A keen astrophotographer has captured what he believes to be a meteorite above his home in Finchampstead.
Martin Lines uses his Allsky camera to capture images of the sky. Last October we published one of his amazing images of the night sky.
Speaking about his latest image which was captured in the early hours of Sunday morning, Martin told Wokingham Today: “I would be interested in confirming if it is a meteorite.
“It has the right shape, with the explosion just before the end.”
He added that the same object was also captured by a fellow astrophotographer in Sevenoaks, Kent.
Senior astronomy manager at the Royal Observatory Greenwich, Dr. Ed Bloomer, told Wokingham Today: “This is a tricky one.
“The monitoring camera closest to Wokingham doesn’t seem to have picked up anything, although that’s also true going back a few days so it might actually have stopped working properly.
“Nearby cameras picked up a few bits here and there, but as far as I can see there were no stand-out bright trails at the time.
“But, the picture certainly seems to show a nice meteor.
“It doesn’t look bright enough to be a fireball, but you’d need more information about its speed and duration to completely rule that out.
He added that a Starlink satellite should have undergone re-entry sometime on July 7.
“It’s not impossible that it could be seen doing so over the UK, but the errors in the predicted time are plus or minus 20 hours, so I can’t say much definitively with regards to that without access to more privileged info.
“As for predicted meteor showers, we’re at the right time for the Alpha Capricornids, which have a low rate.
“The Delta Aquariids should be kicking off in just a few days.
“It’s not impossible the picture shows a very unusually early part of this, but it does mean people should keep their eye out for the next week or two.”
Matrin’s images can be seen via his website here.
