Reunion Island object - fireball/bolide

[Montrealgirl]

Any idea what this is? We took this Photo here on Reunion island. In the eastern sky, moving south to north around 7pm Reunion time on Oct. 25th.
The large crescent shape dissipated within seconds. The smaller object stayed in the sky longer, maybe a minute. We thought it might have been a rocket re entry but there was nothing showing as having launched. Could it have been a fireball/bolide? Looking for answers.

 

[John J.]

Hi @Montrealgirl, welcome.

A few questions:
Is the photo's lower edge roughly parallel with the horizon?

Did the smaller bright object move in a straight line as far as you can tell? Or in a curve, or move in some other way?
How did it "vanish", e.g. did it seem to suddenly disappear, or gradually lose brightness, or travel beneath the horizon?

Did you hear anything unusual?

If it was visible for about a minute, it might be unlikely to be a natural bolide, but it can be difficult to estimate duration of an exciting event.

The famous daylight fireball seen over North America in 1972 was visible along a path hundreds of miles long, and is estimated to have been in the atmosphere for approx. 100 seconds, but to any given observer was probably visible for a few tens of seconds at most.
1972 Great Daylight Fireball, Wikipedia; footage below posted by YouTube user bailesie in 2010


Source: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KcsJ6e8S5lA


Found this photo, "Astronomy Picture of the Day" 2nd March 2009 on a NASA webpage*, https://apod.nasa.gov/apod/ap090302.html

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*The NASA webpage has a header stating, "Due to the lapse in federal government funding, NASA is not updating this website. We sincerely regret this inconvenience" which I think is really sad.
Surely it can't have cost that much to show amazing pictures which might spark an interest in science in children/ young people, and some of those images are the result of extraordinary American research accomplishments. Then again, I'm not an American taxpayer.

 

[Montrealgirl]

Thank you for your answer, you are most definitely correct. Time is so difficult to estimate, especially when so focused on an event. It seemed longer than it actually was I'm sure. The 'shield' disappeared suddenly, the more distinct object took longer and seemed more gradual.
It did look like it was travelling straight and paralell to the horizon and no, there was no sound.
After I posted this question, I continued to do some research. A friend of mine suggested that it might have been a space x launch (I thought my friend who was with me had checked), so I was able to easily discover that there was indeed a launch at the same time. Do you think this is likely what my image is?

 

[flarkey]

it looks very much like a SpaceX rocket launch to me. So if there was a launch not long before then that's probably what it was.

 

[John J.]

Satellite Starlink-1336 (ID 45557) was predicted to re-enter the Earth's atmosphere on 25 October 2025, but perhaps not near Reunion and the times don't match very well (re-entry time estimated at 11:44 UTC ± 1 hour, so 15:44 ± 1 hour Reunion time.

Yellow Icon – location of object at midpoint of reentry window
Blue Line – ground track uncertainty prior to middle of the reentry window (ticks at 5-minute intervals)
Yellow Line – ground track uncertainty after middle of the reentry window (ticks at 5-minute intervals)

Map, information from Aerospace Corporation website https://aerospace.org/reentries/45557.
At first glance I thought the end of the yellow line indicated an estimated landing site, but I think I was wrong. Objects in low Earth orbits take approx. 90 minutes to complete an orbit, so ± 1 hour gives a lot of leeway in where a re-entering LEO object might land...

Starlink-2696 was also predicted to re-enter on the 25th October at 20:38 UTC ± 2 hours, i.e. between 22:38 (25th October) and 02:38 (26th October) Reunion time.

The Aerospace Corporation website has a database of re-entries ("Debris, Unknown, Payload, Rocket Body"), https://aerospace.org/reentries.
I don't know how comprehensive the database is or how accurate the estimates are.

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Interestingly, found these, from 2017 and 2022. Reunion is a bolide magnet!

"Phénomène lumineux observé à La Réunion, un "bolide" ?" (machine translated, "Luminous phenomenon observed in Reunion Island, a "bolide"?"), LINFO.RE website, 15 September 2017 https://www.linfo.re/la-reunion/soc...n-lumineux-observe-a-la-reunion-une-meteorite

From 10 June 2022, YouTube poster Patrice Huet:

A 19h02 Temps Universel le vendredi soir 13 mai 2022, une brillante boule de feu (bolide) est passée au sud de l'île de La Réunion.

("At 19:02 Universal Time on Friday evening, May 13, 2022, a brilliant fireball (bolide) passed south of the island of Reunion.")


Source: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ViTL0LFhoFU

 

[flarkey]

Just to provide some evidence that it was Starlink 11-12 that you saw....

The rocket was launched from Vandenberg California at 1420hrs UTC ,
https://flightclub.io/result/3d?llId=b99e48e1-e424-4b4f-8523-a19259d6a6c6

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Starlink_and_Starshield_launches#Starlink_launches

.....it would have been over Reunion Island about 50 mins later, so 1510UTC.

https://flightclub.io/result/3d?llId=b99e48e1-e424-4b4f-8523-a19259d6a6c6

Launched at 1420 UTC so over Reunion Island at 1510hrs UTC , plus 4hrs makes it 1910hrs local, which matches your "moving south to north around 7pm Reunion time".

 

[Mendel]

Is the crescent shape an optical phenomenon caused by moisture in the air?

 

[jarlrmai]

As far as I know it's the shell of gasses from various rocket burns.

 

[Montrealgirl]

Very cool guys! Appreciate your time and attention to our little mystery, but clearly mystery no more. It seems like there is just so much 'stuff' in our atmosphere now, there's bound to much more UFO in our skies and probably more visitors to your forum.

 

[FatPhil]

Very cool guys! Appreciate your time and attention to our little mystery, but clearly mystery no more. It seems like there is just so much 'stuff' in our atmosphere now, there's bound to much more UFO in our skies and probably more visitors to your forum.

Thank you for an actually interesting case to look at!

 

[AmberRobot]

*The NASA webpage has a header stating, "Due to the lapse in federal government funding, NASA is not updating this website. We sincerely regret this inconvenience" which I think is really sad.
Surely it can't have cost that much to show amazing pictures which might spark an interest in science in children/ young people, and some of those images are the result of extraordinary American research accomplishments. Then again, I'm not an American taxpayer.

It's not about the amount of money it is that during a government shutdown the majority of federal workers are not allowed to work. So, whoever usually updated that website is currently furloughed.

 

[jdog]

Very cool guys! Appreciate your time and attention to our little mystery, but clearly mystery no more. It seems like there is just so much 'stuff' in our atmosphere now, there's bound to much more UFO in our skies and probably more visitors to your forum.

That's for sure!

Five SpaceX launches in the last week alone, from different parts of the United States, and yet another one today, with more than 8,800 Starlink satellites already in orbit. And they're not the only constellation.

Plus one or two Starlink satellites deorbiting every day, what goes up having to come down at some point...

 

[John J.]

It's not about the amount of money it is that during a government shutdown the majority of federal workers are not allowed to work.

Yes, I'd forgotten that there's a US government shutdown at present.