"Lydia Dustbin" wrote in message
om...

"Dr J R Stockton" wrote in message
news:64ef73b7-9bee-41e8-b672-

Yesterday, 7th Oct 08. Wolverhampton/Dudley border 21:05 approx, facing
east. A very bright, and far larger light than I thought anything had a
right to be, went streaking from the south east (Birmingham direction)
and
away to the north (over Wolverhampton) in a position I can only say was
closer to chimneypots than zenith.
The whole thing took about two seconds.

And can anyone hazard a guess at what it was?

http://www.imo.net/calendar/2008#gia - A Draconid? But Draco was
more to the North (I don't know quote where the radiant is). It
sounds much too fast for a re-entry. A sporadic meteor?
.
8) I dread to think what one of those is. I Googled about a bit and found
this site which cheers me up. Now I am wondering what happened after it
passed over Wolverhampton.
http://www.popastro.com/sections/met..._sightings.htm
.
Thank you for your suggestion, anyway. At least now I know things larger
than a streak can be seen without people telling you to get your eyes
tested.
.
VL.

I've been interested in astronomy since I could read. When I was perhaps
ten, having seen two comets and Sputniks 2 and 3 but before I had ever
positively seen a meteor, I saw a bright and irregular object comparable in
angular size to the moon moving over several degrees in a second or two.
Knowing for sure that there was nothing celestial which could fit that
description, I thought for decades I must have imagined it. Very much later
I read that fireballs can be bright enough to overload the retina and appear
to be very much larger than their true angular dimension. Sounds like your
experience was something similar.