15 minutes ago, JessicaF said:

It is extremely unlikely that 15 meteors would fall all at the exact same time. The trails also appear parallel. My guess is that these are specular (and thus short lived) flashes / reflections from a constellation of satellites.

In fact, this happens due to the collapse of one larger body.

朝日新聞

青森上空に激レア「流星クラスター」発生　約1秒間に19個の流れ星：朝日新聞

13日未明、青森県上空で短時間に大量の流れ星が出現する「流星クラスター」が発生、青森県弘前市の「星と森のロマントピア天文台『銀河』」が撮影に成功した。活動中のペルセウス座流星群に由来し、非常にまれな…

I saw double or triple ones, but with an interval of several seconds.

It does look suspiciously similar to the flashes I see all the time on my time lapses where I KNOW they are satellites reflecting light.

That said, what Samrau says about a bigger one breaking up does make sense -

I won't claim I know, because I don't! 😋

Edited August 14Aug 14 by NightSky

16 minutes ago, NightSky said:

It does look suspiciously similar to the flashes I see all the time on my time lapses where I KNOW they are satellites reflecting light.

That said, what Samrau says about a bigger one breaking up does make sense -

I won't claim I know, because I don't! 😋

To avoid being голословным, I provided a link.

"This was captured by a surveillance camera installed on the observatory grounds. According to Jun Yamashita, the observatory's commentator, on the 13th, at around 0:57 a.m., 19 fragments flew from northeast to southwest in 1 second."I was fortunate enough to witness this rare event."

Larger meteoroids often break up, I agree. But as far as I have even seen this, there is a bright fireball in the beginning that explodes in the atmosphere as it penetrates deeper into denser parts of the atmosphere. In this case, the fractions already enter the atmosphere separated, which means the breakup must have occurred right before hitting Earth. Plus, fractions would likely be of vastly different sizes and thus vastly different brightness when burning up. These seem to be rather similar in brightness (and thus in size). It just looks suspicious in order for this to be a tight cluster of meteoroids.

On the other hand, upon closer inspection they do seem to leave short and short lived trails, suggesting that indeed something is burning up there. And the trails do go straight into the radiant. I am shocked though as I have never seen or heard about this before.

Meteor showers are coming from the dust that is left behind by comets in which the Earth passes through. So can easily be some bigger fragments the earth passed through that caused this.

Even though the maximum was in the night of the 13th even the days before and after the maximum are always interesting. Who knows you can catch some sub peaks with higher intensities.

Even though the Perseids have a higher ZHR, the brightness of most is a bit disappointing. The kappa Cygnids are active as well and are often brighter than the Perseids.

3 hours ago, JessicaF said:

It is extremely unlikely that 15 meteors would fall all at the exact same time. The trails also appear parallel. My guess is that these are specular (and thus short lived) flashes / reflections from a constellation of satellites.

Starlink 1401, 1411, 2119, 3643, 4208, 4550, 5664, 30914, Meteor 2-21F, 3-5R, Globalstar 39 + several more Starlink nearer to the horizon and unknown military satellites.

Got curious and had to look it up 😂

Edit: on a side note yikes that's a lot of satellites in the same small patch of sky at the same time. I really hope UN gets that resolution through....

Edited August 14Aug 14 by Rudolph

1 minute ago, Rudolph said:

Starlink 1401, 1411, 2119, 3643, 4208, 4550, 5664, 30914, Meteor 2-21F, 3-5R, Globalstar 39 + several more Starlink nearer to the horizon.

Got curious and had to look it up 😂

Yesterday, over the territory of the European and Volga parts of Russia, space debris was slowly flying and burning in the atmosphere. At first we thought it was an Earth-grazing fireball, but then we found out it was garbage. Probably something from your list.

https://vk.com/wall-224331033_147

Edited August 14Aug 14 by Samrau
translate error

Might be 34588, I'm trying to find the webpage I viewed a while ago that showed every satellite that was set to or had deorbitted in the last 48 hours 👀

Edit: Might be the same event, timezones gives me a headache. Video of it captured in Montana(UTC-6):

https://www.krtv.com/news/montana-and-regional-news/space-debris-lights-up-the-night-sky-across-montana

The CORDS Reentry Database has no entry for that day, so the source is unknown.

Edited August 14Aug 14 by Rudolph

4 hours ago, JessicaF said:

It is extremely unlikely that 15 meteors would fall all at the exact same time. The trails also appear parallel. My guess is that these are specular (and thus short lived) flashes / reflections from a constellation of satellites.

I agree with @JessicaF and I am skeptical what this is exactly. Indeed the parallel trails so close to what should be the radiant. Her subsequent statement above "And the trails do go straight into the radiant" must be a mistype as meteors originate at the radiant and go away from it. In fact the initial instance of ablation in the atmosphere suggested it was near the radiant (from @Samrau description) and they should have had fairly short trails. I can't tell from the video the exact orientation of the camera and the constellation background. It actually looks odd to me.

That said it does appear to be something that entered the atmosphere. It is possible for a larger body to break up and create this but given no evidence of a breakup on that video I'm puzzled. Also it doesn't have to be a Perseid and that is something inexperienced observers get wrong quite often. Just because that is the most active shower at this moment @Vancanneyt Sander correctly pointed out several other showers are active and Earth is constantly being struck with sporadic meteors.

As @Rudolph pointed out it could be a debris reentry event and it could even be related to two recent rocket launches. One of them created that weird gas structure seen on Space Weather and its possible it is related.

Japan has a strong meteor observing network called SonotaCo that predates both the GMN and CAMS meteor network. They would have more data on this and if it is something unusual they will publish about it. Also depending on the location S Korea has a pretty well developed GMN network, they have 120 stations. Hopefully it was clear over enough stations to pick up some data. At the very least there will be some chatter in meteor network circles at some point.

29 minutes ago, astroHoward said:

Her subsequent statement above "And the trails do go straight into the radiant" must be a mistype as meteors originate at the radiant and go away from it. In fact the initial instance of ablation in the atmosphere suggested it was near the radiant (from @Samrau description) and they should have had fairly short trails. I can't tell from the video the exact orientation of the camera and the constellation background. It actually looks odd to me.

What I meant by "trail" is the line when extended to infinity. On the celestial sphere, these lines should approximately intersect at the radiant and its antipodal point. The visible parts of the trails do NOT originate in the radiant--their extensions do.

I do have to chuckle at a few statements here because its clear many of you are on the youngish observing side (except for @hamateur 1953 😂 and myself ☹️).

A dozen meteors all at once does happen, just not very often. Unfortunately some of the best examples of that have already passed. And at that time myself and most other astrophotographers were still using film. Oh what I'd give to have a modern digital camera / lens for the Leonids in 1998.

I was fortunate to be at a dark site, clear skies to witness the 1998 Leonid meteor shower that became known as the year of the fireballs. This was actually the night before the estimated peak but I was lucky for that. I'll link to the best article I could find off-hand because you would probably think I'm exaggerating. This is a good summary on PopAstro 1998 Leonids. Read just the introduction at the least because it is true and I saw it: 10-20% of all the meteors that night were fireballs. Not Perseid kind of fireballs, I'm talking the kind that when it happened behind you it cast a shadow of you on the ground. Those were happening every few minutes or so! Some of those fireballs would explode and rain a shower of particles down like the video that has been posted here. There was constant activity, at times the rate was easily 200 meteors per hour, that is 3 or 4 meteors per minute! It felt like more, it was the craziest thing I've ever seen.

I did end up chasing the 2001 Leonids and had bad luck with the weather. I still curse myself for going east to avoid approaching clouds when I should have went west. Near the peak time I likely saw over 15 meteors per minute for a short time. It would have been better in ideal skies but oh well. That year, perhaps the last good Leonid outburst, the hourly rate, the ZHR, was estimated around 1900.

The moral of the story is you have to go out and observe - you never know what might happen!

14 minutes ago, astroHoward said:

I agree with @JessicaF and I am skeptical what this is exactly. Indeed the parallel trails so close to what should be the radiant. Her subsequent statement above "And the trails do go straight into the radiant" must be a mistype as meteors originate at the radiant and go away from it. In fact the initial instance of ablation in the atmosphere suggested it was near the radiant (from @Samrau description) and they should have had fairly short trails. I can't tell from the video the exact orientation of the camera and the constellation background. It actually looks odd to me.

That said it does appear to be something that entered the atmosphere. It is possible for a larger body to break up and create this but given no evidence of a breakup on that video I'm puzzled. Also it doesn't have to be a Perseid and that is something inexperienced observers get wrong quite often. Just because that is the most active shower at this moment @Vancanneyt Sander correctly pointed out several other showers are active and Earth is constantly being struck with sporadic meteors.

As @Rudolph pointed out it could be a debris reentry event and it could even be related to two recent rocket launches. One of them created that weird gas structure seen on Space Weather and its possible it is related.

Japan has a strong meteor observing network called SonotaCo that predates both the GMN and CAMS meteor network. They would have more data on this and if it is something unusual they will publish about it. Also depending on the location S Korea has a pretty well developed GMN network, they have 120 stations. Hopefully it was clear over enough stations to pick up some data. At the very least there will be some chatter in meteor network circles at some point.

2 hours ago, Vancanneyt Sander said:

Meteor showers are coming from the dust that is left behind by comets in which the Earth passes through. So can easily be some bigger fragments the earth passed through that caused this.

Even though the maximum was in the night of the 13th even the days before and after the maximum are always interesting. Who knows you can catch some sub peaks with higher intensities.

Even though the Perseids have a higher ZHR, the brightness of most is a bit disappointing. The kappa Cygnids are active as well and are often brighter than the Perseids.

Not buying. Every second, the Earth scoops up a cylinder (approximately) of the diameter of the Earth and length 30 km. Normal density of Perseids the size we see in the video is 1-2 per minute. In one minute, the Earth scoops up a huge volume of space. What I am trying to say is that the shower is very (did I say VERY?) thin in terms of its density. Collisions are highly unlikely, and the chances that 15 meteoroids will enter the atmosphere in a fraction of a second are just astronomically (pun intended) small.

But here is an idea. The speed of Perseids w.r.t. Earth is, if I remember correctly, around 70km/s. Yep, they are the faster shower out there. We could check if the speed of these objects matches this number. If they are satellites, their speed should be roughly 10x slower (orbital speed is 7.2km/s). Anyone willing to brush up trigonometry from high school analyze the video? :)

The guy made a video using this camera, which looks like a webcam, and the video quality is poor.

According to some information, the radiant point is located in Perseus

20 minutes ago, astroHoward said:

I do have to chuckle at a few statements here because its clear many of you are on the youngish observing side (except for @hamateur 1953 😂 and myself ☹️).

I have no doubt about your competence, but it's not nice to boast.

27 minutes ago, JessicaF said:

Not buying. Every second, the Earth scoops up a cylinder (approximately) of the diameter of the Earth and length 30 km. Normal density of Perseids the size we see in the video is 1-2 per minute. In one minute, the Earth scoops up a huge volume of space. What I am trying to say is that the shower is very (did I say VERY?) thin in terms of its density. Collisions are highly unlikely, and the chances that 15 meteoroids will enter the atmosphere in a fraction of a second are just astronomically (pun intended) small.

But here is an idea. The speed of Perseids w.r.t. Earth is, if I remember correctly, around 70km/s. Yep, they are the faster shower out there. We could check if the speed of these objects matches this number. If they are satellites, their speed should be roughly 10x slower (orbital speed is 7.2km/s). Anyone willing to brush up trigonometry from high school analyze the video? :)

Here is an example of the speed of a satellite and a meteor

Edited August 14Aug 14 by Samrau

6 minutes ago, JessicaF said:

Not buying. Every second, the Earth scoops up a cylinder (approximately) of the diameter of the Earth and length 30 km. Normal density of Perseids the size we see in the video is 1-2 per minute. In one minute, the Earth scoops up a huge volume of space. What I am trying to say is that the shower is very (did I say VERY?) thin in terms of its density. Collisions are highly unlikely, and the chances that 15 meteoroids will enter the atmosphere in a fraction of a second are just astronomically (pun intended) small.

But here is an idea. The speed of Perseids w.r.t. Earth is, if I remember correctly, around 70km/s. Yep, they are the faster shower out there. We could check if the speed of these objects matches this number. If they are satellites, their speed should be roughly 10x slower (orbital speed is 7.2km/s). Anyone willing to brush up trigonometry from high school analyze the video? :)

While true if you model the stream as a uniform distribution of particles but that is not what they are in reality. Your explanation may work for sporadic meteors Earth runs into constantly but that is not what a meteoroid stream from cometary debris is. Maybe in some meteor shower cases its more akin to Earth passing by someone holding a hose with water gushing out of it. While the Perseids are a very old meteor shower and are perhaps more uniformly distributed then a newer shower there can in fact be 'clumps'. There are reasons for that including planetary gravitation influence, specifically from Jupiter.

This is getting a bit into the weeds of meteor research but @Pom referenced this in his post. While I have not read the specific prediction he mentioned, he is referencing one where a stream of particles the Perseid parent comet laid down in 1079 would enhance this years activity. That is, there was a prediction for enhanced density in the stream the Earth would pass through.

I've actually wondered about this as a visual meteor observer for years. If one sits and does a real meteor observing session, ie you are properly situated in good skies and paying close attention, one thing you will notice is meteors sometime appear in groups. For example, watching the Perseids in a good year you might see a few meteors closely space, a few seconds apart. Then see nothing for 50 seconds. The average hourly rate one might compute from these observations does not really convey the fact the meteors were not uniformly distributed over that time period.

To see how often clumps show up when I do a 'real' observing session, I record meteor counts / magnitudes with a keypad on a small microcontroller device I built that timestamps the observation (has a RTC). Data is saved as a flat csv file I can download later. So hopefully one day I be able to more thoroughly investigate this observed clumping see.

38 minutes ago, astroHoward said:

While true if you model the stream as a uniform distribution of particles but that is not what they are in reality. Your explanation may work for sporadic meteors Earth runs into constantly but that is not what a meteoroid stream from cometary debris is. Maybe in some meteor shower cases its more akin to Earth passing by someone holding a hose with water gushing out of it. While the Perseids are a very old meteor shower and are perhaps more uniformly distributed then a newer shower there can in fact be 'clumps'. There are reasons for that including planetary gravitation influence, specifically from Jupiter.

This is getting a bit into the weeds of meteor research but @Pom referenced this in his post. While I have not read the specific prediction he mentioned, he is referencing one where a stream of particles the Perseid parent comet laid down in 1079 would enhance this years activity. That is, there was a prediction for enhanced density in the stream the Earth would pass through.

I've actually wondered about this as a visual meteor observer for years. If one sits and does a real meteor observing session, ie you are properly situated in good skies and paying close attention, one thing you will notice is meteors sometime appear in groups. For example, watching the Perseids in a good year you might see a few meteors closely space, a few seconds apart. Then see nothing for 50 seconds. The average hourly rate one might compute from these observations does not really convey the fact the meteors were not uniformly distributed over that time period.

To see how often clumps show up when I do a 'real' observing session, I record meteor counts / magnitudes with a keypad on a small microcontroller device I built that timestamps the observation (has a RTC). Data is saved as a flat csv file I can download later. So hopefully one day I be able to more thoroughly investigate this observed clumping see.

What do aurora enthusiasts do when there is no aurora to watch? They endlessly argue about meteors!

So, I have been into astronomy since I was a kid, which was a long time ago. I went to "meteor camps" for high school kids where we would observe Aquarids, learn how to report the trail parameters, and during the day we had lectures from pros (and no sleep, LOL). Fun times! I watched many showers in my life, including the enhanced Leonid shower in I think 2000 or 2001 (?) There was a shooting star on average every 2-4 seconds before the sunrise. It was absolutely magical. Even during this Leonid "superstorm", I would not see groups of meteors falling at the same time. The chances of having 15 of them in less than a second are just astronomically small even in such super dense (but still very thin) storms.

Putting arguments aside, I think analyzing the speed will constitute the proof of whether these are "within orbit" objects or Perseids. Then, there is the last hypothesis here, which we have not discussed yet, which is that the objects are fractions of Santa's disintegrating sled. @Rudolph would probably be able to tell if this is the case :) (no hard feelings, the joke was there)

51 minutes ago, JessicaF said:

What do aurora enthusiasts do when there is no aurora to watch? They endlessly argue about meteors!

...

Putting arguments aside, I think analyzing the speed will constitute the proof of whether these are "within orbit" objects or Perseids. Then, there is the last hypothesis here, which we have not discussed yet, which is that the objects are fractions of Santa's disintegrating sled. @Rudolph would probably be able to tell if this is the case :) (no hard feelings, the joke was there)

I do agree with you 😀 Your thinking on velocity maybe a good approach.

Another possibility if one spoke/read Japanese is to ask on the SonotaCo forums about it. Certainly others in that network that run observing programs may have picked this event up. Or one could ask on the Global Meteor Network forum and I may do that. A number of people there are far more knowledgeable than I and can determine orbital estimates from these kind of videos.

Academically you could ask Dr Denis Vida, Western University, the founder of the Global Meteor Network, for his thoughts.

27 minutes ago, astroHoward said:

I do agree with you 😀 Your thinking on velocity maybe a good approach.

Another possibility if one spoke/read Japanese is to ask on the SonotaCo forums about it. Certainly others in that network that run observing programs may have picked this event up. Or one could ask on the Global Meteor Network forum and I may do that. A number of people there are far more knowledgeable than I and can determine orbital estimates from these kind of videos.

Academically you could ask Dr Denis Vida, Western University, the founder of the Global Meteor Network, for his thoughts.

Do you know Dr. Vida? It is probably the best avenue at this point. I am looking at the video that @Samrau posted with a satellite and a meteor, and I must admit that the objects in the video under question are too fast for a satellite. Their speed does correspond more to what one would expect from a meteor. With the advancement of automatized video recordings of meteors, it is possible that we sometimes capture very rare events. A tight cluster like this must be a "recently" disintegrated meteoroid as things fly away from each other pretty fast up there. I really wonder what an expert would think. Let's see what feedback we get from the Global Meteor Network forum. Please, keep us posted. I am now very curious about this mystery.

Here is another video, city of Vladimir, Russia. The object's speed seems high, so it may indeed be the Earth-grazing fireball?

On August 13, at about 16:00 local time, a bright fireball was captured at the Russian Vostok station in Antarctica. The trail persisted for more than half an hour. Unfortunately, the flight of the fireball itself could not be filmed, apparently the station staff were not sitting under the frosty sky waiting for the Perseids. I wonder if there is a connection with the events in Japan, central Russia and Antarctica?

https://t.me/aari_official

Maybe asteroid threat warning systems have shown their poor effectiveness again, and we need to start developing them?

And so. I have collected some data:

1) Hirosaki, Japan. 19 objects flew from northeast to southwest in about one second. 15:57UTC, August 12 (local time 00:57, August 13.). There's clearly a Perseid here.

2) Russia, Ryazan. It was moving from north to southeast, flying over the convergence of Jupiter and Venus, the constellation "Charioteer", the star clusters "Pleiades" and "Hyades" from the constellation Taurus. The flight duration is 54 seconds. 23:30UTC, August 13 (local time 02:30, August 14). The Perseus radiant is not suitable because there is a Charioteer under Perseus, where the video starts from. It's probably space debris.

3) Antarctica, Vostok station. 10:00UTC on August 13 (local time is 16:00 on August 13). The direction is not yet known. But if you include a little knowledge, you can conclude that in the photo with a long meteor trail, there is a bright horizon on the right, which means the sun is under it, and a bright star on the left is Sirius. The trail on the right looks scattered, which means that the fireball was moving from the direction of the constellation Sectatus towards Sirius. The Perseus radiant is not suitable.

There are a lot of events in such a relatively short period of time )))

21 hours ago, Samrau said:

In fact, this happens due to the collapse of one larger body.

朝日新聞

青森上空に激レア「流星クラスター」発生　約1秒間に19個の流れ星：朝日新聞

13日未明、青森県上空で短時間に大量の流れ星が出現する「流星クラスター」が発生、青森県弘前市の「星と森のロマントピア天文台『銀河』」が撮影に成功した。活動中のペルセウス座流星群に由来し、非常にまれな…

I saw double or triple ones, but with an interval of several seconds.

I witnessed a similar explosion with about three or four smaller particles flashing then descending ultimately. Was awesome! This was also a Perseids event maybe 30 years ago. Edit: @Samrau that has to be the longest duration fireball video I have ever seen!! Totally magnificent dude! Thanks for posting it. Wherever it came from. Off-topic but if anyone knows when Elon plans to “deorbit ” some Starlinks it might make an interesting thread. 😊

Edited August 15Aug 15 by hamateur 1953
Typos and Star links burning up as entertainment value perhaps

3 hours ago, Samrau said:

And so. I have collected some data:

1) Hirosaki, Japan. 19 objects flew from northeast to southwest in about one second. 15:57UTC, August 12 (local time 00:57, August 13.). There's clearly a Perseid here.

2) Russia, Ryazan. It was moving from north to southeast, flying over the convergence of Jupiter and Venus, the constellation "Charioteer", the star clusters "Pleiades" and "Hyades" from the constellation Taurus. The flight duration is 54 seconds. 23:30UTC, August 13 (local time 02:30, August 14). The Perseus radiant is not suitable because there is a Charioteer under Perseus, where the video starts from. It's probably space debris.

3) Antarctica, Vostok station. 10:00UTC on August 13 (local time is 16:00 on August 13). The direction is not yet known. But if you include a little knowledge, you can conclude that in the photo with a long meteor trail, there is a bright horizon on the right, which means the sun is under it, and a bright star on the left is Sirius. The trail on the right looks scattered, which means that the fireball was moving from the direction of the constellation Sectatus towards Sirius. The Perseus radiant is not suitable.

There are a lot of events in such a relatively short period of time )))

Montana US, 05:15-05:30 local time(UTC-6)

https://cf.cdn.uplynk.com/ause1/slices/38c/08eb16cf8af2400d815b1b31a3092ff6/38c686356a2f4ffaa7e5d9edf7da7c0d/38c686356a2f4ffaa7e5d9edf7da7c0d_e.mp4

How do I embed the video? 👀

Edited August 15Aug 15 by Rudolph

1 hour ago, Rudolph said:

How do I embed the video? 👀

compress with a special program or online below 1mb

5 hours ago, Rudolph said:

Montana US, 05:15-05:30 local time(UTC-6)

https://cf.cdn.uplynk.com/ause1/slices/38c/08eb16cf8af2400d815b1b31a3092ff6/38c686356a2f4ffaa7e5d9edf7da7c0d/38c686356a2f4ffaa7e5d9edf7da7c0d_e.mp4

How do I embed the video? 👀

Very cool. Possibly what I have been hoping to view: starlink aluminium burnups. Edit: afterthoughts. Worked five countries on starlink burnups on 144 mhz @Pom 😎

Edited August 15Aug 15 by hamateur 1953
A new DX hypothetical category 😊

On 8/16/2025 at 12:58 AM, hamateur 1953 said:

Worked five countries on starlink burnups

From today on you shall be referred to as the inventor of space debris scatter (SDS).
Whenver VHF is flat, make your own DX. Just blow up some starlink satellite and point your antenna to it.

Ahoi
Pom

Edited August 17Aug 17 by Pom