Shooting star

[Halb]

I missed it. But from the reports I did expect to see news reports about giant robots running amok this morning.

[Zwolf]

TTmonkey said:

If it was directly overhead then it would be what, 10 miles away... if it was way out over the horizon it could be 100 off mile away or more.....

There's around 80 miles of atmosphere directly above our heads before you start getting into "outer space" and the altitude at which things start to burn up on re-entry is a just below that I think.

10 miles up is still within the troposphere, the lowest layer of Earth's atmosphere. For an average human stood at sea level with a clear view to the horizon, it's about 3 miles away.

10 miles to the horizon is roughly 100ft above sea level and 100 miles is getting on for 10,000 feet up, using the simplest conversion of: distance in miles = √ height above sea level in feet.

[Eric Mc]

To see a thing burning up, it has to be actually coming through the atmosphere - which means that it will be around 50 to 100 miles away if directly overhead. Obviously, if it is closer to the horizon it would be further from the viewer.


If a meteor enters the atmopshere from solar orbit, as they nearl;y all do, the closing speed with earth is often in the region of 60,000 mph to 100,000 mph. A satellite re-entering from orbit will always enter at a speed of under 17,500 mph.

[ShayneJ]

Well whatever it was it certainly was NOT a meteor it was travelling far far to slowly.

It was almost certainly a dead satellite or rocket stage
with the remote possibility of a high alt/speed military test going mammary's vertical

[Jaykaybi]

I've just seen a very bright one - waaaaay brighter than any I've witnessed before.

Blazed across the sky heading East, at what looked like thousands of mph.

The odd thing is, it's quite cloudy here. I can't see any stars. If it were a plane I'd have heard it, and if it were a Chinese Lantern it would never have gone so quickly.

Do meteorites do their thing below cloud level??

[simoid]

UFO

[RegMolehusband]

You can't say THAT in the Science! section!

[Eric Mc]

Jaykaybi said:

Do meteorites do their thing below cloud level??

Hopefully not. Most burning up happens in the 60,000 to 100,000 feet levels. Most clouds are at 10,000 to 15,000 feet. Having said that, you can get some clouds at much higher altitude - including almost to the edge of space.