anyone see very bright shooting star near moon from Adelaide approx 00:30 14/10/2010

[thehutchenator]

I just witnessed a very bright shooting star while looking just above and south of the moon from north adelaide at approx 00:30 on Thurs 14th Oct 2010. Wondering if it is significant in any way.

[mental4astro]

G'day, thehutchenator, :welcome: to IIS.

Sadly I didn't see anything, except for These damn clouds!!!, despite my being in Sydney.

Meteors are ususally insignificant. After so many billion of years, most of the really big stuff that used to regularly pumell the Earth, most of the stuff that enters the atmosphere is no bigger than a pea.

Occasionally you do get bigger stuff, and there are regular reports of sonic booms being heard associated with this critters.

Just wait for your first fireball! This is a meteor whose trajectory entering the atmosphere is very shallow, so it is skimming along it for a very long time and distance. Very often you'll see bits flying of it as it breaks up too, even variations in colour (I've seen green fireballs a couple of times). And even more creepy is the glowing trail left behind the fireball. This stuff is both "smoke" and super heated gases that were created as the thing shot through at something like upto 50,000km/hr - that is one heck of a carpet burn!

If there is something "significant", like the thing being man-made in origin, unless it poses a risk to people, or a particularly big or history piece, we wouldn't really hear about it. There are some 'crazies' that chase these things too to photograph the re-entry, much like storm chasers.

Mental.

[Astroman]

Do you know which direction the meteor appeared to travel from? if it looked as it was coming from the Eastern sky, it could possibly be an Orionid Meteor, as the radiant was above the horizon at that time of night as seen from Adelaide. These meteors are not really fast but some do produce really nice meteors, some orange/yellow in colour...