Possible bollide activity in the UK skies

[Appollynon]

I thought I'd post this observation on the "sightings" Ive had over the past two nights in my corner of the UK, and inquire to see if any other UK residents had seen the same/similar actvity or notice anything unusual?

Im based in Chelmsford, Essex and and on Sunday night around at approx 11:05pm I had went out to my back garden to have a ciggarette(roll up) before bed. I was out there for less than 10 minutes, and in that time had seen not one but two anomalies in the sky. The back of my house faces due east and I observed the first one whilst gazing East-South-East (roughly 120degrees form due North). It was only lit up in the sky for an second or two, long enough for me to observe a bright white glow streaking vertically down towards the earth and leaving a tail of dim light behind it (form west to east). It seemed very far away from my vantage point and my guess is that it was some type of bollide burning up on its way into our atmosphere.

Only 2-3 minutes later whilst watching in the same area of sky, I sighted a second of these anomalies. This one seemed to be the same type of what I would guess was a bollide type object entering our atmosphere and travelling from a west to easterly direction, more overhead than the first one (the same direction I have seen over a half dozen other examples of this anomaly).

I thought it was strange that I had seen these two anomalies tavelling in what seemed to be a similar trajectory and area of sky which I have observed similar phenomena over the past two years, but then went to bed an almost forgot about it untill my sighting the next night.

Last night a little earlier at approx 10:20pm I had gone out into my backyard again for a smoke before heading to bed. I was about half way through my roll-up when I saw a very, very bright light streak over my neighbours house to the NW, and travel toward the SE. What I found amazing was that I had heard this before I spotted it, and when I only spotted it around 10degrees up vertically from the apex of my neigbours roof. At first it looked like a very bright firework with what looked like sparks flying off, but the luminesence of the tail that followed it was brighter than any firework tail I've ever seen. It was in the sky for around 3-4 seconds and long enough for me to see a bright part of it brake off before it dissapeared from my view over another neighbours rooftop. To be honest I was a bit shaken, as I had realised that it was well below the low level clouds that were passing over my area last night, and also with it being only around 10degrees verticaly above the apex of my neighbours houses, it must have been pretty low. Part of me tried to rationalise it away as being a low level horizontally flying firework, but there was no bang or large explosion that I heard, just the fizzing noise as it sped overhead and away.

What really confuses me is that of all of these type of sighting I have seen in the past 2-3 years from my backyard all seem to have a roughly identical trajectory heading from the westernly direction towards the east. Not once that I remeber have I seen one of these types of anomaly in the sky travelling in another direction.

 

[Russ]

I know what you mean, I live in the same area and have seen what you describe many times. One thing I suggest is to look at stars, some of them move - given their apparent height, they move pretty fast too. If you spend 30 mins outside I think its highly likely that you will see at least one. You have to be vigilant though because even though theyre moving, they do blend in with the stars easily for some reason (probably because they look like stars).

 

[Appollynon]

I have seen this penomena you describe about the moving stars many times Russ. I have gone through a couple of mental exercises trying to figure out what they are. From my deductions on the sightings I have seen, I theorise that they are either satellites of some sort (although there are a great number of them if they are), or something else which I cannot explain. I say this as many times I have been following their movement when they pass over low-level commerical flights, and high level chemtrail sparayers (which you can make out from the soft glow of the chemtrail). This means they are higher-up than the high altitude sprayers, and high enough not to cause any deviations in their flight paths (or maybe high enough not to get picked up by conventional radar). I guess they could be stealth-craft of some sort, but if we are seeing them then they aren't all that stealthy hehe.

I have around half a dozen friends who have also seen this phenomena, both when in my company and on their own. I call them "sparklers" as they are somewhat like the lower magnitude sparkling stars, but different in that they move, sometimes in a fixed path, sometimes erraticaly and sometimes they blink in and out of existence when there is no cloud cover around. I've tried tracking them with a telescope, but being a complete amatuer it is very difficult to try and get a closer look due to their speed.

 

[Gaby]

I call them "sparklers" as they are somewhat like the lower magnitude sparkling stars, but different in that they move, sometimes in a fixed path, sometimes erraticaly and sometimes they blink in and out of existence when there is no cloud cover around.

I've seen this too, the ones I saw sparkled and disappeared, completely gone, no sign of it in a clear sky. They were slow, like a satellite, only that they were "shiner". Hm...