It is indeed a bolide which was detected by the FRIPON network (which includes a hundred cameras deployed on the whole French territory thanks to an ANR financing and intended to detect this type of celestial objects).
Nearly 250 witnesses (Figure 4) report a very impressive object that was also heard by some.
If you are one of the witnesses, please feel free to send a sighting report online!
Using the data recorded by the cameras, scientists were able to reconstruct its trajectory.
The main parameters of the event are a passage at the zenith of Brest and a bright end of trajectory in the English Channel at 39 km of altitude.
The object was moving very fast. This is partly what explained the intensity of its luminosity. The initial speed of 21.5 km/s ( 77 500 km/h) and an inclination of 34° to the horizontal did not allow the survival of a meteorite. The object of about twenty centimeters disintegrated completely in the atmosphere.
The captured images
Three FRIPON/Vigie-Ciel stations recorded the phenomenon:
- at Querqueville (Groupe astronomique Hague-Querqueville) - FRNO01 - Querqueville - 2021-09-05 21:46:58 UT
- in Ludiver (Planetarium of Ludiver) - FRNO07 - Ludiver - 2021-09-05 21:46:58 UT
- in Vannes (Club Astronomie de Rhuys) - FRBR04 - Vannes - 2021-09-05 21:46:58 UT
The bolide also passed over Brest (Service hydrographique et océanographique de la Marine); despite a local cloud cover, the image remains spectacular.
Lexicon
- a bolide is a very bright meteor (synonym of shooting star). The term bolide is generally used to describe any meteor brighter than the planet Venus (the brightest star in the sky after the Sun and the Moon)
- a meteor (or shooting star) is the luminous feature observed when an interplanetary dust or a small meteoroid enters the Earth’s atmosphere at very high speed (between 12 and 72 km/s)
- a meteoroid is a small particle of a few millimeters to a few tens of centimeters in diameter that moves in space. It is this particle that gives birth to the meteor if it is lucky enough to enter the Earth’s atmosphere. If the meteoroid is massive enough, a part of the object can resist this entry into the atmosphere, and give birth to a meteorite
- a meteorite is the rocky or metallic stone that is found on earth, when a part of a sufficiently massive meteoroid has managed to cross the atmosphere and reach the ground
