Stunning Lyrid Fireballs!

Did anyone else see any fireballs on Sat night?

I was doing a Lyrid watch on Sat/Sun morning from 01.50 - 04.20 local time from the country with my sister. The activity was great and i logged 49 meteors during that period. Most of the Lyrids were faint and appeared rather close to the radiant. At 02.30 we wintessed a stunning Lyrid fireball not far from the zenith at a rough mag of - 8 or -9. It was a brillant rapid moving elongated streek of intense white light that reminded me of the shape of a Tanto (Japanese Knife). The fireball lit up the surrounding fields, trees and road and left behind an incredible brightly glowing smoke trail shaped like a snake, white in colour with a tinge of red on its NW section. The trail lasted for approx 1 min duration. This was my sisters first fireball sighting and she described it as scary. John Mc Connell also observed it and the meteor stations at Armagh and by Robert Cobain picked the object up. 15 Mins later there was a second fireball high in the north that lit the clouds up again. Did anyone else see anything?

Martin,
It was cloudy and raining here on Saturday night but I was out for an hour last night from 0:00 till about 1:15, mainly looking at the comet 73P SW but did see two very bright meteors. Both were -3 to -4 in magnitude and both could be traced back twoards Lyra.

Considering most of the time was spent at the eyepiece there could have been many more that I missed.

Thanks for that Micheal.

Hi Martin

Like michael I was out for an hour or so also, and did pretty much the same, looked at comet and galaxies, I did spot two meteors however, not as bright as michaels, one about -2 to -3 and quite a distance from radiant and the other a little dimmer but close to lyra

Thanks very much for the info Trevor!