[meteorite-list] FW: North Sea daylight fireball on May 31

From: Robert Verish <bolidechaser_at_meteoritecentral.com>
Date: Thu Apr 22 10:22:33 2004
Message-ID: <20030604224847.76642.qmail_at_web80513.mail.yahoo.com>

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meteorobs-digest Wednesday, June 4 2003
Volume 04 : Number 1160

(meteorobs) Northsea daylight fireball on May 31
(meteorobs) Northsea daylight fireball update
(meteorobs) Meteor Activity Outlook for June 6-12,
2003

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Date: Tue, 3 Jun 2003 14:45:20 +0200
From: "Marco Langbroek" <marco.langbroek_at_wanadoo.nl>
Subject: (meteorobs) Northsea daylight fireball on May
31

Hi all,

I received two reports on a daylight fireball observed
from the Netherlands on the evening of May 31, about
one hour before sunset.

Observation 1 is from Mr. Eijgensteijn from The Hague.
He saw the fireball while playing badminton. He notes
a duration of 3-4 seconds after which it disappeared
behind trees and notes that it was very bright
(although it was still daylight!). It had a short
tail, the head of the fireball was "cone-shaped" with
a bright white color. He estimated an apparent fall
angle of about 60 degrees or steeper, going from a sky
altitude of about 60 degrees to about 45 degrees in
azimuth 170 (south).

The second obs. is from mr. Thomas, who was with his
sailingyacht on the North Sea, 10 km offshore of
IJmuiden harbor. He describes it with some interesting
details as:

"Five white/light blue stripes (close together), with
a number of yellow/orange/red balls at the end. The
stripe/flash appeared slightly oblique, fastly towards
the water and disappeared some tens of meters [sic]
above the water surface"

Dr. Laslo Evers informed me that there is an
infrasound detection of this fireball, indicating it
occurred over the North Sea. See his website:
 http://www.knmi.nl/~evers

The The Hague observation appears to be in the wrong
direction compared to the infrasound position.

Later that same night, around 2:30-3:00 GMT, another
bright meteor has been reported by several chance
observers. This too appears to have been a
several seconds event.

- - Marco Langbroek
  Dutch Meteor Society


- ----------
Drs Marco Langbroek

marco.langbroek_at_wanadoo.nl
meteorites_at_dmsweb.org
http://home.wanadoo.nl/marco.langbroek

------------------------------

Date: Wed, 4 Jun 2003 10:39:20 +0200
From: "Marco Langbroek" <marco.langbroek_at_wanadoo.nl>
Subject: (meteorobs) Northsea daylight fireball update

Hi all,

An update on the Northsea daylight fireball of May 31,
~ 18:46 UTC.

Turns out the The Hague observer inadvertently
switched north and south (as the sun made preparations
to set at his left side when he was playing badminton
and the fireball moved away from him). With that
clarified, his azimuth 170 thus must read 350.
Incidently, this makes his sightline cross almost
exactly at the node of the two infrasound detection
lines.

I received more info on the sighting from the sailing
yacht as well.
This yacht was sailing in a sailing competition about
8 nautic miles out of the coast, about 15 nautic miles
north of Scheveningen, in direction 169 degrees, as I
understand it. The crew saw the fireball pass almost
overhead, moving roughly parallel to the coast, from
azimuth 180 to azimuth 30, ending at aproximately
60-75 degrees altitude. The exact position of the
yacht
is still not entirely clear but I hope to get a more
exact position later this week.

The sightings point to a fragmenting bright and slow
fireball (several seconds duration) with an end point
close to the node of the infrasound detections (see
http://www.knmi.nl/~evers ), coming from the
south-southeast,
roughly parallel to the Dutch coast.
If anything survived, it appears it went down in sea.

- - Marco Langbroek (DMS)

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Received on Wed 04 Jun 2003 06:48:47 PM PDT