A fireball seen over Scotland and Northern Ireland is no longer believed to have been space junk from Elon Musk’s satellite programme, according to astronomers examining it.
The UK Meteor Network said the fireball was visible for 20 seconds just after 10pm on Wednesday night. It received almost 800 reports from Scotland, North Ireland and northern England.
Videos appeared to show an object breaking up over the night sky as it headed north-west. One showed it over Paisley, west of Glasgow.
The UK Meteor Network wrote on Twitter on Thursday afternoon: “We have checked the Starlink de-orbit and it would not have come anywhere near the UK. At this point we cannot find any known space junk or satellite de-orbit that could account for this fireball. We are looking at the data again.”
The network added that the UK Fireball Alliance was also looking into the occurrence.
John Maclean, an astronomer with the network, had previously said it was likely to have been space junk because it was travelling too slowly to be a meteor. He said the most probable cause was a Starlink satellite from Musk’s SpaceX company.
Thousands of Starlink satellites, which are designed to disintegrate upon re-entering Earth’s atmosphere, have been launched by Musk’s company to provide internet connection.
There have been nearly 800 reports of the fireball that was seen over UK last night. The preliminary trajectory has been calculated by the IMO and indicates that the object, which we now believe to be space debris, would have landed in the Atlantic south of the Hebrides. pic.twitter.com/skSvl0YH5Y
— UK Meteor Network (@UKMeteorNetwork) September 15, 2022
Maclean said: “Most meteors enter the atmosphere between 75,000 and 80,000 mph. Whereas space junk is slower at 25,000-30,000 mph. As a result, space junk is visible across the sky for much longer. A meteor would be a matter of a few seconds, whereas this was visible for 20 seconds. That’s too slow for a meteor.”
He added: “If you look at the videos, the way it breaks up is more consistent with a piece of space debris. Meteors do break up when they come through the atmosphere, but usually near the end of their trajectory. This was breaking up much higher.”
Maclean, a fellow of the Royal Astronomical Society, said: “Sometimes there are satellites or debris from a space launch, which we’re not notified about, especially from China.”
Maclean said Starlink satellites “de-orbit quite regularly, because they only have a finite lifespan in space … We’re expecting in excess of 40,000 satellites in the next few years. Soon one out of every five objects you see in the night sky could be a satellite, which is going to cause great problems for astronomers.”
At 2.8 metres long, space junk from Starlink satellites is too small to be dangerous because it burns up in the atmosphere, Maclean said. But the junk is likely to lead to more fireball sightings. He said: “I would certainly think we are likely to see more of these fireballs given the number of satellites that Musk, and others, including Amazon, are putting up.”One Twitter user filmed what she thought was a “shooting star” over the town of Larbert, between Edinburgh and Glasgow.
#meteor #scotland #larbert pic.twitter.com/xnkVmRN2qC
— Julie Cox (@juliecoolie10) September 14, 2022
Steve Owens, an astronomer and science communicator at the Glasgow Science Centre, said it was a “brilliant fireball”.
Speaking to BBC Radio Scotland, he said: “It was incredible. I was sitting in my living room at exactly 10 o’clock last night and saw out of the window due south this brilliant fireball, this meteor streaking across the sky, and I could tell that it was something special because I could see through broken cloud: it wasn’t perfectly visible, I could see that it was fragmenting, breaking apart, there were little bits coming off it.”Danny Nell, 21, was walking his dog in Johnstone, just west of Paisley and Glasgow, when he saw the fireball.
Speaking to PA Media, he said: “I was walking my dog and it was strangely enough 10pm on the dot and I just saw the flash in the sky and pulled out my phone and recorded it. I thought it may be a firework at first because there was a lot of Scottish football on, but quickly realised it wasn’t and just grabbed my phone to see if I could catch it.”
