Bright Meteor

[glenc]

At 3:37 am today a bright meteor went across Crux from upper right to lower left. It was much brighter than Venus, bluish and the path was about 10 degrees long.

[Dennis]

That must have been quite a spectacular sight Glen – thanks for the report. One of the spin offs from imaging is that once you have everything set up and the rig is capturing the sub-frames, you can afford to lie back and look up with the naked eye and get to see the occasional meteor.

Cheers

Dennis

[Outbackmanyep]

Hi Glen, are you able to report that to Adam Marsh at the ASV Meteor Section? Im sure he'd be wanting to make note of that! :thumbsup:

Cheers! :)

[glenc]

Do you have Adam's contact details? Please pm them if you do, thanks

[glenc]

I saw the light from another bright meteor just after 3am today. I was looking out the back door towards the west and saw the floor on the back verandah light up for about 2 seconds. The meteor was almost overhead, moving south-SW, and must have been as bright as the moon tonight (mag -11). I looked out the window to the south and there were no aircraft or other lights around, just thin cloud.

[Outbackmanyep]

Hi Glen, sorry for not getting back to you earlier, Adam Marsh's email addy PM'd.
Cheers! :thumbsup:

[glenc]

Thanks

[john_cleverdon]

Thats interesting - I saw a bright meteor/fireball last night as well, but earlier.
We were returning home from dinner out at Arthurs Seat (a hill on the Mornington Peninsula, south of Melbourne). While stopped at one of the lookouts, at 7.50pm, we saw the meteor (mag -4 or -5, if not brighter?) to the northwest.
This one was low in the sky, below the head of Hydra and Procyon.

Regards,
John

[§AB]

^^ Hey John Welcome to Iceinspace :)

Remember me from the MPAS?

Once I saw a fireball tear thru the eyepiece as I was observing 47Tuc. Startled me to say the least.

[john_cleverdon]

Hello,
Yes, I do remember you. I'm so busy at work now I don't get time to get to many MPAS meetings, although I still get along to MPAS BBQs and viewing nights (when the weather is clear ;)). The MPAS site at the Briars is pretty good now, and it makes a great spot for a BBQ and social evening.

I also joined a 4WD group 3 years back, so that's something else to take up my time.

Last weekend, this 4WD group had a weekend camped at Moliagul (in the Goldfields), so I took advantage of the clear dark skies to give those attending a tour of the night sky through a small refractor that one of the other 4WD'ers had.

To keep on topic, we saw a couple of meteors as well, though only average brightness.

Not enough space to pack my trusty 6-inch Dob this time, but the feedback afterwards was good enough such that it may make a future trip to this site.

Regards,
John

[Spanrz]

Dam it, I was watchin at Crux from 12:20am-1:00 am, bugger.
Looking for the Shuttle re-entry, but didn't see it. Bugger.

[rhisaac]

We were up at Tea Tree, Tassie at around 9ish last night when a really bright meteor zipped through a short way from around Arcturus to Antares ... very cool:)

[Chippy]

I saw a meteor on Friday morning at around 4:30am from Sydney. It was very similar to the one described below. Very bright, bluish, probably about 10 degrees long and also in the vicinity of Crux.

I'd actually forgotten about it until I saw this thread :-)

[war bird]

there is is nothing like seeing a bright fire ball randomly appear and silently streak across the sky. I saw a beauty a few years back which was part of the leonids shower, was quite slow and it had 2 long tails which hung in the sky glowing for several mins. Ill never forget how cool it was to see.
Im always on the lookout for them

[glenc]

Todays APOD shows a fireball at Uluru.
http://antwrp.gsfc.nasa.gov/apod/
http://antwrp.gsfc.nasa.gov/apod/image/0806/FireballAyersRock_brimacombe.jpg

[glenc]

At 7:17am on 30 June 1908, an immense explosion tore through the forest of central Siberia. Some 80 million trees were flattened over an area of 2,000 square km (800 square miles) near the Tunguska River.
The blast was 1,000 times more powerful than the atomic bombs dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki and generated a shock wave that knocked people to the ground 60km from the epicentre.
The cause was an asteroid or comet just a few tens of metres across which detonated 5-10km above the ground, 100 years ago today...
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/7470283.stm

[Karls48]

Magnitude –7.1 Fire Ball, Wednesday 03/07 05.27 in northwest sky of Sydney.