admin2

We saw the massive meteor sailing over our house. Our first fireball! Too quick to photograph but this is an artistic impression.

Admin1 adds:

I saw it at just before 11pm from the back upstairs window which faces east, between some trees. A very bright bluish point of light caught my eye, low in the sky; at first I thought it was a police helicopter with a searchlight, which we see occasionally around here. It travelled due west, and as it climbed the sky it brightened even more and started leaving a trail and throwing off multicoloured sparks, orange, gold, green, blue, red, white. It was clearly a fireball! I yelled at admin2 in the next room to look out of the window, as it passed overhead and out of my view. We bumped into each other in the hall, but she had time to look out of the spare room window and get a good view of the breaking-up object as it descended to the west. I reckon it was in view for at least 30 seconds, probably more (it’s very hard to estimate times in these circumstances!). Magnitude perhaps -10, probably much brighter in the early stages. No sound, and we couldn’t see any persistent trails (but street lights don’t help).

It was an extraordinary sight; it’s a great pity we didn’t have time to grab a camera, but admin2′s drawing above is pretty accurate (and it looked a lot more impressive than the currently published pics and videos suggest). No certainty yet as to whether it was a meteor or a re-entering spacecraft, which the multiple colours suggest it may have been. I’d go for a meteor….