South Australia Desert Meteor ~6:20 pm 24APR2011

24APR2011 South Australia Desert Meteor ~6:20 pm (c) Chris Handler 

South Australia Desert Meteor ~6:20 pm 24APR2011
This bolide appeared over the South Australian desert last night When I first noticed it, it was about as bright as the international space station (mag -4), but moving much quicker. It suddenly flared up very brightly, then started to fragment. There where about a dozen fragments in total, all of them trailing very smokey tales. By this point it was bright enough to throw shadows, and maybe just of the brightness of the full moon. All the fragments soon faded, and a trail lasted in the sky for about ten seconds. The bolide itself lasted about seven seconds. We waited for a sonic boom, but there wasn't any. Here's the thing though. I was just setting my camera up for some star scape shots, and managed to turn my camera around quick enough to catch most of it. I missed the first 3-4 seconds because I have a 2 second timer on to steady the shot, but caught the majority of it. Unfortunately I was using a high ISO so it's a bit noisy, but I'm still stoked. It wasn't a Lyrid either because it traveled from roughly NE to W. This happened around 6:20pm Australian central standard time. I was about 10km south of a small town called Parachilna and my coordinates where -31.218,138.404 In the photo, north is about a 1/3 from the left hand side.
Cheers, Chris Handler