What's up with all the slow-moving meteorites I keep seeing lately

Serendipity

Jedi Master
In the last 10 days I've seen slow falling meteorites(fireballs) at least 8 times.
First time I saw it was when I went on my balcony and there was light almost as bright as Venus moving horizontally across the sky.For as few seconds I thought it maybe is a plane but planes have flashing light and this thing was just simple round light (like a star) so the UFO came to mind, and especially when after 6-7 seconds it started fading away until in the end I could only see a small dot and then nothing at all. In the next few days I saw it 2 more times in similar conditions.I would come out and there it already was, moving horizontally again and fading after some time.For some time I had the idea that UFO's are stalking me :P , and when they realize I've spotted em they turn of their lights. ha ha

But after thinking about it more I came to conclusion that it probably were meteorites though very strange behaving type,I've never seen before.
Then last night I went out to relax and watch some shooting stars. I saw quite a few,all behaving like usual shooting star. Lasting around one second and moving really fast.

Then I came back home,on balcony and talked with my father about meteorites.He went inside,and then in middle of sky appeared one bright as Venus,moving really slowly.I called my father to come quickly, he came 7 seconds later when it already started fading so I pointed my finger to the sky and in that same instant another one with same size,same speed and direction appeared following the first one. My dad didn't noticed when it appeared so when I asked him what's that pointing to 2 slow moving fireballs(one fading) he thought it's a star before noticing it moves and then stood and looked at it silently. I told him wow that's weird we just talked about meteorites and then saw 2 of them coming in same time. He then went to sleep and I remained to smoke.
When I was lighting my 2nd one on the north appeared another fireball, this one moving vertically and had orange glow to it. I watched with my mouth open thinking 'oh my god' as it was falling at even slower rate then others I saw before,and it kept falling for 20 seconds before becoming obscured by the hill.Later I put my indexfinger at my arms distance with base of the finger being top of the hill and I measured that the meteorite appeared below base of the nail.It took him 20 seconds to go through that length.

I went to bed thinking what a strange night that was. After so many incidents happened in last 10 days,I have feeling that if I just go out to watch the sky and wait for about 20 minutes I can count to see another one!

I got 4 questions bugging me:
why they move that slowly?
why they last so long?
why I keep seeing them so frequently last 10 days?
why they appear only between 2:30 am and 4:30 am? (each one of the 8 I saw appeared in that time range,more so when I spend far less time outside in that time range then. lets say between 10 pm and 2 am ,and in that time range I've only seen shooting stars)

From http://www.sott.net/articles/show/241972-Fireballs-of-February- article, NASA scientist gives partial answers to my first 2 questions
It's not the number of fireballs that has researchers puzzled. So far, fireball counts in February 2012 are about normal. Instead, it's the appearance and trajectory of the fireballs that sets them apart.

"These fireballs are particularly slow and penetrating," explains meteor expert Peter Brown, a physics professor at the University of Western Ontario. "They hit the top of the atmosphere moving slower than 15 km/s, decelerate rapidly, and make it to within 50 km of Earth's surface."
But question why they keep appearing nowdays remains unanswered(at least for general public,I mean)

on the other hand, is it maybe just normal type of meteorite activity,that is nothing at all unusual for Perseid meteor shower and I'm making fool of myself?
Still it's strange and strange is good enough to peak my curiosity so I'll go out tonight after 2:30 am and see if they come again no matter what they are they are fun look at, at least for the time being :) Thank s for listening
 
If it looks like a moving star, it may be a satellite, especially if you see it in the same place repeatedly. A fireball looks a lot messier, with flaming chunks coming off and a tail.
 
Hey Mr. Premise
No, it wasn't satellite,and it's not in same place either. It travels very slow, but also very low,much lower altitude then any satellite, and then it burns out.

Here is the video with what is the closest thing to my sightings.Only, the ones I saw were a bit higher up in sky, and even slower then half a speed the fireball in the video is traveling at.
http://www.space.com/14502-texas-fireball-meteor-police-video.html

I'm almost completely sure it's meteorites,or something similar,and 100% sure it's not a space station.
And it's not even that strange in the light of recent session and increased numbers of fireballs entering the Earth's atmosphere lately,just a bit eerie..

EDIT: By saying that it burns out I meant that it starts to lose its brightness gradually and then you can even see it becoming cinder if you focus your eyes.
And it's way too low and too bright to be space station in first place.Brightness of all objects I saw ranged between brightness of Jupiter and that of Venus.
 
Serendipity said:
and then you can even see it becoming cinder if you focus your eyes.
And it's way too low and too bright to be space station in first place.Brightness of all objects I saw ranged between brightness of Jupiter and that of Venus.

Seen many , and i mean many , of what you describe for over a decade.I would say you are not seeing meteorites , or satelites. unidentified flying object is what it will remain until and if more is revealed to you.Thats the way it goes.
 
Away With The Fairys said:
Serendipity said:
and then you can even see it becoming cinder if you focus your eyes.
And it's way too low and too bright to be space station in first place.Brightness of all objects I saw ranged between brightness of Jupiter and that of Venus.

Seen many , and i mean many , of what you describe for over a decade.I would say you are not seeing meteorites , or satelites. unidentified flying object is what it will remain until and if more is revealed to you.Thats the way it goes.

And I have seen many such objects in recent years and certainly those were not meteorites.
 
Maybe, but they have one thing in common with meteors for what I've seen. They burn out after some time. Maybe space trash falling down? :D But I doubt that.

But I quote the article from sott again:
"These fireballs are particularly slow and penetrating," explains meteor expert Peter Brown, a physics professor at the University of Western Ontario. "They hit the top of the atmosphere moving slower than 15 km/s, decelerate rapidly, and make it to within 50 km of Earth's surface."

What I saw is almost the same as the object in video link I posted, and that was called a fireball. Maybe I'm wrong or haven't noticed that type of things before but I tell you I didn't see it before but lately and way too often and it was strange(maybe not usual meteorite but some other type?)

P.S. As I said, I'll go out tonight and see if I see ''fireballs'' again.
BTW,who says it aren't fireballs,even if they don't have smoke tail maybe they are different kind.We know the comets and meteors behave in different ways in solar system and in the atmosphere as well. (Now it hit me that it might have had tail but it wasn't visible cause it's night and cause it's smaller fragments then your 'usual' fireball.
 
Same here, I've noticed a number of these exactly how you describe over the last year or so and never noticed these before. I've seen satelites too, but they don't fade like these do after 10-20 or close seconds.
 
What could enter the earth's atmosphere slowly and move slowly when gravity should have it accelerating? The only thing that comes to mind is man-made space debris. It can enter fast enough to burn but be light enough to meet enough air-resistance to make it move apparently slowly when viewed at a distance. Could it be?
 
Richard said:
What could enter the earth's atmosphere slowly and move slowly when gravity should have it accelerating? The only thing that comes to mind is man-made space debris. It can enter fast enough to burn but be light enough to meet enough air-resistance to make it move apparently slowly when viewed at a distance. Could it be?

Actually, cometary fragments are reported to move very slowly through the atmosphere - it's almost an eerily slow speed, due to electrical interactions, from what I understand. Regular meteorites zip through like little small (or not so small) flashes - but charged cometary fragments can move very, very slowly. I'm not saying that this is what is being described in this thread, but it is a possibility.
 
anart said:
Richard said:
What could enter the earth's atmosphere slowly and move slowly when gravity should have it accelerating? The only thing that comes to mind is man-made space debris. It can enter fast enough to burn but be light enough to meet enough air-resistance to make it move apparently slowly when viewed at a distance. Could it be?

Actually, cometary fragments are reported to move very slowly through the atmosphere - it's almost an eerily slow speed, due to electrical interactions, from what I understand. Regular meteorites zip through like little small (or not so small) flashes - but charged cometary fragments can move very, very slowly. I'm not saying that this is what is being described in this thread, but it is a possibility.

This video on sott looks like a very slow moving fragment of meteorite to me with some evidence of disintegration (where it reemerges from behind clouds). Serendipity, is this anything like what you have seen?

http://www.sott.net/articles/show/248763-Video-Giant-Fireballs-Strike-Russia-July-2012
 
Ben said:
anart said:
Richard said:
What could enter the earth's atmosphere slowly and move slowly when gravity should have it accelerating? The only thing that comes to mind is man-made space debris. It can enter fast enough to burn but be light enough to meet enough air-resistance to make it move apparently slowly when viewed at a distance. Could it be?

Actually, cometary fragments are reported to move very slowly through the atmosphere - it's almost an eerily slow speed, due to electrical interactions, from what I understand. Regular meteorites zip through like little small (or not so small) flashes - but charged cometary fragments can move very, very slowly. I'm not saying that this is what is being described in this thread, but it is a possibility.

This video on sott looks like a very slow moving fragment of meteorite to me with some evidence of disintegration (where it reemerges from behind clouds). Serendipity, is this anything like what you have seen?

http://www.sott.net/articles/show/248763-Video-Giant-Fireballs-Strike-Russia-July-2012

Hey Ben! No,it wasn't like that.Ones I saw moved even slower and didn't have any tail from what I could see since it was night.
Actually, after last night when I went outside to watch the sky I'm not sure myself what those lights I saw really are.

I lay down on the ground and watched the clear night sky,saw couple usual Perseid meteorite fragments and after only 10 minutes I noticed 2 bright lights(bright as Jupiter) in close distance one to another.At first I thought it were two stars but then I realized that there shouldn't be any stars that bright at that place on the sky.So it means that they just appeared.
As I kept watching I noticed they are moving really slowly in the same direction and after 20 seconds they started losing their brightness and in the end I could see only 2 dots still moving for 30 seconds at least before I lost their sight.

Now I'm suspecting it might even be space station,or something similar, that for reasons unknown to me suddenly gets bright for short period of time and then it goes dark again. I did a little test.Based on their speed I calculated it would take 20-30 minutes for it to come back on same place on the sky,assuming it's space station or satelite, but it didn't appear again or if it did it wasn't bright so I couldn't have noticed it again.

Actually,it was very similar to what I've seen from my balcony with my father the other day.Two lights, same distance of each other,same brightness and speed,lights going out after short period of time. But that still can't explain the other similar lights I saw lately and what is causing such behaviour.

But,that's not all.I got more then I've bargained for.I think I saw an UFO 1 hour after I saw those 2 lights. High above me appeared a light,somewhat more unusual type of light then those 2 I saw before. It appeared suddenly, so it got my attention.
I watched it closely to see is it another of those lights but soon I noticed it has weird trajectory, it's moving was very irregular and undulating.
It traveled bit to the left,then steered bit to the right again and again.When it came above me it made 90 degrees turn to the south and continued to move in even more irregular manner before it stopped and hoovered high above.I was quite taken with all that and watched 15-20 minutes to what now appeared like ordinary star in the sky,then i got bored and went home.

What's even weirder to me is when I told the story to my brothers one of them said it's no big deal to see that stuff on sky that he sees it often, but it doesn't bother him.
The other one said I'm crazy and that it was probably a balloon. :lol:
 
I have seen a few of those before, most notably a few weeks ago when I was sitting with a neighbor out in the garden, we were talking about all kinds of stuff. It was late, about 12 o clock, or maybe even 1 in the morning, when I looked up and saw something that at first I thought was a star. The it began to move, and it got a streak after it, like a tail, that was growing in length. I told him, he looked up, and we both observed it for about a minute or so, it stopped once, then it got back up to speed, and it looked like it was moving up and higher, out of the orbit. It was freaky to see it like that, freaked both of us pretty good. He said it was the first time he saw something like that by himself. It definitively wasn't a satellite, or a meteor, because it stopped. I somehow got an impression it stopped to take a look at us, that it somehow saw us, I sensed something like that - I know it sounds stupid and that is probably just my imagination - about looking at us, but it was definitely slow moving and unusual. I tend to sort it into the category of UFO sightings, for what it's worth. This was continental Europe, Croatia, in the inland region.
 
Serendipity said:
But,that's not all.I got more then I've bargained for.I think I saw an UFO 1 hour after I saw those 2 lights. High above me appeared a light,somewhat more unusual type of light then those 2 I saw before. It appeared suddenly, so it got my attention.
I watched it closely to see is it another of those lights but soon I noticed it has weird trajectory, it's moving was very irregular and undulating.
It traveled bit to the left,then steered bit to the right again and again.When it came above me it made 90 degrees turn to the south and continued to move in even more irregular manner before it stopped and hoovered high above.I was quite taken with all that and watched 15-20 minutes to what now appeared like ordinary star in the sky,then i got bored and went home.

I saw something incredibly similar to your description in California a few months ago. There was a light far brighter than usual in the sky while I was at a party/gathering of friends. The thing moved across the sky, constantly changing pace, and changed directions at least once. I mentioned it, and everyone looked at it confirming it was there. Eventually it just stopped, and became a regular 'star,' completely motionless. It stayed there, and after 15 minutes or so, even I became bored and stopped staring at it. Everyone else lost interest far more quickly.

Not sure what it was, but it was sure strange that it was maneuvering like it was (I'm saying that it crossed at least 30-40% of the visible horizon in the direction I was facing) and then became perfectly still, as a star. I checked back after another half hour, and there it still sat, like it had never moved at all...Fwiw.
 
This is just crazy. I saw the same or similar UFO again.

Last night I went again outside at around 11 pm, and after I did some running, I went on my usual place to watch the sky and meteors fly by.
Then,after some 15 minutes of watching the sky one star began to move/or it just appeared and began to move, I'm not sure.

Immediately I noticed that it was moving strangely it swayed bit to left then bit to right,it moved the same way like one I saw last time.Only this time it was a lot weirder.
Next 2 hours I watched it make extremely unusual maneuvers, it changed the course at least 400 times and it's speed at least 200 times.And all that in the same small place on the sky that was maybe 6-8% the size of the whole sky.

When it moved it looked like it had very small tail behind it,but when it was standing still it seemed just like any other star(my guess is that's by design)
While it was moving,other smaller dots of light appeared around it,and then the UFO adjusted it's course to 'pick them up' each time.That happened every minute or so.
I could know exactly where it will move next when I saw the small barely visible dots of light appear in it's vicinity.

Sometimes it even looked like it was made of few separate dots of light but then it became just single light again.
Another curious thing was that when airplane flew relatively close by the UFO, it changed direction and moved towards the place where the airplane just passed by.
That happened around 10 times in the period of 2 hours I kept tracking it, and before it stopped and became a 'star' for 15 minutes and then I left.

Here are my 3 wild guesses what that was :
1) UFO was playing with my head and/or generally making me waste my time
2)Big alien gave his kid to play with daddy's craft :P
3)UFO performed some other mysterious activity?

Strange thing though is that 2 times in a row I saw UFO with similar behaviour.(How I regret buying my decision to buy laptop and not the telescope,that thing practically posed for someone to take a picture of it)
It's becoming obvious there is increased UFO activity in the night skies all around the world,but not many people watch the sky these days and/or no one seems to notice or care..

P.S. flycat, I'm also from Croatia,only I live far on south, so it's curious that we both saw something very similar.
 
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