Video The fireball shot through the night skies of Scotland and Northern Ireland this week, initially thought to be fallen SpaceX hardware, was actually a meteor after all, according to the UK Meteor Network.
Skywatchers were shocked by a bright object whizzing overhead late Wednesday. A video capturing the unusual sight shows how the object’s light flickered like a sparkler and had what appeared to be a green glow and a dusty tail.
BREAKING 🚨: Large meteor spotted burning up over Scotland and Northern Ireland pic.twitter.com/EpqXvpeZd4
— Latest in space (@latestinspace) September 15, 2022
Those who thought they’d seen a shooting star – or those looking for a heavenly farewell for Queen Elizabeth or a sign of approval for King Charles III, Britain’s new monarch – were likely disappointed, astronomers at the UK Meteor Network said that this is nothing more than a lone SpaceX satellite dissolving into the atmosphere.
“Most meteors enter the atmosphere between about 75,000 and 80,000 miles per hour,” John Maclean, an astronomer on the network, told The Guardian.
“Whereas space junk is slower at 25,000 to 30,000 miles per hour. As a result, space debris is visible in the sky for much longer. A meteor would be a matter of a few seconds while this one was visible for 20 seconds. This is too slow for [a] Meteor.”
The citizen science group has now changed their mind and believes the fireball was one meteor that had an “asteroid orbit” and a speed of “14.2 kilometers per second” or about 31,765 miles per hour. The object is unlikely to be part or all of SpaceX’s Starlink satellite.
“We checked the Starlink de-orbit and it would not have come anywhere near the UK. At this time we cannot find any known space debris or satellite de-orbit that could be responsible for this fireball,” the UK Meteor Network said in an update on Thursday.
OK. The final analysis is in! The fireball over NI and Scotland last night was definitely a meteor. The fireball observed yesterday (Sept 14, 20:59:40 UT) above the UK lasted over 20 seconds and traveled NW, passing directly over Belfast. 1/4 pic.twitter.com/GnV70S13B8
— UK Meteor Network (@UKMeteorNetwork) September 15, 2022
Science: It needs a second look
A closer examination of the object’s trajectory revealed that it had to be something extraterrestrial in origin. Denis Vida, a postdoctoral fellow in meteor physics at the University of Western Ontario in Canada, confirmed it was a meteor and shared his findings with the UK Meteor Network. Vida helps operate 700 cameras around the world that look out for meteor events as part of the Global Meteor Network.
This fireball was unusual
“When I looked at the data and took actual measurements on the videos our meteor cameras observed, the numbers showed that it was indeed a natural object in an orbit just past Mars. If it were a SpaceX satellite, the orbit would have been much smaller and around the Earth instead of around the Sun as it was in this case,” he said The registry.
“This fireball was unusual because it lasted a very long time and covered a lot of ground, which is usually a feature of reentries. However, this in no way makes the object special or more interesting, it is simply a geometric curiosity. Other fireballs typically enter the atmosphere at a much steeper angle and are therefore shorter.”
Unfortunately, we probably won’t find any evidence of the space rock. Traces of what may have been left of the meteor landed in the North Atlantic about 50 to 100 km west of the Isle of Islay, a remote southern island in the Inner Hebrides of Scotland. ®
#fireball #sky #meteor #SpaceX #junk
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