Society for Popular Astronomy

Many thanks for the details Alastair, you must be pretty busy! I've been fascinated watching the videos of this, being at such a shallow angle and being visible for so long. I sadly didn't see it myself, I think I must have been driving to the observatory at the time. Your calculation for the final ...

Had to pipe up Adrian and say I managed to catch it too! I'm glad I found someone else who did. Was driving home through Hatfield, Herts when I noticed it out of the window to my right (looking NW towards where Draco would be), turned my head and saw the end of it as it faded away. Clouds all over t...

Hi all, Here's some pictures taken during and after a power cut we had one night last weekend. It was fairly localised, looked to be about a 500m radius (the town is ~3km wide, I'm a bit West of the centre). Conditions were clear except some very light cloud to the SW, rather hazy (smog alerts that ...

Hi Graham,

For a 350D

18mm = 70.6° x 47.1° and
55mm = 23.1° x 15.4°

Hi Alastair, We've spotted a fireball at the matching time from our Isle of Wight camera: http://star.herts.ac.uk/allsky/camera3/2010-12-09/AllSkyImage000296283.JPG Time: 20:38:08 - 20:40:08 Start Azimuth: 81.5°, Altitude: 21.1° End Azimuth: 77.0°, Altitude: 8.5° Annoyingly I was outside imaging fro...

Note the Cromer camera took a 120 second exposure beginning at 21:57:59, so the meteor could have occured any time between 21:57:59 and 21:59:59, and the time of 21:58:52 from Klaas's image is within that range. The trail profile looks similar from both cameras, and the direction from Ooskapelle mat...

Thanks for the mention David, we're looking forward to contributing many more fireball reports in the future 8) Thanks too Stella for the satellite identification. I'd ruled it out as an Iridium flare but must have somehow missed it when looking down the satellite list on Heavens-above. It's now upd...

Hi Albert, How has it been identified as a meteorite? When you say it arrived in Surrey, did you see it fall? I'd be interested if you could post any pictures. If it's a genuine meteorite it'd be very rare indeed, only 13 confirmed meteorites have ever been found in England. A meteorite can only be ...

Hi David, If the lensing galaxy was symmetrical then the lensed object would appear as an Einstein ring. An Einstein cross occurs due to a lensing galaxy which doesn't have a uniformly distributed mass, so light from the object behind it is bent be different amounts. The following may help to demons...

You've got it right for the 1st century, but all others follow the same pattern. So the 2nd century goes from (1st Jan) 101 to (31st Dec) 200 As there is no year zero the 1st century starts from the year 1, and continues for 100 years (ending at the end of the year 100). Then the 2nd century is the ...

I personally don't think it could be the result of a meteor impact, as all except the largest meteors are travelling at terminal velocity by the time they reach the Earth. Such a small stone travelling at terminal velocity wouldn't be able to create a hole in concrete.

The images in the articles you linked to Andrew are indeed both meteorites, however they're stock photos. There's an image of the actual "meteorite" in the Daily Mail article . It does appear to have vaguely chondrule-like features, but no evidence of a fusion crust so I won't be convinced...

Just as many meteorites fall per area of the UK than anywhere else on Earth, but our climate does not lend well to the preservation and recovery of meteorites. In fact only 21 verified meteorites have been found in the UK so, as Joe said, the odds are greatly against you. That said, if nobody looks ...

It sounds exactly like one of those Chinese sky lanterns which seem to be increasingly reported as fireballs. Do you have an estimate of the time it was visible for? Even the slowest fireballs are very rarely visible for longer than 10 seconds, but given that you had time to run inside to grab binoc...

Its the young kids that make these things look bad because of the stupid things they do with them. At first I thought this to be the case, and an age restriction would be a logical step. However after searching through news websites sadly I've found the large majority of the plane incidents were ca...