(meteorobs) Meteor over Ireland Feb.3,2010

[Tony Beresford]

At 06:07 PM 6/02/2010, you wrote:
>At 12:13 PM 6/02/2010, Geert Barentsen wrote:
> >
> >Judging from the reports, I would expect the meteorite (if any) would have
> >fallen into the sea.
> >
> >If anyone would see evidence for a sat decay, please do let me know.
>t
>The only possible decay was  supposed to happen some 2 hours earlier,
>and at the longitude of Ireland but on a descending orbit at some 30 degrees
>South of Ireland , orbital inclination about 51.6 degrees.
>So that removes satellite decay from the possibilties.
Geert,
I mentioned a decay which was predicted to happen on February 5,
but I had not read the reports at that point.
and there is  absolutely no way the event can be explained by
a satellite decay.There was no predicted decay around that time.
This is absolutely confirmed by the observer
reports on your website. A decaying satellite would have lasted
for much longer than the 10 second mentioned by the first report.
This entirely due to the fact that the usual re-entry of
of an uncontrolled bit of our rubbish has to have a velocity
around  8 km/second , and from the right persperctive the observed
trajectory is horizontal.

Interested to see the proportion of observers who had the common
illusion about the closeness of the event and consequently that the
impact point was local. This is of course a common event in both
time and space.Please complement most of the persons who reported
on your website as of 0900UT. The fact that quite a few reports
said it was arounf full moon brightness , but the relativly
experienced put a much lower brightness is disconcerting.
Tony Beresford