Bright Meteor over the South of England

By Peter Campbell-Burns

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At 22:02 UTC on 8th July our cameras in Church Crookham (Peter Campbell-Burns) and East Barnet (Jim Rowe) reported a bright meteor with a very long trail.

We are waiting to see if any other stations recorded this event, but based on data from these two stations this is what we know.

Our initial analysis suggests that this is a sporadic meteor. Neither station caught the full trail, but between the two cameras we did capture the entire event. Our cameras recorded an initial observed altitude of 106km, a terminal altitude of 88km and a velocity of 58.7km per second. The event lasted over 2.3 seconds and reached a magnitude of -3.3, not quite bright enough to be classed as a fireball. The orbit of the meteoroid appears to be highly elliptical and extends into the outer solar system. However, we ideally need more data to refine the analysis

It should have been observable across a huge swathe of the country but some regions were clouded out. In fact this was the only meteor that Church Crookham recorded on this particular evening due to cloud. The ground trail started over Hook Norton (North of Oxford and famous for its brewery) and finished over Blandford Forum.

• VO: 58.790298
• AMAG -3.2657
• Start Height (H1): 106.9151
• End Height: 88.05869