Fireball mid sixties over Dublin

NickNickleby

Greetings,
Seeing another recent post triggered this distant memory.

Some time between 1966 & 1969 I was out playing in a field opposite my home. It was a summer evening , clear sky, still sunny. There were many other children around and we all looked up in amazement when we heard a sound like a sputtering jet plane. A fireball shot overhead. It had a small tail, but it sounded for all the world like a large firework. It happened very quickly, but lasted long enough for me to see what I thought were sparks falling from it. Recalling it's track overhead, I would say it was travelling south to north, perhaps slightly West of North. To my childish eyes, it seemed to me that after disappearing behind the roofs of the houses, it must have landed near Dublin Airport , because late at night I could see the 'searchlight' at the airport, so I had an idea where the airport was. No doubt it was very high up and perhaps disintegrated or exited the atmosphere.

Anyone recall this, and if so, can you put a date on it?

Cheers

ps200306

I remember something like it, also visible in daytime from south Dublin, also travelling south west to north west, but was definitely mid seventies or later.

MeteoritesEire

The Bovedy meteorite fell in 1969, was seen far and wide though i'd have to do bit of digging on laptop later to find direction.theres also an audio recording of the sound knocking about online somewhere, one of the very few ever recorded

https://www.lpi.usra.edu/meteor/metbull.php?sea=Bovedy&sfor=names&ants=&falls=&valids=&stype=contains&lrec=50&map=ge&browse=&country=All&srt=name&categ=All&mblist=All&rect=&phot=&snew=0&pnt=Normal%20table&dr=&page=0

NickNickleby

MeteoritesEire wrote: »

The Bovedy meteorite fell in 1969, was seen far and wide though i'd have to do bit of digging on laptop later to find direction.theres also an audio recording of the sound knocking about online somewhere, one of the very few ever recorded

https://www.lpi.usra.edu/meteor/metbull.php?sea=Bovedy&sfor=names&ants=&falls=&valids=&stype=contains&lrec=50&map=ge&browse=&country=All&srt=name&categ=All&mblist=All&rect=&phot=&snew=0&pnt=Normal%20table&dr=&page=0

firstly, thanks very much for taking the trouble to reply with this info.

It certainly resonates with my recollections of the event. I would have been almost 15, so being out 'so late' would've been ok (strict regime in our house). If I heard the recording, I'd definitely remember it, it was such an amazing experience.

so now I know what I'm looking for.

cheers!

NickNickleby

found the recording :
http://fireball.meteorite.free.fr/Bonus/Video/fireball_bovedy_sound.avi

However, its only distant sonic booms. The written description from the astronomer closely matches my recollection.

jfSDAS

Sorry, I forgot to reply to the thread after the night we met up in Dunsink.

Details of the daylight fireball in June 1969 should be in the second article that appears at https://scholar.google.com/scholar?cluster=18044402937428935542&hl=en&as_sdt=0,5 - however, I'm not so sure now it was the same object as the path is over in the eastern part of England so it would have been low or even below the horizon (if visible at all) from Dublin.

There is a mention in the book Bombarded Britain of a bright fireball on the evening of August 8th 1966. That was seen from the Fife region of Scotland.

Bovedy seems possible but that was earlier in the year and also when the sky was twilit.

Hope the above helps!

John

mickmackey1

Sunset in Dublin on Apr 25 1969 was at 8.43 pm and the time of the Bovedy fireball is given as 9.25 pm. So this might seem inconsistent with the OP's recollection of a 'summer evening, still sunny'. Otherwise the description seems accurate though; reports of the fireball were made from Dublin.

NickNickleby

Its 48 years ago, but my admittedly hazy recollection is that it wasn't night time, so I described it as sunny still bright, but that could have been cloudless evening sky , still bright enough to 'not be night' if you get my drift.

Actually, after looking at the reply from MeteoritesEire, I too looked up sunset for that date. Then I compared that to sunset this week. An hour after official sunset the sky is still bright enough to compare to what I think I saw. So for me, it fits perfectly.

The whole point of the original post was to confirm that I'm not mad. Many people who grew up with me do not remember the incident, and yet there were many dozens of others around me that evening who all witnessed it (I think:eek:).

thanks for the replies guys