Fireball reports from 2012 October

Tracie Heywood Uncategorised

After a busy September, the month of October brought fewer fireball reports.

Below is a  summary of fireball reports from the UK received during October and a couple of images.

Colin Towe (Houghton on the Hill, Leics) reported a fireball seen at 22:12 BST on Oct 7, travelling from near the Pisces/Aries/Cetus border to Perseus.

Peter Mayhew (Bishopthorpe, N Yorks) reported a mag -3 fireball seen at 21:26 BST on Oct 9, travelling from near the Hyades in Taurus to Cetus. He described it as having a colour of “Orange, fading to blue” and having a “lovely colourful train that was very long” of 3 sec duration.
There were also two other on-line reports from Norfolk of a fireball at approx the same time. Both reported it as being in the north eastern part of their sky, with one commenting that it was heading south. One observer described it as an “Orange Ball”, the other as “Orange, leaving a trail of yellow light”. Both also quote a duration of 2-3 secs.

A fireball at approx 22:28 on Oct 10 was reported by Dan Haines (Westcliff on Sea, Essex) and by Stuart Capel & David Trelfer (Whitfield, near Dover, Kent).

Dan’s report was “I was looking south over the river Thames towards Kent and a fireball came into my view travelling West. It’s trajectory was slightly pointing downwards and after a couple of seconds it broke into two, then a third small piece and then it just fizzled out”

Stuart and David estimated its magnitude as -3/-4, describe its colour as “Yellow with bluish tinge at edges” and report it leaving a long train of 1 sec duration.

Three other reports of this fireball were found on-line. A Sussex observer described it as “heading North West 30 degrees under the constellation of Hercules … and breaking up”, a London observer described it as “Orange/Yellow with a tail flame”, whilst a Norfolk observer described it as a “Ball of Red/Orange fire with a flame tail”.

Two fireball reports were received from Oct 29. Tony Jones (Pwllheli, Gwynedd) reported a mag -4 yellow-orange fireball seen at 19:15 GMT and Neil Graham (Lealholm, N Yorks) reported a pale green mag -5 fireball seen at 22:43 GMT. The latter was described as having a large central core, being of duration 3-4 secs and travelling from south to north.

Although none were witnessed directly, Alex Pratt (Leeds) did capture several bright meteors and fireballs during October using his video system. The best two images, showing a mag -4 sporadic at 03:57:13 GMT on Oct 7 and a mag -2 Orionid at 05:12:17 GMT on Oct 21 are reproduced below: