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Space Science

Fireball Over Wales 51

Posted by timothy from the blame-the-cia dept.
nagora writes "After last weeks meteor strike on an Indian village, Astronomy Picture of the Day has a spectacular photo of a fireball over Wales. Come home to a real fire..."
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Fireball Over Wales More

Fireball Over Wales

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  • Fireball (Score:1, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward
    At least that's one fireball in Wales that can't be blamed on the nationalists ...

  • Green fireball (Score:5, Interesting)

    by ballpoint ( 192660 ) on Wednesday October 01, 2003 @10:21AM (#7103229)
    On a summer evening in the center of Belgium some five years ago my brother-in-law and I saw a very bright, green-glowing (slashdot color, but much brighter) object zooming overhead from the south to the east. We thought a crash was imminent; it was quite threatening even if it didn't make any noise.

    Unfortunately I haven't found any references to it anywhere. I'm pretty sure others must have seen it too.

    This Wales fireball seems even more impressive though.

    • Re:Green fireball (Score:2, Insightful)

      by GigsVT ( 208848 )
      It probably had a lot of copper in it, copper burns green.

      If you ever see another one, contact local astronomers to report it, they get off on that sort of thing, and want people to report fireball sightings.
      • Each time I'm outside in similar conditions (a warm summer evening, yummy...) I hope to see something like that again.

        Your remark made me think again on how the internet and the ubiquitousness of cameras have changed everything. While I wanted to report it back then I didn't get to doing it due to lack of contact info. This would be a no-brainer now.
      • It probably had a lot of copper in it, copper burns green.The green color probably comes from oxygen ions regaining electrons, just like the green color in aurora.

    • Re:Green fireball (Score:4, Informative)

      by Bishop923 ( 109840 ) on Wednesday October 01, 2003 @11:34AM (#7103792)
      Chances are, what you saw was a Bolide [nasa.gov] they can often glow brighter than the full moon.
    • Reminds me of an event in my back yard about a month ago (in north eastern US):

      I was looking for mars but found it on the opposite side of the sky from where it really was. This object didn't move, but grew very bright, brighter than the real mars a month ago. It grew extremely bright over the period of about 30 seconds. Maybe 5x the brightness and size of Mars's best showing this year. Then it quickly faded to nothing. Only thing I can think of is a meteor that was coming directly at me, as it didn
      • Not to sound insulting, but it may have been a commercial aircraft turning directly toward you from a distance. the lights have very narrow and very bright beams. Sometimes if they are sufficiently far away they look like a single point of light that grows and fades in the same (or nearly the same) spot. Being brighter than mars, jupiter or even venus would not be surprising.

        -Sean
        • Not insulted. Guess it could have been. The sky wasn't that dark though, and I looked for that, thought it was the obvious answer, could've missed a pinpoint, but I did look pretty hard and saw nothing but clear blank dusk. Wouldn't a turning plane light sort of grow from the side nearest me? This thing grew out very large from it's exact center. It was a little bit amber too. Light can play pretty neat tricks on the eyes, but this thing sure didn't seem like an airplane light. Guess I'll never know.
      • This object didn't move, but grew very bright, brighter than the real mars a month ago. It grew extremely bright over the period of about 30 seconds. Maybe 5x the brightness and size of Mars's best showing this year. Then it quickly faded to nothing.

        I saw something similar about two weeks ago, a little way north of Baltimore. My best guess is that is was one of the Iridium satellites - when the light catches them just right, they shine very brightly for a short time.

  • Remeber Kids (Score:4, Funny)

    by kinnell ( 607819 ) on Wednesday October 01, 2003 @10:31AM (#7103291)
    Don't do high energy physics experiments in your mothers microwave without taking the appropriate safety precautions

    • Re:Remeber Kids (Score:2, Funny)

      by Anonymous Coward

      Don't do high energy physics experiments in your mothers microwave without taking the appropriate safety precautions.

      Two men are surprised to meet in mid-air, one plummeting downward toward the ground while the other soars higher upward. As they pass, the first yells out "Do you know anything about parachuting?" The second shouts back, "No! Do you know anything about gas barbecues?"

  • Bolides (Score:1, Interesting)

    by Anonymous Coward
    Ah yes, I remember it well... My wife and I were driving in DC 2 years ago in the daytime and we stopped at a red light. Looking north, I saw something out of the corner of my eye and turned to see a giant fireball headed east to west over the city. It had the most vivid hues of red and orange and was quite bright. It turns out that it was a rather large bolide that came in from the Atlantic, travelled over New Jersey, and exploded in western Pennsylvania. So what initially looked to be right over DC w
  • Scientists say, however, the risk of being killed by a falling meteorite is not worth worrying about.

    Unless you discover heaven, of course.

    (if you don't know what I'm talking about, read/see The Discovery of Heaven [dannyreviews.com] by Dutch wannabe Novel prize winner Harry Mulisch.

  • Come home to a real fire... (Score:3, Informative)

    by dontod ( 571749 ) on Wednesday October 01, 2003 @11:05AM (#7103543) Homepage
    ...buy a holiday home in wales.

    For those who don't remeber / know 'Not the Nine O'Clock News' [wikipedia.org] it's where Rowan Atkinson (Mr Bean, Blackadder) got his break on TV.

    Don.
    -------
    Don't say revenge. Don't say revenge. Ummm.. revenge? Okay, that's it. I'm outta here. *step step step step step..door slam*

  • ...Buy a cottage in Wales (Score:4, Funny)

    by carndearg ( 696084 ) on Wednesday October 01, 2003 @11:11AM (#7103600) Homepage Journal
    Very impressive picture, kudos to the kid who took it. I am curious to know though whether any of the pieces of the object would have made it to earth or whether in such events they merely pass through the outer atmosphere in a blaze of glory. I am guessing that a "sofa sized" object would have quite a lot of energy and would cause quite some destruction had it struck the earth in one piece.

    "Come home to a real fire" in the context of Wales made me laugh though. Back in the 1980s it was the slogan used to advertise coal fires, and at the time the extreme fringe of the Welsh Nationalists were burning down holiday cotages in North Wales owned by absentees.

    I cant remember who it was, might have been "Not the 9 o'clock news", ran a spoof of the coal fire ads, "Come home to a real fire, buy a cottage in Wales"

    • Very impressive picture, kudos to the kid who took it.
      Indeed. I wonder just how fast it was moving through the sky and just how much time he had to take that picture. Truly impressive, one of the best astronomy photos I've ever seen.
    • I hoped someone would get the joke; I assumed the /. editors wouldn't when I put it in.
    • I cant remember who it was, might have been "Not the 9 o'clock news", ran a spoof of the coal fire ads, "Come home to a real fire, buy a cottage in Wales"

      It sure was [wikipedia.org]

      'Come Home to a Real Fire (Buy a Cottage in Wales)' (a reference to a spate of arson attacks by Welsh people against English settlers, and also a parody of the contemporary coal marketing campaign)

  • You young folks might not know (Score:4, Funny)

    by falsification ( 644190 ) on Wednesday October 01, 2003 @11:19AM (#7103669) Journal
    You young folks might not know what that is. You might even be scared. Well, let me tell you. That thar fireball warn't caused by no rock fallin from the sky. That thar was a dragon.

  • while driving back to college (UC Irvine) on a sunday night. It seemed to be streaking straight down to my south, and I kept hoping that the university had been destroyed to get me out of my compiler construction course!

  • During the 2001 Leonids, (Score:4, Interesting)

    by JeanPaulBob ( 585149 ) on Wednesday October 01, 2003 @02:57PM (#7106206)
    I saw one meteor flash so brightly, a friend of mine saw his silhouette on the ground (he was adjusting the blanket he was sitting on at the time). The meteor left a debris trail visible for minutes afterward. A NASA image gallery [nasa.gov] has several [nasa.gov] pictures [nasa.gov] of the trail [nasa.gov], including one animated sequence [nasa.gov].
  • It's a space station!
  • Is Clark Kent in the fireball? ;)
  • everyone flused the toilets in a 747 at one time ;)
  • According to the actual article (sigh) the trail in question is by no means considered to be a meteor trail but more likely an airplane contrail reflecting the setting sunlight.

    Come on SlashDot...let's not turn into the National Enquirer in our search for articles OK?
    • However the article also states.

      "Editor's note: The APOD text has been modified from its original content. "

      This morning the part about the contrail was ommitted.
      • More importantly, there's no contrail AHEAD of the "blast cloud". The curved cloud leading out from it is at a lower altitude, since it was in the previous photograph of a minute before, and has traveled considerably in relation to the blast cloud.

        I see no clear-cut photographic evidence to rule this out as a bolide.

  • Lesson learned (Score:3)

    by NanoGator ( 522640 ) on Wednesday October 01, 2003 @05:55PM (#7108334) Homepage Journal
    Well, I'd say this photo has taught us all a lesson. When the guy next to you on the plane says "Pull my finger", politely decline.
  • I saw an impressive green colored streak across the sky. It bounced two or three times. And to think had I been ontime for work, I wouldn't have seen it.
  • No evidence, but when I saw this picture on TV this morning I was conviced I'd seen this kind of thing before, and I have.

    As the Nerimoff suggests this is just a reflection of light from the Sun as it disappears over the horizon. It seems quite striking when you see it because of the contrast with darker clouds around. I guess the angle the light is striking at and the type of cloud or contrail would combine to give the effect.
    • I'm leaning towards it being an actual bolide. Look at the contrast b/w the sky and the "flaming" object in the first picture; unless the camera used to snap the picture has an exceptionally narrow dynamic range, that fireball is much brighter than the light reflected off a cloud could be.
  • Sofa sized? Is that a UK unit of mesurment? WHats the conversion factor to american units(VW Beetles)?
    • 1 sofa = 0.25 VW Beetles (approx.)
    • Ah, but as far as I know, no American ever wrote a book-length poem on the subject of a VW Beetle. On the other hand, a certain Brit named William Cowper [utoronto.ca] ...

      Begun in the summer of 1783 and completed by the autumn of 1784. First published in 1785. Asked by Cowper to suggest a subject for a poem, his friend Lady Austen submitted that he take a lighter subject than had been his custom, and facetiously set him the "task" of composing one about a sofa. His earlier poetry had, for the most part, been written in

  • What's next? Sharks with freaking lasers on their heads?

  • Four actual impacts since May, and an unverified fifth. Plus this fireball thing.

    Link-O-Rama. . .

    Oakland County [detnews.com] [detnews.com]

    Mount Vernon [komotv.com] [komotv.com]

    English garden, (possible). [thisislincolnshire.co.uk] [thisislincolnshire.co.uk]

    New Orleans [nola.com] [nola.com]

    And of course, India [abc.net.au] [abc.net.au] two days ago.

    About 4 or 5 years ago there was a bit of noise around the scientific community about a mysterious very big object being detected around the vicinity of Pluto's orbit. An object travelling on an eliptical orbit

  • The funny thing is that that very night I was out in the woods with a friend, and saw a big fireball coming down. I pointed, and my friend managed to see it even after I pointed. He turned fast, and managed to see it. Most times, by the time you point, it's already gone. It was about 1AM EST in Richmond at the time. Anyone else see it?

  • I saw one _just_now_ outside, in DC (Score:3, Funny)

    by blakespot ( 213991 ) on Friday October 03, 2003 @01:39PM (#7125690) Homepage
    I just went outside to bring some food back to eat at my desk as I work here, programming in Washington DC. As I was making the 3 block walk to my normal lunch spot, I saw a glare out of the corner of my eye and looked up and indeed a bright fireball was almost directly overhead - this was not 1 hr ago!!

    I did not make out a tale due to the sheer brightness of the fireball but after some time I was able to determine that it is slowly headed west, having approached DC from the Atlantic, presumably. A co-worker claims she saw it just crawling over the horizon this morning at about 7am. It is far, far brighter than the full moon, I can tell you with certainty.

    What is going on with all these fireballs?


    blakespot

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