A Shooting Star?

I think I just saw a shooting star?

Well, it looked like one. Although I've never seen a shooting star before so I guess it could be anything?

Are there any agencies in the UK that I can call to see if there was any space activity that could have caused this?

Should I call my local observatory?

I'm in the west of scotland, looking due east. It wasn't under any normal flightpath.

I saw two last night in London. So maybe there's a meteor shower?

Edit:
It could be this!!!
Check it out.
en.wikipedia.org...

The Perseids will next be active from July 17 to August 24, 2008,[2] with their peak on the morning of August 12, 2008

[edit on 4-8-2008 by _Phoenix_]

Maybe the observatory. If it was big enough to be picked up on radar or something, they might have a record of it.

Right now there's a meteor shower, its peak will be on the 12th of August: the Perseids

But how did it look like? Did it have a straight path? Was it fast? Slow? Maybe it was a satellite or the space station. How big was it?

If it went fast and straight, it was a shooting star, make a wish!

Originally posted by Wallachian
Right now there's a meteor shower, its peak will be on the 12th of August: the Perseids

But how did it look like? Did it have a straight path? Was it fast? Slow? Maybe it was a satellite or the space station. How big was it?

If it went fast and straight, it was a shooting star, make a wish!

Hey I wonder if you or anyone else can answer this.

I saw the first shooting star go by, then 3 mins later I saw another but this time it went in the total opposite direction!?

Is that normal?

reply to post by _Phoenix_


Meteors in a meteor shower typically fall in a radial pattern - kind of like light from a flashlight. It would be unusual to see two go in opposite directions.

reply to post by DarthChrisious


If they originated from the same point, they could go in opposite directions, i guess?

reply to post by Wallachian



Yeah they could...one could head towards the 8 o'clock position and another could head towards the 4 o'clock position. The picture I had in my head, though, was one heading towards the 9 o'clock and another towards the 3 o'clock. You know...just completely opposite directions.

Originally posted by DarthChrisious
reply to post by Wallachian

 

Yeah they could...one could head towards the 8 o'clock position and another could head towards the 4 o'clock position. The picture I had in my head, though, was one heading towards the 9 o'clock and another towards the 3 o'clock. You know...just completely opposite directions.

Yep that's what I saw the 9 and 3 o'clock opposite directions.

Odd??

Maybe I made a mistake, but I swear that's how I saw it.

[edit on 4-8-2008 by _Phoenix_]

As the earth travels into the leftover debris scattered around the sun in a very elongated path from the comet swift-tuttle, our atmosphere hits and burns up the little sand sized specks, which causes "shooting stars" about 50 miles up. Every year around mid August, as we return to this spot in space after a year loop around the sun, we run into the debris path that is always there, just hanging in space, being renewed as the 6 mile wide comet makes its loop at a weird angle to ours every 130 years. No it will not cross our path, but will get close in the year 3009? The shooting stars emanate from a spot in the sky that is sort of like the windshield of our earth car. The spot in the sky that they look like they are coming from is the constellation Perseus, hence the Perseid meteor shower, and the Leonids, Aquarids, etc. They can appear to be going in different directions like driving into snowflakes appear to go in all directions as you go through them. Way more fun to watch when you know. Sci Fi writer Phillip K. Dick: "Reality is that which - when you stop believing in it - doesn't go away..."

london on the london A406 going west i saw a big shooting star 12 september 2008
it was traveling down south west to west it lasted few seconds then faded.
it had a long tail and was bright .

At first i just pass Brent cross I said to my self it that a part of plane on fire
it was large but then i said ghoss!!! it a comet or a shooting star.

the light stop in mid air so to me it did not tuch earth...

how many mile the eye can see..

Originally posted by Nerdling
Should I call my local observatory?

No. You should go outside and enjoy the show!

However, if it had taken place on a non-major shower night, and the meteor was exeptionally bright (or accompanied by any unusual phenomena like sonic booms/major fragmentarion/your face peeling off your skull), then that would have been pretty much the right thing to do

Seriously though, you should contact the International Meteor Organization (IMO) or the American Meteor Society has an online fireball report form if you see something like I described above.

Bright meteors are fairly common, but super-bright meteors (ranging from the brightness of a full moon to the brightness of the sun), are increasingly rare in proportion to their brightness, and whitness reports of such events are eagrly sought in the scientific community, so I'd encorage anyone reading this to report their sighting to one of the organizations mentioned above.

Originally posted by _Phoenix_

Hey I wonder if you or anyone else can answer this.

I saw the first shooting star go by, then 3 mins later I saw another but this time it went in the total opposite direction!?

Is that normal?

The Anonymous answer above is right on the mark, but since this is ATS, I think this topic deserves a more in-depth answer...

Just to help illustrate the point, heres a photo showing the Leonid radiant, and many meteors appearing to radiate away from it. Notice how the meteors closest to to the radiant appear to be short, and those further away look longer? Well, not all of them, but in general...


source

...well that is just an optical illusion!

When you see a meteor very close to it's radiant, it looks short because you are looking at it heading directly (or close to directly) towards you.

Conversely, meteors seen to appear far away from the radiant (typically seen early on in the night when the radiant is just about to rise or has already risen but is still withing a few degrees of the horizon), can be long and breathtakingly spectacular, and are known as "earth-grazers". Due to them hitting the atmosphere at a very shallow angle, they tend to survive longer, and that combined with the side on (vs "head on") perspective makes for extremely memorable meteors!

Meteors seen actually in the radiant (rather than a point, the radiant is actually a small area of sky, but it's easier to talk in terms of it being a point for simplicities sake usually) will appear as stationary points that grow in brightness and quickly fade away.

So, if you are looking towards the radiant, as Phoenix seems to have been back in August, and a meteor appears somewhere to the left of the radiant, travelling away from it, followed by a meteor just to the right of the radiant travelling in the exact opposite direction to the first meteor, the second has to also be travelling away from the radiant.

The important thing to remember here is that all meteors travel away from the radiant (of the shower they belong to).

Now, to confuse things yet further, all meteoroids (a meteor is the name for the light show you see when a meteoroid slams in to the atmosphere) belonging to a particular meteor shower are travelling on parallel trajectories in respect to each other - just like a formation of aircraft flying straight and level, except that this particular formation is usually following a comet in a never ending chase around the sun, just like a dog chasing it's tail.

I've uploaded a short .mov (leonids.mov) which is an animated simulation of how the Leonid dust-trails interact with Earth (same principal for the Perseids and all other well defined showers), to give the illusion of an imaginary point in the sky called a radiant from which all meteors belonging to that shower appear to radiate from.

Also in the zip is a CGI animation/simulation of the formation of a Leonid dust-trail (here's where the dog chasing it's tail comes in). In this case the meteoroids being simulated were ejected from the parent comet in 1767. The inner red ring represents Earth's orbit around the sun, and the outer red ring represents Jupiter's Orbit around our sun.

Jupiter has to be included in any orbit simulations where orbits come close, since gravity is so massively strong due to Jupiter's sheer size, it's effects on comets and the meteoroids forming a dust-trail can also be so great that the trails become perturbed whenever they come close, directly affecting future shower predictions for that stream.

The Zip can be downloaded from here: www.sendspace.com...

I hope that helps, if not, just ask


[edit on 13-9-2008 by C.H.U.D.]