I'm not astronomer by any means so bear with me...
Sat here in my room and saw a huge white/greenish glowing ball passing from east to west in South Manchester. At first I thought it was a helicopter but it made no noise, passed overhead quickly (it looked like a chopper at a few hundred feet) with a bright trail of orange behind it.
Hard to judge distance and speed as I had nothing to compare it against but it looks similar to this:
Saw something like that late one evening many years ago. We were traversing the forest primeval in northern Canada when a fireball swept from NE to SW parallel to our track. We were at FL410, and it was bright enough to light up the cockpit. The only two other flights in the vicinity, a BA from Chicago to London and a LH from Chicago to Frankfurt both experienced the same thing. We all agreed we'd never seen anything like it before.
Drat, that means the parcel I was expecting from Alpha Centurii wont be delivered, bloody annoying as it contained a kit to turn water into petrol, at least that's where the nice guy at the Indian call centre said it came from. .
I have seen many meteors in my time as a pilot, and they all moved faster and lasted for less time than that.
I have seen a Russian rocket stage re-enter the atmosphere, and it looked quite a bit like that - so my bet is on a piece of man-made space junk re-entering from orbit.
Last edited by Checkboard; 22nd Sep 2012 at 07:48.
There are fast meteors and slow meteors,some come in behind us as it were slowly catch up to us and dunch into the atmosphere, some we meet head on from the opposite direction and we come together with our combined speed. The green colour of the fireball suggests copper so space junk is a likely candidate.
Last edited by tony draper; 22nd Sep 2012 at 08:03.
Looking at the video given the rate of apparent movement and the colour it looks a lot like space junk to me although as Drapes has said meteorites can also seem to move quite slowly dependent on the entry geometry .
Whilst the space debris re-entry prediction sites can give accurate predictions for items they know about they sometimes miss events such as re-entering booster stages from launches that have occured in the last few hours (saw exactly that over China a few years back...no-body was expecting the light show we wittnessed!!)
I guess we'll know for sure if the UK Astronomy organisations start appealing for observations later today.
P.S. Happy Autumnal Equinox to all the astronomers out there, may all your skies be dark, clear but not too cold........
Logged in to say green suggests copper at correct temperature for soldering but Drapes already said it so please ignore this post unless you already have me on your ignore list in which case you won't be reading it and have no need to manually ignore.
People of Earth, well what you call the UK actually,
What you witnessed last night was a Thargian zx1800 Scout vehicle breaking up in the upper atmosphere. It would seem that the di-lithium crystal overheated in the flux capacitor and caused a catastrophic failure of the vehicle as it orbited your planet. A common problem with the zx1800, especially those built without the enakublator safety system. The crew, Captain Uzbiiiku, First Officer Zlongi and Engineer Battersby were able to escape in their escape pod and are safe awaiting recovery from the mother ship. I have to report that recovery operations are now being undertaken to recover the craft. All we ask that you do not try to recover it yourselves, as you did at Roswell. This caused us a hell of a lot of sh1t!
Live long and whatever
Ablon Beebulbrook Thargian Ambassador to Earth
39 Acacia Avenue Godalming Surrey
'Thargian Empire - Working together for a safer Galaxy'
p.s. to the one you call Con Pilot. I hope you enjoyed our gift of the case of Aldabran whiskey we left at your front porch. The water having been passed by a Aldabran honey monster, gives it an interesting kick don't you think.
Trust me, the crew are fine. In the escape pod were three of what we call 'comforts' that the one you call Pippa Middleton was modelled on. They will be quite happy I can assure you.
Last edited by uffington sb; 22nd Sep 2012 at 14:15.
Also #UFO trending on T...
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