Fireball/Meteor Spotted Over Ireland - 20th February 2024
Science/Medical/Technology
Thursday 22nd, February 2024
A video that shows a fireball shooting across the Irish sky was captured on by CountyDownCycling on X (Twitter).
Just before 6pm on the 20th of February 2024, many took to social media to post about having seen a meteor or shooting star in the skies over Ireland, with similar reports coming from overseas in the UK, from places like Yorkshire and Lincolnshire.
It has been speculated that the bright ball might be debris from ERS-2, a European Space Agency satellite that was burned up in the Earth's atmosphere yesterday with some small bits of debris making it to the Pacific ocean.
ERS-2 was decommissioned in 2011, it was a 2,500kg satellite used to observe Earth for research purposes.
The ESA explained about the expected area any debris will land, expected around the east coast of Africa,
With that said the ERS-2 satellite didn't burn up until yesterday which is a day after this fireball was spotted so it's very possible it was just another piece of space debris or a meteor that is seen in the video.
You can checkout the video above or at the link at the end of this article.
Just before 6pm on the 20th of February 2024, many took to social media to post about having seen a meteor or shooting star in the skies over Ireland, with similar reports coming from overseas in the UK, from places like Yorkshire and Lincolnshire.
It has been speculated that the bright ball might be debris from ERS-2, a European Space Agency satellite that was burned up in the Earth's atmosphere yesterday with some small bits of debris making it to the Pacific ocean.
ERS-2 was decommissioned in 2011, it was a 2,500kg satellite used to observe Earth for research purposes.
The ESA explained about the expected area any debris will land, expected around the east coast of Africa,
"It is here that we currently expect the satellite to begin to break up. The vast majority of the satellite will burn up and any pieces that survive will be spread out somewhat randomly over a ground track on average hundreds of kilometres long and a few tens of kilometres wide"
With that said the ERS-2 satellite didn't burn up until yesterday which is a day after this fireball was spotted so it's very possible it was just another piece of space debris or a meteor that is seen in the video.
You can checkout the video above or at the link at the end of this article.
