Did anyone see the meteor over the UK?

Lots of tweets about a meteor that came in over the UK tonight about midnight. Did anyone see it? It looked quite spectacular and there are jokes about us landing a rover on Mars last week and then this happens :slight_smile:

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Oooo, thatā€™s so cool. :cool:

Lyrids will be her in in mid April!

Just been reading some posts about in on FB. Came over just before 10pm, apparently. So sorry I missed it!

There is a theory that meteorites and comets bring viruses to earthā€¦Interesting. Wasnā€™t there a comet last year?

Lots of people here saw it. I was so tired yesterday I went to bed soon after 9 pm.

ā€˜Huge flashā€™ as ā€˜fireballā€™ lights up skies ā€˜like a giant fireworkā€™

Video footage:

:cool:

Impressive stuff, thanks for that Omahā€¦:023:

What a shame I missed it :frowning: I would definitely watched it if I had known about it.

Same here, Jazzi.

Iā€™d have looked out for it if Iā€™d known, but didnā€™t know anything about it.

  • Just found this reply to the question ā€œWhen was the last time a Meteor hit Earth.ā€

The last known impact of an object of 10 km (6 mi) or more in diameter was at the Cretaceousā€“Paleogene extinction event 66 million years ago. The energy released by an impactor depends on diameter, density, velocity, and angle.

Meteorites may be just north of Cheltenham

Scientists think some meteor pieces will have survived the intense heat of atmospheric entry and hit the ground. A computer model that analysed the camera data suggests the probable site of impact is just north of Cheltenham.

ā€œWe can track the fireball really well, but the ā€˜black magicā€™ starts when it goes dark - when the light goes out and it still has another 10-20km to reach the ground,ā€ explained Dr Ashley King from the UK Fireball Alliance (UKFAll) and Londonā€™s Natural History Museum (NHM). ā€œStrong winds can blow the object off course of where you think itā€™s going to land, and thatā€™s what weā€™re working on now. But, yes, somewhere north of Cheltenham, out towards Stow-on-the-Wold,ā€ he told BBC News.

Any fragments that made it to the ground will be small, smaller than an orange, say, and are likely to be dark and shiny. Anyone who finds what they think might be a meteorite is asked to photograph it in situ, noting the GPS co-ordinates from a phone, if thatā€™s possible. The object should then be bagged without direct handling. And the absolute no-no: do not put a magnet near the object. This could destroy important information needed to study the rock.

ā€œWeā€™ve learned over the years that most meteorites carry a kind of intrinsic magnetic record within them from when they were in space,ā€ said Dr King. ā€œWe can actually study that and learn about where these things came from and how they formed. But if you put a magnet on the object, itā€™s a little bit like wiping your credit card with a magnet. We lose all of that information.ā€

Some of the trajectory work from the camera data has already suggested the object originated in the outer asteroid belt, which is between Mars and Jupiter.

Time for Sly old grey fox to bring out his metal detector for a test run :smiley:

I was thinking the same thing Minxā€¦:cool:
Better get started, thereā€™s a lot of ground to coverā€¦:surprised: ā€œI may be gone quite some timeā€ā€¦:frowning:

Did you buy it from. Comet. Foxyā€¦?

Sorry, Iā€™ll get me coatā€¦

:044: Nice one Primus, your mastery of the written word is second to noneā€¦:smiley:

I would have loved to have seen that. :cry:

How about a Chinese Lantern Longdogsā€¦:smiley:

I have seen one of those, many years ago before we had really heard of them. I thought I was watching an alien Spaceship. :shock:

Weā€™ll keep the light on for you. :wink:

Thanks Right Now, but itā€™s so cold here at the moment I think Iā€™ll wait for the weather to warm up a bitā€¦
Someone described the meteor as being about the size of a cricket ball, and that was before it burned upā€¦:shock: Needle in a haystack springs to mindā€¦:017::smiley:
Although, I was watching Aussie Gold Hunters on TV, and because the debris is magnetic one of the hunters found a piece of meteorite with his detector, and I was surprised to hear how valuable it wasā€¦:surprised: