large meteor on the coast ?

[GrahamL]

From tweed coast news

A MYSTERIOUS fireball seen falling from the sky in Kingscliff on Wednesday has local residents and Tweed Heads police baffled. Glenda and Sophie Bowkett were two Kingscliff residents who witnessed the object as it appeared to descend towards Noble Park, but said they could not figure out what it was. Mrs Bowkett was driving her car and had stopped at the Cudgen Road lights when her daughter alerted her to what appeared to be a large orange fireball with a black trail of smoke floating towards the earth about 6pm. "It was just like this huge round fireball," Sophie, 9, said. "You could see it twirling around and around." Sergeant Rob Taylor, of Tweed Heads police, said a number of people called the police and reported seeing a bright orange shape in the sky over the hills at Cudgen, with some saying it could have been a light plane about to crash. "Numerous people in the Kingscliff area reported seeing a bright orange shape with a trail of black smoke travelling in a downwards motion towards the ground," Sgt Taylor said. One woman told police she believed the object to have been some sort of meteor that struck the Cudgen area. Sgt Taylor said police had not seen the object, but said the reports led to further investigations in case it turned out to be a plane in trouble. Gold Coast and Brisbane airports were contacted by police and no planes had been reported missing, but a search was carried out regardless. "Police from Murwillumbah, Kingscliff and Byron Bay responded and searched the area," Sgt Taylor said. He said the Careflight rescue helicopter was also deployed from Coolangatta to conduct an aerial search. A Careflight spokeswoman confirmed the helicopter had been sent out following reports of "an aircraft on fire". "We searched the area for about 30 minutes and were then called back," she said. Despite the search, nothing was found and the object remains a mystery.

[omnivorr]

those descriptions sound like the descent was too leisurely to be a meteor.. not rocketing to earth @ thousands of kph.... ;P

???

Cheers
Russ

[goober]

Not the paper bag and candle trick again?

[jjjnettie]

LOLOL
Most probably.

[omnivorr]

"Missed it by that much Chief" .. "err, would you believe.." :lol::lol::lol:

[jschulte]

Hi Guys,

Im not a scientist, or even remotely associated/interested in Astronomy, however, I've been searching for some description of this event because this perfectly describes what I just saw (about 3 hours ago) as I travelled past the old Ikea, southbound on the M1.

I even pointed it out to the mrs and the cars around me as we drove. Low in the west sky, as the sun set (it was about 6pm) a large ball of flame with a white tail ( i can only assume white because of the backdrop of the sun) falling extremely slowly to earth.

Now, i thought it may have been a satelite burning up, as I was fortunate enough to see the meteor storm back in the 90's up in north qld, and they moved very fast, this one i watched in amazment for nearly 5 mins (without having an accident -chuckles-) as we drove down to Springwood.

Any ideas? i've been unable to find anything on BoM or news related websites tonight- i can't have been the only one to see it.. it was huge.

Joe
mrjoebipty@hotmail.com

[fringe_dweller]

Hi Joe, as mentioned, 5 minutes is too long for a meteor - 10 - 30 secs duration is the extremely rarest longest possible amount of time. being low in the west it was most definitely an aircraft contrail lit up by the setting sun, as i strongly suspect the first one is too, the time being 6 o'clock and sunset mentioned, it is a very common report to hear, they do look speccy some of them for sure.

[leroy]

With regards to this sighting, we were on the northside of Brisbane (Albion), watching the same object. It appeared large in the sky to the west, as bright as the visible Moon, with a tail of constant length as it moved towards the horizon. We drove to the top of the hill, aprox 200m, and the object was still visible to the west, before dropping below mountains on the horizon. Springwood to Albion is a 20 minute drive, so I doubt a plastic bag and a candle would do the trick. Aircraft contrails tend to hang a lot longer, this stayed constant length with the object as it moved. I have seen a meteor pass overhead at close range back in the 80's which was moving very fast and was low enough that it would have landed close by. This appeared to be much higher in the sky, and moving slowly towards the horizon.

[jschulte]

Thats it - thats exactly what I saw..

And being as though two of us saw it from different aspects, and yes, you are correct, the tail of whatever it was stayed a constant length, which made me think it wasn't an aircraft, which tend to trail quite long.

I perhaps thought it was a satelite or something burning up, but then, i have no idea.

[fringe_dweller]

ive seen aircraft contrails images make it to the evening news and papers, they can fool the uninitiated very easily, and they appear exactly as you describe, they follow the plane, a short contrail - i've personally seen dozens of them, also there is fuel dumps by aircraft that can appear very interesting visually too, :)

[jzero]

Hi, We observed the object also. We were in Shand road Stafford in Brisbane. We continued to observe the object for about 10 minutes in the west. The tail was consistent in length for the period we observed it. It was definately not a con trail as it stayed with the object rather than leaving a static trail. We have also seen many fuel dumps from F1-11's And this was not consistant with any of those fuel dumps. It was not on any regular flight path of which we are aware. Its brightness remained constant. It also appeared a very slow descent and it definately wasn't a meteor as it lasted too long and dropped too slowly. It was also remained very perpendicular which also does not support the meteor theory as they tend to shoot across the sky.\

If anyone has any more information we'd like to hear from you.

[Protiotype]

While waiting for my bus last night between about 18:00 and 18:15, I also noticed a short trail between 10 and 15 degrees above the western horizon. It was no more than half a finger-width long (so about 1 degree) and immediately reminded me of Comet McNaught, having a similar orientation, but much smaller and more defined.

My own intuition does not suspect at all that it was a comet or meteor. Colour was orange, and it would make sense to be an F111 dump and burn - perhaps around Amberley (I could imagine it heading south, and closer to the horizon from my perspective).

Unfortunately, I could not locate it shortly after hailing the bus; which I guess could coincide with a dump & burn.

I should mention however that at the time yesterday, and F111 fuel dump didn't spring to mind and I was more inclined to guessing that it was a rocket test/exercise around around Amberley. The only other previous "dump and burns" I have witnessed were for Brisbane's Riverfire event (as part of Riverfestival); so this was something that was quite a bit more in the distance under different light conditions (sunset).

Was there anyone out and about in Ipswich last night just after 6pm?


Edit: I observed it for about 5 to 10 minutes from the time of leaving my house to getting on the bus.

[tiffatron]

hey i found your post after doing some searching for anyone else that may have seen what we saw... it was around 6.10 last night (sat 15 march 08) and we were on our balcony in norman park, brisbane. sounds like we saw the same thing by your description, and we were pretty curious as to what it could be.. obvious guesses were meteor, comet, space junk etc!

it stayed visible to us for around 15 - 20 minutes but the 'fire trail' became increasingly shorter until it couldn't be seen at all.

we took a photo on digital cam of it but obviously it didn't come out too well..

anyone else know anything about this??


:)

[jzero]

We caught a few snaps of the object on a mobile phone cam. They were taken at 6.12pm - 6.13pm yesterday. Looking at them now the object just appears as a white dot. The tail of the object was not really picked up by the cam.

When we first saw the object, the tail was about 4cm long (measured at arms length). For the period of time we saw it, the tail only diminished slightly.

From the F1-11 fuel dumps we have seen the flame definately flickers, even from a distance. The tail of the object was constant in this regard.

I look forward to watching tonights news to see if it is mentioned.

[astro_south]

Kearn nails it - just confirmed on the news as high (43,000ft) contrails from an international flight

[Sharnbrook]

I also saw this from the Western Suburbs, (Brookfield), around 6 in the evening, but I didn't note the time. As I went outside, I noticed it immediately at about 50 deg altitude, and travelling almost due SW. My immediate reaction was that I had seen an Irridium flare/flash, but as soon as I paid attention to it, I realised that without any doubt in my mind that it was in fact a high flying aircraft, with a fairly short contrail. From my position, I could clearly see the reflection of the aircraft body ahead of the contrail, and it wouldn't have lasted more than a few minutes, though it was certainly well past its zenith when I saw it. My wife was also present, and I commented to her that in exactly 3 weeks time, we may be making a similar statement, as we fly off to the northern hemisphere for a couple of months. Her opinion was also that it was an aircraft.

Whatever, it presumably has nothing to do with the large orange fireball at Kingscliffe on Wednesday, which started this thread.

[jaycee]

Myself and my two children witnessed this comet/meteor or whatever it was around 6.15. on the 15th of March, we were actually in traffic in Stafford. People next to us at the lights saw it also.. to me it looked like it had a small tail at this point. When we arrived home a few minutes later, it was gone.

[coldspace]

And welcome to or the new Brisbane members who just signed up. We need more of you on board :D.

Matt

[Protiotype]

Cheers coldspace. :) I finally decided to sign up here after being impressed by my first "twilight contrail". I have only (relatively) recently gotten back into skygazing - that would have been at time of 2006's partial lunar eclipse (2006-09-08).

I've subscribed to Ian Musgrave's Southern Skywatch (ABC) for yonks, but only happened to get hooked on his blog (same time as 2006's PLE) after learning more on reliably viewing satellite flares, meteors and comets (Holmes and of course McNaught!).

This year, the annular solar eclipse (partial for us) was my personal highlight - having spent lots of phone calls and half a day to train to the Gold Coast just so that I could get my hands on an (naked eye) eclipse viewing filter that Brisbane didn't seem to usually stock. Well worth it and a nice 'surreal' experience; being my first solar eclipse of any kind.

My regular skygazing will generally coincide with bright Iridium flares or ISS passings (especially if there's a shuttle mission in progress). I never get bored of gaining a glimpse of the ever-habited space station orbiting 340km above our heads at 27,000km/h. Also, it's ever-satisfying when friends drop their jaw after you explain to them how people actually live in that bright 'moving spot' in the sky receiving 15 sunrises a day - if NASA would actually let them stay up all night!

I did some Image Googling to and found that the one on Saturday looked somewhat similar to the shorter trails on this page:

http://www.mchenrycountyblog.com/2006/12/insignificance-of-man.html

[fringe_dweller]

glad it all got sorted :thumbsup: and welcome aboard guys! protiotype sounds like you got the bug good! - no turning back now :)

[Protiotype]

Oh I definitely caught the bug - this will be my support group until I manage to convince all my friends about the merits of satellite chasing! :p

[Mikasaurus]

I just stumbled across this thread by pure coincidence, and thus found the explanation for the phenomenon I spied high in the Brisbane western sky at sunset ~18.00hrs 28/04/08. It was only a short contrail that kept a constant length as the object moved. I watched it for a good 5 min and was sure it was a high altitude plane, which was also sparkling like a star as it reflected the sun's rays down to me in just-twilit Ascot.
Being intrigued by all things astronomical and cosmological ... I'm now hooked & happy to join y'all.

[lknowlen]

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[MrB]

Ummm...... wrong thread?

[jjjnettie]

LOL
I think that he is helping the fellow who has "got the bug" to debug.

[girl]

I saw exactly the same as this persons post. I saw it today It was near Parkwood/Arundel on Gold Coast,..Definitely a fire ball with black trail.....

"A MYSTERIOUS fireball seen falling from the sky in Kingscliff on Wednesday has local residents and Tweed Heads police baffled. Glenda and Sophie Bowkett were two Kingscliff residents who witnessed the object as it appeared to descend towards Noble Park, but said they could not figure out what it was. Mrs Bowkett was driving her car and had stopped at the Cudgen Road lights when her daughter alerted her to what appeared to be a large orange fireball with a black trail of smoke floating towards the earth about 6pm. "It was just like this huge round fireball," Sophie, 9, said. "You could see it twirling around and around." Sergeant Rob Taylor, of Tweed Heads police, said a number of people called the police and reported seeing a bright orange shape in the sky over the hills at Cudgen, with some saying it could have been a light plane about to crash. "Numerous people in the Kingscliff area reported seeing a bright orange shape with a trail of black smoke travelling in a downwards motion towards the ground," Sgt Taylor said. One woman told police she believed the object to have been some sort of meteor that struck the Cudgen area. Sgt Taylor said police had not seen the object, but said the reports led to further investigations in case it turned out to be a plane in trouble. Gold Coast and Brisbane airports were contacted by police and no planes had been reported missing, but a search was carried out regardless. "Police from Murwillumbah, Kingscliff and Byron Bay responded and searched the area," Sgt Taylor said. He said the Careflight rescue helicopter was also deployed from Coolangatta to conduct an aerial search. A Careflight spokeswoman confirmed the helicopter had been sent out following reports of "an aircraft on fire". "We searched the area for about 30 minutes and were then called back," she said. Despite the search, nothing was found and the object remains a mystery. __________________

[iceman]

Hi Jodi, :welcome: to IceInSpace!

Congrats on seeing your first fireball! They're quite an amazing sight you won't forget quickly.