meteor

The Mabey-Broadway bus passengers (well, it was just Andy and me!) witnessed a very rare sight on our homeward journey yesterday – a meteor! It was about 5.40pm and we were driving through the fairly well-lit streets of Knowle West when we suddenly caught sight of an amazingly bright rocket-like “thing” travelling across the sky. We both reacted in the same way: “wow, did you see THAT?”…. Initially, I thought it was a huge firework, but soon realised it was something much more impressive than that. We followed it for about three or four seconds before it disappeared from view. I’ve previously seen shooting stars but never witnessed anything quite so dramatic (in astronomical terms, you understand). Andy is the nearest I know to anyone remotely connected with astro-physics and he told me this morning that it was indeed a meteor (he tells me that the local tv presenter-cum-weatherman kept calling it a meteorite – which rather annoyed Andy, because it only becomes a meteorite if it survives impact with the earth’s surface… which it clearly hadn’t when we saw it!).
Anyway, it was a first for me!

Photo: unfortunately, I didn't take a photograph myself but this is the closest I've seen amongst google images to what we witnessed (but without such a long tail).