell. It lasted about a second and had a short tail with a sparkling effect behind it.
It had an elevation of about 20 30 degrees from the earth and was falling at elevation of about 40 degrees from east to west.

Was outside smoking a fag and was thinking to myself I haven't seen any solar activity in a while and the bamm.

Edit.
It was about 10pm

ceallaigh1234

HI, just saw a meteor over borrisokane, co.tipperary. I say there was 6 or 7 fragments. it was passing over from right to left which I think it would have been north east. Just wondering did anyone else see?? As you can tell I am not an expert :-) It was aprox 11pm on the 21st of September. It was actually coming across the sky instead of falling if that makes sense? and looked like a fireball

Walkman

Large thread already about it here

Dude007

ceallaigh1234 wrote: »

HI, just saw a meteor over borrisokane, co.tipperary. I say there was 6 or 7 fragments. it was passing over from right to left which I think it would have been north east. Just wondering did anyone else see?? As you can tell I am not an expert :-) It was aprox 11pm on the 21st of September. It was actually coming across the sky instead of falling if that makes sense? and looked like a fireball

Saw the same in south Wexford on 21Sep12 at 22:55 in north east direction about 25° from ground, passing horizontal east to west for more than 30 secondes...