UK New Year Meteor Shower 2010-- Astronomical Fireballs or Fire Lanterns-- or Both!

The Society for Popular Astronomy (SPA) in the United Kingdom (UK) was 'plagued' by reports of fireballs streaking across the skies during the last two weeks in 2009, including the date January 01, 2010. Fireballs are meteors that are particularly bright. These fireball sightings coincide with the Coma Berenicids Meteor Shower, whose shower activity may continue until January 23, 2010.

In a UK Weather World web forum thread titled 'New Year "Meteor shower" due to sky lanterns', SPA Meteor Director Alastair McBeath responded, "I've had a large number of reports of 'fireballs' or a 'meteor shower' from New Year's night, beginning in the early evening and running through till about 00:30 UT on January 1, from many parts of the UK". At a later point, he added, "There is the possibility there may have been one or more genuinely meteoric fireballs seen from Britain on December 31- [January 01]."

Mr. McBeath stated that some reports were too vague to specifically ascribe to meteors but that many sightings were clearly of sky lanterns- flame-fuelled rice-paper lanterns that float in the sky. He continued, "I've received reports of lifeboats being launched and other emergency services wasting time and effort chasing nonexistent distress flares caused by some of them [sky lanterns], especially near coastal districts."

UK Weather World forum moderator Jason Smith responded that he had seen about fifteen sky lanterns during his walk home from a New Year's Eve party in Wick Saint Lawrence, Somerset." Later that day, he found the local shop supplying them. The shop owner told him that he had sold more than 300 sky lanterns. Mr. Smith said, "...and this is from one store alone here in Weston-super-Mare! Imagine how many were launched."

Mr. Smith continued, "Watching them in the sky, they were moving South Westerly and at quite a speed. If I hadn't [known] or didn't know what they were, I would have suspected them to have been meteors or fireballs for sure." He said that flights in and out of Bristol International Airport 'must have had a field day spotting these lanterns'.

The consensus is that most UK citizens who thought they were sighting fireballs were seeing sky lanterns. However, a few sky watchers may have seen actual fireballs. Some of the fireball sightings detailed in comments on my previous UK fireball articles sound genuine. No one should be too fast to disregard an eyewitness sighting.

Some of my readers have commented a couple of times, such as Graham Riley whose second comment was- "Hello again, I have seen lanterns released and traveling in the night sky. The object we saw was definitely not a lantern. Also there was no wind- it was a perfectly still freezing cold New Year morning at 12:10am with nil cloud cover. The light was extremely powerful- brighter than a lantern and much larger in size." ^{_{Posted on 1/03/2010 at 1:01:33 PM.}} I recommend that Mr. Riley give his full account to the expert astronomers at SPA and the IMO.

Have You Sighted a Real Fireball? If you have sighted what you believe to be meteors or their brighter counterparts, the fireballs, then visit the SPA Meteor Section 'Making and Reporting Fireball Observations' to learn how to accurately describe what you have seen. Then, if you are in the UK, you can send any reports of fireball sightings to the SPA- you will see how to do so at the bottom of the page.

For those in the USA, by all means visit the SPA Meteor Section. However, you should report your sightings to the American Meteor Society (AMS). The AMS Fireball Report Form is not in working order as of today, January 3, 2010, but AMS expects to have it working soon. For those elsewhere in the world- or for those who unsure if what they saw was a fireball- then follow the directions on the SPA Meteor Section page.

To learn more about fireballs, visit the International Meteor Organization at this page.
To learn about Sky Lanterns a.k.a. Fire Lanterns, click here.
^{_{Sources: popastro.com; ukweatherworld; author's files.}}