Possible small meteor impact just north of Cheltenham
Image: Gloucestershire Live
The hunt is on for meteorite fragments that are likely to have fallen to Earth over England on Sunday night.
Many people across Northern Europe saw a fireball in the sky shortly before 22:00 GMT, and the streak of light was also caught on special cameras. Scientists think some pieces will have survived the intense heat of atmospheric entry and hit the ground.
A computer model that analysed the camera data suggests the probable site of impact is just north of Cheltenham.
“We can track the fireball really well, but the ‘black magic’ starts when it goes dark – when the light goes out and it still has another 10-20km to reach the ground,” explained Dr Ashley King from the UK Fireball Alliance (UKFAll) and London’s Natural History Museum (NHM).
“Strong winds can blow the object off course of where you think it’s going to land, and that’s what we’re working on now. But, yes, somewhere north of Cheltenham, out towards Stow-on-the-Wold,” he told BBC News.
The fireball produced a sonic boom as it hurtled across the southern England sky. Eyewitness accounts describe the object breaking up into several defined streaks just before going dark.
Any fragments that made it to the ground will be small, smaller than an orange, say, and are likely to be dark and shiny.
Anyone who finds what they think might be a meteorite is asked to photograph it in situ, noting the GPS co-ordinates from a phone, if that’s possible.
The object should then be bagged without direct handling. And the absolute no-no: do not put a magnet near the object. This could destroy important information needed to study the rock.
“We’ve learned over the years that most meteorites carry a kind of intrinsic magnetic record within them from when they were in space,” said Dr King.
“We can actually study that and learn about where these things came from and how they formed. But if you put a magnet on the object, it’s a little bit like wiping your credit card with a magnet. We lose all of that information.”
Some of the trajectory work from the camera data has already suggested the object originated in the outer asteroid belt, which is between Mars and Jupiter.
“Most of the asteroids further away from the Sun tend to be these carbonaceous type that have got water and volatile materials in them but until we actually get our hands on some fragments, we can’t say for certain,” Dr King told BBC News.
Scientists from the UKFAll and meteorite experts from the universities of Glasgow and Manchester and the NHM are interested to hear from anyone who thinks they may have found something of interest.
Even if you just have a photo or video of the event, the researchers request you upload and share it.
Between 10 and 20 meteorites are estimated to fall to the ground in the UK each year, but it’s rare that any fragments are actually picked up.
The last recovered fall was in 1991 – the so called Glatton Meteorite, because it fell in the village of Glatton near Peterborough.
Mr Arthur Pettifor was tending his onions in his garden when a 10cm rock fell into his hedge.
See the BBC article here: www.bbc.co.uk
About 15 years ago, I was walking across a local park in Birmingham, when something hit the ground a few yards from me. I thought someone had thrown it, but there was no-one around. I picked it up and it was warm with a kind of sulphurous smell. I kept it and here is a photo of it, with a ruler for scale.
About the author: Andy Rowlands is a British Principia Scientific International researcher, writer and editor who co-edited the new climate science book, ‘The Sky Dragon Slayers: Victory Lap‘
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Robert Beatty
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Interesting report Andy, and well presented.
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Andrew Rowlands
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That’s very kind Robert, thank you 🙂
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Gary Ashe
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I saw this and it was the most amazing thing in the sky i ever saw and i’m 61.
I left the pub at 10 to 10 and took the dog down the back of ronaldway airport 5 mins away and just as i got there this big fireball about the size of a golf ball held at arms length just appeared out of nowhere coming nearly straight down from my perspective dropping from 1 o’clock to 7 o’clock just beneath the lowest stars on the horizon, but it looked really close……i do mean really close.
big tail of yellow and orange sparks and flames, and even tho it was pitch black it lit up enough around it to know it was trailing thick smoke as well, i swear it looked that close i thought it went down in the bay at derby haven.
i was just driving along in the dark and then boom there it was silently dead centre of my wind screen, i thought what the fuck is that, and then it was pitch black again, 2 maybe 3 seconds and that was it,
I came home googled all kind of search criteria but nothing, so forgot about it until i told someone about it at teatime today and they told me it had been on the news and that so i checked again and found vids of it,
But it doesn’t look like it looked to the naked eye in vids its black and white and out in the distance, anyway it was quite something, i thought for sure it was space junk burning up.
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Gary Ashe
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I’m in the Isle of Man by the way, thats where i saw it from, just in the right place at the right time,
Third one this year i have seen as we got that meteor shower going up our east coast a few weeks back, but they weren’t in the same league as this.
And i always take the dog out there cos theres no traffic at that time its just some single track road to a quarrie so the dog does the walking and i follow behind in the car in the warm.
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Gary Ashe
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Andy it went down within 2 miles from where i was into the sea i would bet money on it.
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