大象传媒

This blog blog entry relates to an entry on talking about . I saw the fireball myself in Glasgow at around midnight and my girlfriend, who was on the other side of the city, saw it as well.

All very romantic, and being a dedicated pseudo scientist, I decided to do some digging around to see if there had been any other sightings or explanations.

A quick took me to the . No sign of our meteor/comet/ufo so I emailed a chap called Alastair, who prepares the sightings report on the website.

Alastair sent me an excellent reply, which I've copied below for anyone interested.I would definitely recommend having a look at the , and a

If you can remember any details, please send a report to the Alastair using the email address meteor@popastro.co.uk. They are keen to get information about sightings in the hope that one day they will find some debris. The on their website gives you an idea of the information they will find usefull.

(from Alistair's email)
It's clear from the descriptions that these were indeed all sightings of, probably two (possibly three) separate, fireballs, the term we commonly use for especially bright meteors (technically, any meteor which reaches magnitude -3, compared to the brightest stars and planets; in practice, this is at least as bright as the planet Jupiter at its best).

There is no recognised strong meteor shower active in mid-January to which these objects may have belonged. However, in several recent years, there have been reports of one or a few fireballs occurring between January 15-16 to 17-18 inclusive, which may imply there is some unrecognised lesser meteor shower activity occurring around this time, perhaps annually. Unfortunately, the number of meteors involved is small, as there has been no significant increase in general meteor rates simultaneously, and so far, there are very few accurate positional data for any of these events, which might allow the recognition of a distinctive stream of objects in space producing these bright meteors.

This year, I have received sightings of single fireballs on January 15-16 and 16-17 from the UK, besides these three fresh ones in your own e-mail.

Aside from this interval, the last ten days of January through to about February 20 has sometimes produced loose "clusters" of fireballs in recent years too. Statistically, February has long been known as a month when more fireballs happen overall, though this is unlikely to be noticed by even a dedicated observer, as the numbers involved in a given year for the whole British Isles might be 8-10 during all of February. There is no evidence yet to suppose that these originate from the same source.

If you, or either of the other two observers can recall any further details about your sightings - especially rough positions for where the meteor trails started and ended in the sky compared to the stars, or the compass directions and apparent elevations above the horizon for these points - those would be extremely helpful. Please don't be concerned if this is not practical for any of those concerned. Even experienced meteor observers can find remembering these details difficult immediately after the event, so there's no shame attached!

Alastair McBeath

Meteor Director, Society for Popular Astronomy,
SPA Meteor Section homepage: http://www.popastro.com/sections/meteor.htm

International Meteor Organization Vice-President,
IMO website: http://www.imo.net