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Fireball over Iceland
- robga 3y agoVideo https://youtu.be/GHHitRCagcE https://youtu.be/GHHitRCagcE
- Aachen 3y agoThe video shows northern lights for the most part. I like that it's a video and you can see people move stuttery/stop-motion. Typically, northern lights are posted as picture and you have no idea what it was really like irl. I saw it once in Finland and thought it was clouds very faintly moving against the night sky. "Too bad," I thought, "if there were lights then this obscured them". The next morning I saw pictures where it looked like the most spectacular thing: those "clouds" were northern lights! Here at least, it's obvious that the exposure time per frame is cranked up because we don't perceive people as stuttering during the night. (Later I saw the lights properly in Iceland, but it was still just a faint green haze. Can be mistaken for city glow at a glance, but if you look for a bit it becomes clear that it's moving slightly and too green. Again less than what one might be lead to expect)
- bjornasm 3y agoDon't go into the trap to think that all northern lights are that faint. Iceland are pretty far South in many ways, in addition the intensity varies. Sometimes it is just spectacular, a lot more spectacular than on pictures.
- stavros 3y agoThat's not always the case. I saw them in Iceland and yes, they were faint one day (such that only my camera could see them), but another day they were really bright, and they looked like waves in the sky, changing very quickly. It depends on the day.
- patall 3y agoSorry mate, but you did not see them properly. In February, we had some that looked like in the video to the naked eye. And I was in the outskirts of Stockholm, so neither that remote nor that far north. Obviously doesn't happen that often, though the locals weren't bothered much.
- Aachen 3y agoI know it gets better than what I saw in general, but this was about three months of being in Finland and Iceland cumulatively (both times during fall). Figured that's the best most people can hope to see, at least without specifically going very far north at the right time of year for this specific purpose, and so the pictures just aren't representative of what you are likely to see while in these countries
- bjornasm 3y ago>Figured that's the best most people can hope to see(...) so the pictures just aren't representative of what you are likely to see while in these countries Its quite wrong to assume your three month experience is representative for what you would expect to see of northern lights in Iceland and Finland.
- Aachen 3y agoI don't think most people's holidays are going to be longer? Not sure what makes you say that. I understand one might get lucky or unlucky, are you saying my 3 months happened to be extremely unlucky and therefore it's "quite wrong" that this can be extrapolated to an average experience when visiting the countries?
- mcv 3y agoThere's probably a big difference between what you could see under ideal circumstances, and what you're likely to see during a normal vacation.
- hydrok9 3y ago
- dagurp 3y agoThey always look better in pictures. Even a cheap camera phone will take a good picture of them.
- mlindner 3y agoI've seen the northern lights once before with my own eyes and no you cannot mistake them for "clouds" or "city lights". You unfortunately probably saw a very faint version, probably low to the horizon. And no I wasn't even in the far north. It was during a solar storm and I was in my own backyard in southern Michigan.
- amatecha 3y agoAurora that looks grey is simply too feint for your eyes to perceive the colour[0][1]. One way you can confirm whether what you're seeing is aurora or not, is to take a picture with a digital camera. Camera sensors can discern the green (or whatever) hue, whereas the cones (which perceive colour) cannot pick up such dim light. Once the aurora becomes stronger, you can absolutely see shockingly-vibrant green, pink, purple, and other colours, literally streaming/swirling/dancing across the sky. It's an unforgettable experience. I hope you have the chance to see this at full-strength sometime, and I absolutely recommend seeking it out if possible. (extra-recommended to watch while sitting in an outdoor hot tub at midnight in -10*C in Iceland, of course!) [0] https://www.neworld.com/blog/2018/aurora-borealis-and-our-eyes-perception/ https://www.neworld.com/blog/2018/aurora-borealis-and-our-ey... [1] https://futurism.com/how-we-see-the-aurora-borealis-camera-vs-human-eyes-2 https://futurism.com/how-we-see-the-aurora-borealis-camera-v...
- mcv 3y agoSounds like they were just about to pack up and leave, and then this happens. Spectacular, and incredibly lucky that they got to see it like that. Not to mention those northern lights look great. I should go to Iceland some day.
- jharohit 3y ago1:06 - what is moving in the top right quadrant of the video amongst the stars?
- alfiopuglisi 3y agoProbably a satellite in low-earth orbit. They only take a few minutes to go from one horizon to the other. Since it is very bright, I am guessing it is the ISS. Update: Iceland is too far north (64°N) to see the ISS (max 51.6°N). Too bad.
- lucb1e 3y agoWas about to say, northern lights are not in the south as seen from Iceland so ISS would not be probable. It should be possible to figure out what high-inclination object was in the sky at the right time of day (it needs to reflect sunlight) on September 13th as the video description says it was shot on Edit: or based on the fireball timing, mister detective here just realised. The comments even say "Is it possible that it was on 12.09.2023 at 22:35? We were in Höfn watching the northern lights when we saw it" and a reply confirms it
- tiffanyh 3y agoWhy does the fireballs tail persist in the sky? Is this some type of long exposure video setup?
- rwmj 3y agoEven after reading the FAQ (which is excellent: https://www.amsmeteors.org/fireballs/faqf/ https://www.amsmeteors.org/fireballs/faqf/) I'm not quite clear why a meteor would be a fireball versus not being one. Is it simply about size, or something in the composition?
- naavis 3y agoIt is just about the brightness. Answer number 1 in the FAQ states: > A fireball is another term for a very bright meteor, generally brighter than magnitude -4, which is about the same magnitude of the planet Venus in the morning or evening sky. A bolide is a special type of fireball which explodes in a bright terminal flash at its end, often with visible fragmentation. Or was your question why are some so bright? That is mainly a function of size and speed.
- rwmj 3y agoCould it also be composition? eg. Mainly water vs mainly rock vs rock with particular metallic impurities?
- jl6 3y agoMeteors are very small. The bright light comes mostly from the molecules of atmosphere in front of the meteor being compressed, heated, and ionized[0] - essentially from the friction of the high-speed meteor entering the atmosphere. I guess if the meteor was a ball of pure magnesium, it might glow brighter, but there isn't so much oxygen up at that height, so my no-calc-gut-feel estimate is that this would contribute orders of magnitude less brightness than the glowing atmospheric molecules. [0] https://www.amsmeteors.org/meteor-showers/meteor-faq/#3 https://www.amsmeteors.org/meteor-showers/meteor-faq/#3
- uoaei 3y agoTo the extent it's about composition it's probably mostly about how long the meteor holds together so it can retain velocity and the surface can stay hot enough to glow. A bunch of small pieces decelerate faster than one big piece. Compositional changes would only change the color somewhat but likely not enough to be worth commenting on.
- camillomiller 3y agoHow big would such a meteor be, more or less, to generate such glow? Is there a way to estimate it?
- Aachen 3y agoOne metre does it I saw this one from 500km away and it was easily the most impressive thing I've seen in my life: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/2023_CX1 https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/2023_CX1 It says that was 1m in mean diameter, but also weighed 1Mg, which seems like a lot but when I look it up, a spheric m³ of aluminium is already heavier than that (1.4Mg) and iron would be 3× heavier still
- ericbarrett 3y agoIn a peer comment's link to the video, the videographer estimates this one was the size of a tennis ball. A typical meteor you might catch out of the corner of your eye on a dark summer night is the size of a rice grain.
- bboreham 3y agoWould like to know what time this happened - I was in Iceland looking up at the sky that night, but didn't see the meteor.