The British and Irish Meteorite Society

Forgive my ignorance but tonight when driving home on South Yorkshire border UK I saw what I can best describe as a bright shooting star but not high in the sky. It came down and across, ahead of us. It burned out/stopped shining bright at what I would estimate at about 20-30 feet above the ground and judging by the path it was taking would have landed (if there was anything to land) about three fields away from the road. It was a dark straight country road with fields either side so could not have been a firework and besides it did not look like a firework. Have found your forum and wondered if you could advise if it was possible that is was a small meteorite?
Many thanks for any help
Nita

It is possible Nita, but estimating how far away a meteor is can be very difficult. Brightness, atmospheric conditions and several other factors can give illusory effects which cause even experienced observers difficulty when reporting these sightings.

Most meteors which actually reach the ground (and only then called meteorites) are accompanied by sonic effects, but again not in all cases. So the short answer is it's just not possible to verify your sighting without corroborative reports from other eyewitnesses, or indeed finding a lump of space rock in that nearby field:)

Sounds like an enjoyable light show all the same!

Yes it was most probably a meteor coming in but they always give the illusion that they are closer than they really are....anything still burning up at that height would have made a huge impact....even huge meteors will finish their hot flight as a fireball at over 20km up in the atmosphere...so the one you saw would be miles up and away...they then freefall to earth....as did the huge one over Chelyabinsk in Russia that you may have seen video of in recent times....only fragments of that landed long after it exploded many miles up...it then produced a shockwave that blew in the windows nearly 2 minutes later. Nearly all meteors burn up completely and never land...and if they do then at least 90% of their mass disappears as it ablates in the fireball stage.

So if the one you saw did drop meteorites then they would be many miles from the point it finished burning up. The usual scenario when a person is near where a meteorite drops is that they do not see the fireball at all but just hear a whistling or rushing noise as the stone or stone drops out the sky nearly vertically. There have only been a couple in the last 100 years that had any speed left as a fireball when they hit the ground...and they left a number of relatively significant craters.

Thank you so much for your informative replies.
I feel lucky to have seen it, even if I can never be completely sure what *it* was and also lucky not to have driven my car into a ditch when it passed in front of us. It only lasted seconds so it is very possible that my height and distance judgements were wrong.
I am content from your replies that it was pretty special anyway and again I thank you

Glad you contacted us Nita....we need people like you to do that so that one of these days we can use the reports to track the big one down and find the meteorites...many thanks.

Graham