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I have been meaning to get in contact and have been reminded by your programme on Supernovae. In February this year (and since it has been so long I no longer have the exact date!) I was walking home from work at about 7pm, looking up to the north I saw a point of light become rapidly brighter and then disappear in the period of about 5-10 seconds.

Since then, I have been wondering what I saw and whether anyone else saw the same. Is it possible that this was a supernova? Do you have any records of naked-eye supernovae sightings from the south UK around this time?

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This is very intriguing, but I'm afraid it's not a supernova - even if the event occurred back in February, astronomers (amateur and professional) would have spotted it subsequently and it would have been well-studied by now. A naked-eye supernova is a very rare event (SN1987A reached naked-eye brightness, at V~3), and the event you describe is very short in duration (5-10 secs) but clearly very bright. The rise and subsequent decrease in brightness of a supernovae lasts days (rise) to months (fade) rather than a few seconds. Short timescale but incredibly intrinsically bright events like Gamma Ray Bursts fit the timescale you report, but have never been seen as anything other than extremely faint optical events (millions of times too faint for the human eye to detect).

You don't mention if the object appeared to be moving, even slightly, so I'm assuming it appeared to be fixed in the sky? This would seem to rule out things like meteor fireballs (unless the object was moving directly towards the observer), but it is possible that this was another Iridium satellite flare or a reflection off some other satellite. I would suspect, given the short timescale and apparent brightness of the event, that this is something close-by, possibly atmospheric or in near-Earth orbit, and would suspect that this is an Iridium flare - but maybe not!

It would be interesting to know if other viewers have seen anything similar, or have any other explanations for this sort of event.
Paul Roche
Final Frontier