An intruder from beyond Earth’s atmosphere can be seen in this image of the 21 Septemberˆà fireball taken by amateur astronomer Colin Campbell from his garden in Lisburn.
Space debris on a one-way trip.(Image credit:Colin Campbell)
Here is how Colin describes how he captured this remarkable image:
ˆàI was out in my garden experimenting with taking a few shots of the stars when what I initially thought to be a fireball came into view, breaking up into many bright pieces and moving quite slowly across the sky. It really was quite stunning, like a slow moving firework. I quickly swung my camera up and got this shot, a 5 second exposure taken at 22:55:52 BST / 21:55:52 GMT/UTC. The fireball was travelling directly east to west and overhead. The image shows it grazing Alpheratz, the top left star in The Great Square of Pegasus. IòÀÙd describe it as òÀØfireòÀÙ coloured òÀÓ orange/yellow; no sound that I noticed.
It is a really dramatic shot which captures this spectacular event for everyone unlucky enough to miss it with their own eyes.We are very grateful to Colin for sharing it with us.
(Article by Colin Johnston, Science Communicator)
hi,we were lucky enough to to be camping in the woods at carincastle on friday evening when the space debris came into the atmosphere on fri night.it is by far the the best shooting star/meteor that we have seen on all camping adventures.as colin has said at first we thought it was a flare or firework,it really was a spectacular experience.at one point there were around a dozen fireballs in the sky which gradually burnt out at different speeds to leave only one large ball of fire in the sky.after what seemed to be around 15 seconds the last ball of fire eventually burnt out in the atmosphere..it really was awe inspiring to see mother natures defences working in full effect that evening..