Space debris?

[Boner]

G'day, I live in Ipswich, Australia. Tonight (28/07/09) I was returning from work and was traveling in a westerly (maybe WWS ish direction) and saw a bright flash out of the corner of my eye. When I looked I saw a fire trail and considered something had entered the atmosphere. It lasted half a second, maybe one second, and the tail wasn't all that long. What I considered exceptional about this was the size of it. Without anything to compare it to I estimated it to be about a quarter to a third the size of the moon which was about half phase. The object was to the left of the Southern Cross and Moon was to the right of the Cross, so they were reasonably close. I've been a star gazer for sometime now (I say gazer because I don't have a telescope as yet) and gave seen 'shooting stars' and some of the periodical meteor showers that come through, but this was massive in comparison. Are these things tracked at all? Did anyone else see it? Would something that caused such a large fire trail have impacted on Earth?

[neufer]

G'day, I live in Ipswich, Australia. Tonight (28/07/09) I was returning from work and was traveling in a westerly (maybe WWS ish direction) and saw a bright flash out of the corner of my eye. When I looked I saw a fire trail and considered something had entered the atmosphere. It lasted half a second, maybe one second, and the tail wasn't all that long. What I considered exceptional about this was the size of it. Without anything to compare it to I estimated it to be about a quarter to a third the size of the moon which was about half phase. The object was to the left of the Southern Cross and Moon was to the right of the Cross, so they were reasonably close. I've been a star gazer for sometime now (I say gazer because I don't have a telescope as yet) and gave seen 'shooting stars' and some of the periodical meteor showers that come through, but this was massive in comparison. Are these things tracked at all? Did anyone else see it? Would something that caused such a large fire trail have impacted on Earth?

You can report it to: http://fireballs-meteorites.blogspot.com/

[Chris Peterson]

G'day, I live in Ipswich, Australia. Tonight (28/07/09) I was returning from work and was traveling in a westerly (maybe WWS ish direction) and saw a bright flash out of the corner of my eye. When I looked I saw a fire trail and considered something had entered the atmosphere. It lasted half a second, maybe one second, and the tail wasn't all that long. What I considered exceptional about this was the size of it. Without anything to compare it to I estimated it to be about a quarter to a third the size of the moon which was about half phase. The object was to the left of the Southern Cross and Moon was to the right of the Cross, so they were reasonably close. I've been a star gazer for sometime now (I say gazer because I don't have a telescope as yet) and gave seen 'shooting stars' and some of the periodical meteor showers that come through, but this was massive in comparison. Are these things tracked at all? Did anyone else see it? Would something that caused such a large fire trail have impacted on Earth? :shock:

For objects like this, size is an illusion. Essentially, anything you see entering (or re-entering) is many miles away, so it is effectively a point source. However, bright point sources often look large.

Re-entering space debris has a slow speed compared with the slowest natural meteors, and enters at a shallow angle. As a result, it usually makes a long path and can be seen for several seconds- sometimes many seconds. It often can be seen breaking up over its travel. It is also very rare compared with natural fireballs. Odds are that you simply saw an ordinary- albeit very bright- meteor.