(meteorobs) Fwd: [IMO-News] Fireball over UK, 2012 March 3, circa 21:42 UT

[Casper ter Kuile (Home)]

Dear Colleagues:

I've taken the unusual step of posting here because this very persistent, but 
apparently natural, fireball has attracted a great deal of interest in the UK 
and across the globe, judging by the mass of e-mails I've received since the 
event occurred.

At present, the complete tally of sightings looks likely to be around 300, as 
I've received or been notified of more than that so far. However, as you may 
imagine, I am still attempting to identify duplicates!

In addition, the object's longevity (probably 30-45 seconds or more) meant a 
significant number of people managed to image part of the flight, especially the 
latter stages, which has helped create further publicity.

I have already posted details from my preliminary analysis of the first 43 more 
complete reports that arrived within 24 hours of the event happening, at:

http://www.popastro.com/phpBB2/viewtopic.php?t=16810

on the SPA's Observing Forum. My intention is to update that topic as more data 
becomes available, and I would ask if you or any of your contacts require 
information about the event, but have no observations to send, that you refer 
people to that topic rather than writing to me! Everyone who wrote/writes to me 
will get a reply eventually, but for those who did not see the event, that could 
be some weeks away.

The end of the trail, over southern England, was much better observed than the 
start, which looks to have been around 1000 km further north, probably somewhere 
between the Orkney, Shetland and Faeroe Islands.

What I would ask is that if anyone has received sightings probably of this 
meteor from the Faeroes or even Iceland, or ships at sea in the area north of 
Scotland, I would welcome having as full a report as possible on what was seen 
and when.

Many thanks in advance for any assistance!

Alastair McBeath,
Meteor Director, Society for Popular Astronomy.
E-mail: <meteor at popastro.com <mailto:meteor%40popastro.com>> (messages under 150 
kB in size only, please)