4 ms·

Wow!! From just east of Aachen, perfectly visible. Turning from a point of light coming down into a "oh wow that's really cool" into an actual fireball at >400

by Aachen 4y ago

Wow!! From just east of Aachen, perfectly visible. Turning from a point of light coming down into a "oh wow that's really cool" into an actual fireball at >400 km horizontal distance! Holy crap that was exhilarating Edit: I was expecting that it would be too far away, also with Aachen's city glow and the highway, that nothing would be visible, or at best, a point appearing and disappearing at basically the same location in the haze of city glow. Compared to that, I'm absolutely blown away. Will post a video in a few minutes, just took the 380MB thing off my phone, now cropping to the right ~10 seconds, rotating, that stuff Edit again: here we are finally https://lgms.nl/files/Sar2667-Aachen.mp4 https://lgms.nl/files/Sar2667-Aachen.mp4 Quite sad it defocused, and you'll need an x264 decoder in your browser I think (I used `ffmpeg -c:v copy` to avoid losses, so it's whatever encoding my phone uses), should work in a local video player if you download it. A friend found this one https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8owpwqzBEPA https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8owpwqzBEPA Location estimate, based on where I saw it plus this video https://twitter.com/meteordoc/status/1624967987294765059 https://twitter.com/meteordoc/status/1624967987294765059 from Brighton looking over a pier: <https://www.openstreetmap.org/?mlat=50.0761&mlon=0.5335#map=8/50.0761/0.5335 https://www.openstreetmap.org/?mlat=50.0761&mlon=0.5335#map=...>. It became visible to me at 03:59:13 GMT+1/CET and exploded 5 seconds later, with my phone's clock sync being ~0.6s behind so it might have been 03:59:14 Got so lucky finding that Brighton video as the 2nd result earlier. Spent another 15 minutes looking for a third angle but the "looking east", "looking south" indicated angles are either implausible or too inaccurate to be useful. A Paris video is of such quality that I couldn't for the life of me find out which buildings are in view to map it to an angle. This location guess is going to be my final estimate.

mendigou 4y ago
Great writeup, thanks! How did you check your phone's time synchronization?
- Aachen 4y ago
  https://time.is https://time.is Per this thread https://twitter.com/tw__astro/status/1624908400902504451 https://twitter.com/tw__astro/status/1624908400902504451 it seems my time is a bit off, though. I took the filename and just checked the time offset in the video. Was considering checking metadata but thought 'nah, those few milliseconds difference'. However, exiftool says 2023:02:13 02:59:29, file name is 20230213_035256.mp4. Adding those three seconds to my previous guess comes out to the tweet's time. As I write this, I'm still... what's the word, excited? Thrilled? Like, I'm still not down to baseline relaxed. It's really just five seconds of light show, but looking at an astronomical event unfolding, knowing this is hundreds of kilometers away in northwestern France, the tiny voice in the back of your head as you see it explode "could they have been wrong about it being just 1 meter?" I wasn't truly scared at any point but the combination of feelings and awe is still a little bit with me.
runeks 4y ago
Thank you for the great video. Works by default on my iPhone 14 in Safari.
mym1990 4y ago
I used to do some astrophotography and I won't ever forget watching one night during the Perseids as a massive fireball streamed across the sky, completely unexpected, the thing was in the sky for a proper 2-3 seconds. I remember being freezing that night, and it was about a 1 hour drive to get to the location, absolutely worth it though!
- madaxe_again 4y ago
  I still do astrophotography - but nothing will ever top the broad daylight bolide I saw over France 30 years ago aged 10 or so - huge blue fireball labouring its way across the sky before disintegrating in an explosion as bright as the sun. I actually dropped to my knees in awe, the garbage I was carrying utterly forgotten.
  - defrost 4y ago
    Can I recommend: Desert Fireball Network (Curtin University) http://fireballsinthesky.com.au/ http://fireballsinthesky.com.au/ https://gfo.rocks/blog.html https://gfo.rocks/blog.html One way amateurs can help is by setting up a meteor detection system and engaging in a little citizen science. A few years ago this was an expensive task, but now with a Raspberry Pi and some simple electronic parts it’s much easier. https://www.skyatnightmagazine.com/advice/diy/raspberry-pi-meteor-detector/ https://www.skyatnightmagazine.com/advice/diy/raspberry-pi-m...
  - mym1990 4y ago
    I wonder what percentage of people will go a whole lifetime without seeing a bolide, or even a shooting star. Dark sky areas are harder and harder to come across as well, and I bet looking up at the sky for a few minutes is becoming more of a rarity as well.
    - Pompidou 4y ago
      Even with pure Sky, a lot of people don't look up. I think its more a matter of education. We have to learn to young people to watch the Sky, and how to watch it (being able to identify stars, constellations, the ecliptic plane, ...).
caporaltito 4y ago
> Holy crap that was exhilarating A perfect occasion to... laachen?
- Aachen 4y ago
  > exhilarating - causing strong feelings of happy excitement and elation TIL that refers specifically to feelings that would cause laughing. Took me a while to get your pun, also because (to this dutchman) aachen is two sounds removed from lachen and not one like it might be for a german (where they hardly differentiate between short a and long aa). I find it hard to describe feelings (in any language), maybe "shocking" is a better word than exhilarating? But that sounds more negative than I mean it. The german word that comes to mind (I hardly speak german so this might be far off) is aufregend which dict.cc says translates to both shocking and thrilling, maybe that's a better description because it's not specifically about being happy or scared but rather a neutral energetic feeling? "Getting worked up" might be a translation of aufregen but it doesn't sound like what an english speaker would say in this situation due to connotation.
  - dEnigma 4y ago
    "Aufregend" sounds fitting to me as a native German speaker. In most contexts I would translate it as "exciting". It can have some more negative connotations, in the "getting worked up" sense, but mostly when used like "sich über etwas aufregen" (so as a verb not an adjective), and when describing your feelings regarding this event it's more on the "exciting/thrilling" side.
timthorn 4y ago
UKMON has received 40 reports and 4 videos so far, from which they have the meteor coming into Dieppe http://ukmon.imo.net/members/imo_view/event/2023/937 http://ukmon.imo.net/members/imo_view/event/2023/937
mikae1 4y ago
> Quite sad it defocused Look at it from the bright side. You will never forget to manually focus the next time a meteorite passes by. :)
- Aachen 4y ago
  It's not that I forgot, actually. I considered using the "pro video" mode on my phone where I can manually set focus to infinity, but decided against it because - I wouldn't know what shutter time and ISO setting to use, or if it should need to be adjusted during the event when I want to be watching it - I was already fairly late to the party to start thinking about and configuring this stuff: I didn't know of the +/-1 second window at the time, only saw the 10-minute window (which was a good thing because an adjacent tweet in that thread said it wouldn't be visible even halfway here so I might not have gone out at all!) - The phone will try to use a broader light range ('HDR') in default mode, which is not something I understand (my confusion about that is a comment in itself), but not in pro mode. It doesn't work for extremes like capturing the sun as part of any picture, but in most cases it will work as though you took two pictures with slightly different shutter times and it'll scale values and stitch the pictures so that the dark areas are not pitch black and the bright areas are not full white. That seems like something I'd not want to disable, as it might make it capture more detail of the bright parts of the event. ... but as I write this, I realize that I can select 'auto' for shutter, ISO, white balance, etc. also in pro mode. Configuring the shutter is the main reason I use pro mode for, so it hadn't occurred to me that there is also a little 'auto' button for that in the corner! Not at the time, and not at the beginning of this comment either ^^'. I can set focus to infinity and only lose "HDR", not automatic selection of other settings. That might actually be worth it, don't know. But that's a good thing to be aware of, so thanks for making me realize this :D
  - mikae1 4y ago
    > that's a good thing to be aware of, so thanks for making me realize this :D NP :)

by Aachen 4y ago

mendigou 4y ago

Great writeup, thanks! How did you check your phone's time synchronization?

Aachen 4y ago
https://time.is https://time.is Per this thread https://twitter.com/tw__astro/status/1624908400902504451 https://twitter.com/tw__astro/status/1624908400902504451 it seems my time is a bit off, though. I took the filename and just checked the time offset in the video. Was considering checking metadata but thought 'nah, those few milliseconds difference'. However, exiftool says 2023:02:13 02:59:29, file name is 20230213_035256.mp4. Adding those three seconds to my previous guess comes out to the tweet's time. As I write this, I'm still... what's the word, excited? Thrilled? Like, I'm still not down to baseline relaxed. It's really just five seconds of light show, but looking at an astronomical event unfolding, knowing this is hundreds of kilometers away in northwestern France, the tiny voice in the back of your head as you see it explode "could they have been wrong about it being just 1 meter?" I wasn't truly scared at any point but the combination of feelings and awe is still a little bit with me.

runeks 4y ago

Thank you for the great video. Works by default on my iPhone 14 in Safari.

mym1990 4y ago

I used to do some astrophotography and I won't ever forget watching one night during the Perseids as a massive fireball streamed across the sky, completely unexpected, the thing was in the sky for a proper 2-3 seconds. I remember being freezing that night, and it was about a 1 hour drive to get to the location, absolutely worth it though!

madaxe_again 4y ago
I still do astrophotography - but nothing will ever top the broad daylight bolide I saw over France 30 years ago aged 10 or so - huge blue fireball labouring its way across the sky before disintegrating in an explosion as bright as the sun. I actually dropped to my knees in awe, the garbage I was carrying utterly forgotten.
- defrost 4y ago
  Can I recommend: Desert Fireball Network (Curtin University) http://fireballsinthesky.com.au/ http://fireballsinthesky.com.au/ https://gfo.rocks/blog.html https://gfo.rocks/blog.html One way amateurs can help is by setting up a meteor detection system and engaging in a little citizen science. A few years ago this was an expensive task, but now with a Raspberry Pi and some simple electronic parts it’s much easier. https://www.skyatnightmagazine.com/advice/diy/raspberry-pi-meteor-detector/ https://www.skyatnightmagazine.com/advice/diy/raspberry-pi-m...
- mym1990 4y ago
  I wonder what percentage of people will go a whole lifetime without seeing a bolide, or even a shooting star. Dark sky areas are harder and harder to come across as well, and I bet looking up at the sky for a few minutes is becoming more of a rarity as well.
  - Pompidou 4y ago
    Even with pure Sky, a lot of people don't look up. I think its more a matter of education. We have to learn to young people to watch the Sky, and how to watch it (being able to identify stars, constellations, the ecliptic plane, ...).

caporaltito 4y ago

> Holy crap that was exhilarating A perfect occasion to... laachen?

Aachen 4y ago
> exhilarating - causing strong feelings of happy excitement and elation TIL that refers specifically to feelings that would cause laughing. Took me a while to get your pun, also because (to this dutchman) aachen is two sounds removed from lachen and not one like it might be for a german (where they hardly differentiate between short a and long aa). I find it hard to describe feelings (in any language), maybe "shocking" is a better word than exhilarating? But that sounds more negative than I mean it. The german word that comes to mind (I hardly speak german so this might be far off) is aufregend which dict.cc says translates to both shocking and thrilling, maybe that's a better description because it's not specifically about being happy or scared but rather a neutral energetic feeling? "Getting worked up" might be a translation of aufregen but it doesn't sound like what an english speaker would say in this situation due to connotation.
- dEnigma 4y ago
  "Aufregend" sounds fitting to me as a native German speaker. In most contexts I would translate it as "exciting". It can have some more negative connotations, in the "getting worked up" sense, but mostly when used like "sich über etwas aufregen" (so as a verb not an adjective), and when describing your feelings regarding this event it's more on the "exciting/thrilling" side.

timthorn 4y ago

UKMON has received 40 reports and 4 videos so far, from which they have the meteor coming into Dieppe http://ukmon.imo.net/members/imo_view/event/2023/937 http://ukmon.imo.net/members/imo_view/event/2023/937

mikae1 4y ago

> Quite sad it defocused Look at it from the bright side. You will never forget to manually focus the next time a meteorite passes by. :)

Aachen 4y ago
It's not that I forgot, actually. I considered using the "pro video" mode on my phone where I can manually set focus to infinity, but decided against it because - I wouldn't know what shutter time and ISO setting to use, or if it should need to be adjusted during the event when I want to be watching it - I was already fairly late to the party to start thinking about and configuring this stuff: I didn't know of the +/-1 second window at the time, only saw the 10-minute window (which was a good thing because an adjacent tweet in that thread said it wouldn't be visible even halfway here so I might not have gone out at all!) - The phone will try to use a broader light range ('HDR') in default mode, which is not something I understand (my confusion about that is a comment in itself), but not in pro mode. It doesn't work for extremes like capturing the sun as part of any picture, but in most cases it will work as though you took two pictures with slightly different shutter times and it'll scale values and stitch the pictures so that the dark areas are not pitch black and the bright areas are not full white. That seems like something I'd not want to disable, as it might make it capture more detail of the bright parts of the event. ... but as I write this, I realize that I can select 'auto' for shutter, ISO, white balance, etc. also in pro mode. Configuring the shutter is the main reason I use pro mode for, so it hadn't occurred to me that there is also a little 'auto' button for that in the corner! Not at the time, and not at the beginning of this comment either ^^'. I can set focus to infinity and only lose "HDR", not automatic selection of other settings. That might actually be worth it, don't know. But that's a good thing to be aware of, so thanks for making me realize this :D
- mikae1 4y ago
  > that's a good thing to be aware of, so thanks for making me realize this :D NP :)