Daylight Shooting Stars

[cieloitaliano]

Criusing south over Germany I noticed what appeared to be a shooting star with a smoky black plume that turned into what I can only describe as a rainbow coloured plume as it hurtled down past us.
Anyone out there familiar with this phenomena? :bored:

[chevvron]

About a year ago, I saw a green object trailing flame north west of me descending on a north easterly track. I thought it was a flare at first, but when I contacted the British Astronomical Society, I was told that several other people saw it, and by triangulation of reports, it was over 150 miles away over the north Atlantic!

[DrKev]

That is what they call a fireball! It's basically a larger than average meteor. Very rare to see them at all, especially in the day time. At night they can outshine the full moon and will cast shadows, often leaving a glowing green trail of ionised gasses in the atmosphere than can last for 30 minutes or longer.

Seeing colours in them fireball itself (other than yellow or white) is not that unusual, either green or red from ionised oxygen and nitrogen in the atmosphere. In fact, the red and green colours are associated with different heights in the atmosphere as the relative concentration of O2 and N2 change (though I can't remember the exact details off hand).

FWIW, most meteors we see are hitting the atmosphere 60km up, travelling at 70km per second and are the size of a spec of dust. The brightest ones, the fireballs, are usually the size of a grain of sand to the size of a small child's fist. Amazing when you think about it - a grain of sand 60 km away bright enough to cast shadows.

It has been estimated that only 1 person in 12,000 will ever see a fireball in their lifetime. I've been lucky enough to see two. Both were when I was living in Dublin, one passing directly overhead (leaving an ionisation trail for 20 mins and it seems I was only person to report it), and another one that passed on a track from Liverpool to Newcastle and out over the north sea!

[Getoutofmygalley]

I saw one once too. It was around about 05:15 and I was getting ready to go to work. I was looking out the window and my eyes were drawn to this fast moving object in the sky which was leaving a trail behind it.

This one I think was skipping off of the upper atmosphere as it would keep disappearing and coming back. Was really quite a sight :)

[cieloitaliano]

This one I witnessed was coming straight down and appeared to be at least the size of a beach ball from the size of the smokey kiln-like plume.:eek:

[chevvron]

I saw mine purely by chance; sitting in the control tower I turned to talk to someone and noticed it in the sky behind him; a case of looking in the right place at the right time!

[cieloitaliano]

I certainly would not have wanted the fireball I saw as an ACAS RA. :eek: :mad: