American Meteor Society
Nearly 900 reports from Great Britain and surrounding areas
Only five days after a brilliant fireball startled observers in Great Britain, another fireball has occurred with a very similar trajectory to the previous event. The AMS/IMO have received nearly 900 reports so far about this fireball event that occurred over southern England on May 16th, 2022 around 9:46 PM BST* (20:46 Universal Time). AMS #2022-2921 event was mainly seen from England and Wales (UK) but we also received reports from France, The Netherlands and Guernsey thanks to our partners UKMON (UK), Werkgroep Meteoren (NL) and Vigie-Ciel (FR).
*BST = British Summer Time
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The ground trajectory computed from the witness reports shows that the meteor was traveling from South East to North West and ended its visible flight over southern England.
Fireball, Bolide?
Several thousand meteors of fireball magnitude occur in the Earth’s atmosphere each day. The vast majority of these, however, occur over the oceans and uninhabited regions, and a good many are masked by daylight. Those that occur at night also stand little chance of being detected due to the relatively low numbers of persons out to notice them.
Additionally, the brighter the fireball, the more rare is the event. As a general thumb rule, there are only about 1/3 as many fireballs present for each successively brighter magnitude class, following an exponential decrease. Experienced observers can expect to see only about one fireball of magnitude -6 (crescent moon) or better for every 200 hours of meteor observing, while a fireball of magnitude -4 (Venus) can be expected about once every 20 hours or so.
My partner was outside at the time and said to me come look at this so I stepped outside and saw a ball of light which went quite quickly of was strange I must say.
I live on Chequamegon Bay of Lake Superior. Last evening, around 7:45 PM, I glanced out the window and saw what appeared to be a small narrow cigar shaped cloud. Since the sky was completely clear, I thought it was a plane’s exhaust but it didn’t move fast enough and was unusual. I looked with binoculars and found it appeared to be a comet, trailing a large cloud of gas. The trail of gas was about 10 times the length of whatever was creating it. It was above the horizon, about the same distance as the sun and at, roughly, 320 degrees. (At that time the sun was probably at 280 degrees) It was easily visible with the naked eye for about 30 minutes and appeared to move slightly to the north and away from earth as it kept getting smaller and smaller. I’m positive it was a comet but I looked at the web thinking that a comet that easily visible in daylight would be a big event but couldn’t find any news about it. By the time I thought to get my video camera, it was so far away and I couldn’t find it in the lens although I could still see it with the unaided eye. Ashland is only about 70 miles from Duluth MN, surely someone there would have seen it. I am a male, two months away from 81 years old. My eyes are decent. The binoculars I used were Leupold Olympic 10×50 . . . pretty decent glasses.