copper debris falling ?

[janlameer]

Hi all !

Over the past two weeks I've seen two interesting fireballs, that were identical in nature but definitely from a different radiant.
Location 30 km north of Amsterdam, Netherlands, aproximately 52 degrees North 5 degrees East.

They both had the same brightness : about minus six magnitude, and the same speed: a bit faster than an average Taurid, but still "slow".
What was interesting was the combined green-white color and the flame structure of the fireball, about twenty arc minutes in diameter, not round but rather a "flame" with the bright green in the "top" of the flame and the bright white following it.
Both meteors faded out in about half a second and no trails were seen.

If I remember correctly the first one was seen in the night from Friday to Saturday 10/11 October 2008 around 01:18 MEZT with a radiant more or less in Taurus. So I thought, hm, early Taurids this year, strange color for a Taurid, since in my memory Taurids are rather yellowish.

The second one I saw Tuesday evening 21 October 2008 , around 21:30 MEZT with a radiant near the west south west horizon, so definitely not a Taurid or Orionid.

The colors, size, shape and speed of both fireballs were exactly the same, both within ten days, while I cannot remember having ever seen fireballs like these.

So my guess is these are small satellite pieces falling down, perhaps still from the Jules Verne spacecraft.

I saw that there have been a few fireball observations lately, perhaps they are from the same original object ???

greetings, Jan Lameer