Police helicopters scrambled to reports of plane crash - only to discover it was probably a meteor b

"A land and air search was launched in Devon after a suspected meteor was feared to be an aircraft breaking up in the sky.
Numerous callers alerted police to the flying object during the early hours of Sunday. It was later seen breaking apart and falling towards the ground.
Police launched an aerial and ground search for a crashed plane after 999 calls about a possible light aircraft crash over Devon.
But it has been stood down after it is believed what was saw was actually a meteoroid breaking apart in the sky.
Units were sent to the Tavistock area after a callers said they saw what looked like a plane crash.
However it is believed what they and many others saw was in fact a meteoroid."

Police helicopters scrambled to reports of plane crash - only to discover it was probably a meteor breaking up

quite interesting that a search was launched after this apparent meteor descent. wonder if anyone will find any meteorite bits?

"There have been hundreds of reports on social media this morning about people 'glowing objects' falling from the sky."

"The Force Incident Manager for Devon and Cornwall Police has given a further update and said: "We have had further reports of seeing an object in the sky from some distance away with a trajectory towards the ground, with an item falling off it at some point.
There have been reports it broke into two and this has come from numerous people."

Tavistock.....being the curious alarm

I'm on their case over there at how you say.....Tavistock yezz....It' was a normal bolide till they saw it land....

There was a time that this sort of thing was so rare, fireballs are now common.

a reply to: SeaWorthy

agreed it seems a lot more commonplace than in days of yore, though there is the argument that the increasing amount of monitoring worldwide goes some way to explaining the apparent increase in frequency.

a reply to: RoScoLaz5

Units were sent to the Tavistock area after a callers said they saw what looked like a plane crash.

I wonder if it was the TARDIS.

Sorry. I couldn't resist. I really need to get some sleep.

I’m struggling to see how all witnesses described it as a plane crash and not one of them said meteor? everybody knows what a meteor looks like, not so much a plane crash, why would the helicopter go out if they had nothing on radar? or reported ? I dunno, sounds odd, meteors are fast plane crashes I believe everybody knows they’re not as fast as meteors

originally posted by: RoScoLaz5

sky from some distance away with a trajectory towards the ground, with an item falling off it at some point.

There have been reports it broke into two and this has come from numerous people."

That's interesting that it broke into two.... with items falling off?

originally posted by: CraftyArrow

originally posted by: RoScoLaz5

sky from some distance away with a trajectory towards the ground, with an item falling off it at some point.

There have been reports it broke into two and this has come from numerous people."

That's interesting that it broke into two.... with items falling off?

I saw straight away watching that, that it was a set-up,

It even says so on the video page; 'Created by "Mammoth Screen" for the filming of "The War of the Worlds"

The physics are all off, it must have taken them a fair bit of time to set up though

originally posted by: RoScoLaz5
a reply to: SeaWorthy

agreed it seems a lot more commonplace than in days of yore, though there is the argument that the increasing amount of monitoring worldwide goes some way to explaining the apparent increase in frequency.

Agreed.

We now see fireballs all the time from webcams, security cameras, doorbell cameras, dashboard cameras, etc. Those kinds of cameras were far less common 10+ years ago.

We also have the internet, social media, and forums such as this one in which people can instantly spread the news worldwide of a fireball. A couple of decades ago, fireballs meteors would have mostly just made the local news and that's it.

originally posted by: NightSkyeB4Dawn
Sorry. I couldn't resist. I really need to get some sleep.

Leaning to it being a cluster of ufo orbs in flight formation entering this dimension with various individuals being fired to the ground (explaing the "crash") during the ground scan monitoring stage

"Night of the Cooters.'
-Howard Waldrop
Read it here.
clarkesworldmagazine.com...

a reply to: Homefree

bookmarked to read later

a reply to: RoScoLaz5

Reminds me of a British case from 1997 in the Lake District - for which there is an excellent thread by Mirageman here, who writes:

Based on the large number of reports coming in to the local police forces, a major rescue operation was launched by the UK Emergency Services. A search for a downed aircraft and survivors took place. Over 140 mountain rescue volunteers, RAF personnel and a large number of police officers from four neighbouring forces were involved in a 13 hour search across the Moors. A thorough search was made on foot and from the air. By 10am next day a 10 mile area around the Howden Reservoir was set up as a no fly zone to enable two helicopters to complete their search unhindered by other military or civilian aircraft.

a reply to: ConfusedBrit

thanks for the link to that very interesting thread there are certainly similarities.

originally posted by: TritonTaranis
I’m struggling to see how all witnesses described it as a plane crash and not one of them said meteor?

Most people wouldn't call the police to report a meteor. There would almost certainly have been reports from other people who identified it as a meteor, if you check other sources such as the IMO.

originally posted by: TritonTaranis
everybody knows what a meteor looks like, not so much a plane crash, why would the helicopter go out if they had nothing on radar? or reported ? I dunno, sounds odd, meteors are fast plane crashes I believe everybody knows they’re not as fast as meteors

Your above post actually answers your own question, or at the very least illustrates the answer.

The general public don't have a good understanding of meteor science, but DO have preconceived ideas about what meteors should look (and behave) like.

To cut a long story short, the "shooting stars" most people are familiar with are small particles ejected by comets, and these usually produce fast or very fast meteors. However, many major fireballs are actually produced by pieces of asteroid entering the atmosphere. Since asteroids orbit the Sun slower than comets, their meteors enter our atmosphere at significantly slower velocities than cometary meteoroids. Asteroids are also made of denser/harder material than comets, so when a piece enters the atmosphere, they tend to last longer and penetrate deeper into the atmosphere.

The key point here is that they are often very slow, compared to a more normal "shooting star", and yes, slow enough that a meteor can (actually quite easily) be mistaken for an aircraft. Most people do not seem to be aware of this, so when confronted with a fireball, and especially one which is shedding debris (as this one was), "aircraft crashing" can seem plausible.

Large meteors and fireballs have a long history of the general public reporting them as aircraft crashes, and before there were aircraft, misleading reports about where the "fiery object" landed. The knowledgeable geologists/meteorite hunters of the time figured out pretty quickly that people perceive meteors to be much closer than they actually are, and they were right. If you take a close look at some of the witness reports that The International Meteor Organization collects in their database, as I have done, it is plain to see.

The combination of unexpectedly slow, and close/bright (both are an illusion), is a sure fire way to confuse people/the unwary on it's own, so it's really not that surprising that these things get misidentified. It's one of the things that has intrigued me for decades, and I've gone out of my way to try and make sense of the subject.

I've observed many meteors over the years and a surprisingly large percentage of those have been bright and/or impressive in some other way, but a very small subset of those have been "unearthly", which is not too surprising given that I was observing extraterrestrial material entering the atmosphere at velocities it's hard to comprehend. There really is nothing quite like it when you see a meteor do something not often observed, and it's one of those things you really have to experience for yourself to fully appreciate.

So, step outside if you can, at an appropriate time, and enjoy the show. Sometimes it's slow going, but if you can get away from city/town/village lights the night sky is always a-buzz with activity!

I hope that helps dispel some of the myths.


PS. Some meteor trivia, which seems somehow appropriate: Spielberg was inspired to make "Close Encounters" by meteors he saw when his dad dragged him out of bed to observe a meteor shower when he was a little boy. If you watch his films closely there is always at least one meteor.

"probably a meteor"? That sounds like a made up story, maybe they are trying to hide something...

originally posted by: word4
"probably a meteor"? That sounds like a made up story, maybe they are trying to hide something...

Why does it sound made up?

In cases like this it can be hard to 100% confirm the exact cause. It takes time and investigation. Similar events that can be hard to tell apart initially may also be caused by re-entering satellites/space-junk, and until those are ruled out, there can never be 100% certainty. So you would expect some "if's" and "maybe's" initially.

But there is incontrovertible evidence that this was an upper atmosphere event - the event was observed by independent witnesses across 3 time-zones. The distance between the two furthest apart witnesses was well over 1500 km. Conventional air disasters would only be observed over tens of km at most since they occur at relatively low altitude compared to meteors/fireballs/reentries - a few km altitude vs many tens of km altitude.

This event bears all the hallmarks of a natural fireball in short, and I have come across MANY similar events that have turned out to be caused by natural fireballs.

What could "they" be trying to hide?

originally posted by: TritonTaranis
I’m struggling to see how all witnesses described it as a plane crash and not one of them said meteor? everybody knows what a meteor looks like, not so much a plane crash, why would the helicopter go out if they had nothing on radar? or reported ? I dunno, sounds odd, meteors are fast plane crashes I believe everybody knows they’re not as fast as meteors

fireball Meteors/bollides look very different than a typical fast streaking meteor. A fireball looks to be moving more slowly, lasts longer, and often breaks up into pieces, looking like multiple glowing sparkly trails.

Like these:

a reply to: Soylent Green Is People

For comparison, here is a link to footage (downloadable file - .flv format) of the event in question:
click here

Source: French meteor observer database

Also, for those who have not looked at the reports for this event, they can be found here, and as usual make for very interesting reading: IMO event 4304-2019

Just for completeness, here is a page about the event including some stills:
click here

a reply to: RoScoLaz5

Those things can be worth cash monies, having significant financial value to collectors and scientific value to researchers

Hopefully, someone finds it, or parts of it, on their land or back green.