Posted on 04/06/2012 11:10:52 PM PDT by The Cajun
Just saw the most impressive meteor I’ve ever seen in my 65 years.
At 5 minutes past midnight was doing my usual walk around outside the house and tractor barn and saw a meteor about 45 degrees off of the northern horizon moving from east to west.
Had visual for approximately 5 seconds as it covered 1/3 of the sky.
Pretty slow compared to other meteors I have seen.
The front was orange-yellow and green towards the back.
What made it really unusual is that even with my old eyes, I could see debris, greenish in color, falling downward fairly close to the back of it.
My first impression was, holy crap, that's close.
Lost sight of it when a tree was in the way and couldn't regain sight of it when I ran to the backside of the tree.
I waited for a sonic boom, but heard none.
Could have been space junk, but that normally moves from west to east and this thing was moving from due east to west.
The only reason I'm typing this up is because I was really impressed with it, never saw a trail like that and one that apparently slow.
That's what I was thinking. But did you see a glowing ball?
Hey, Cajun....luvyabro, but pull out your dictionary.....
What you saw was not a meteor, but a meteorite - or satellite debris falling back to earth........
old Science teacher......
I saw one like that in 1987, around midnight, on I-64 between Richmond and Williamsburg, VA. It traveled south to north and was visible from North Carolina to New York. A huge fireball. Most people only get to see one or two like that in a lifetime.
Still reminds me of the words of Thomas Jefferson, “I can sooner believe that a couple of Yankee professors would lie than believe that rocks fall from the sky.” Even healthy skepticism is ocassionally proven wrong.
I saw a fireball in West Virginia once. Was chaperoning for my daughter’s HS summer band camp. Each night, two chaperones had to sit out at the gate separating the girls’ lodging from the boys’. The chaperone mom was facing east, I was facing west. Clear, moonless night - perfect night for a camper rendezvous so we drank coffee to stay alert.
All of a sudden about 2:00am it streaked across the sky in front of me. It only stayed in view for a second or two before it disappeared somewhere into the WV mountains. I was the only one who saw it - the mom chaperone only saw a flash of light, and she thought someone had flashed a camera.
Might be a dumb coon-ass, but got my eors, rites and oids all figured out...........Know what I mean?
Hope you didn't teach too many kids backasswards stuff..........Know what I mean?
Do you realize, on a cosmic basis, how close you came to buying it? A space rock just came hurtling straight at you at 20,000 MPH and missed you by only a few miles. (Read my tagline).
This is my photo shop representation of what I saw.
Tried to do it while it was still fresh in my mind.
The front end was a lot, lot brighter than I can represent.
The green and a few white sparkles were a lot, lot brighter also.
Seeing it dynamically moving, the sparkles would burn out and constantly be refreshed by new ones, kind of like a fireworks sparkler.
Would have thought the sparkle trail would have had more of a slant to it because of speed, but it didn't, struck me as kind of odd, but I have never seen one with this much detail.
*Any who*, that's basically how it looked.
I never think in terms of a cosmic basis, heck I never think in terms of things north of I-10 :^)
Pretty cool. You shoulda bought a lottery ticket that night! :-)
Heck, I won $9.00 on the Mega Millions 600 million dollar one last week, that used up my good luck for the rest of the year, LOL.
Could be the "sparkle trail" are pieces that broke off at high altitude (and continued to break up) and are "flying in formation" with the main body. They will tend slow up more quickly because of the surface area to mass ratio is and hence drag relative to mass is much larger, creating the "slant angle" effect you were looking for.
A couple of Germans in the 18th century did triangulation measurements of meteors seen during a meteor shower and came up with a altitude of 100 km (60 miles) for the altitude at which meteor trails are visible, a number which has held up well in the modern era of radar and astrophotography. At 100 km the atmosphere is very thin and friction is a lot less than on earth, so the atmospheric braking is a lot less than one might expect.
Some meteors actually bounce off the atmosphere and continue back into space.
Now you got me thinking, could have been that way and I was just assuming they were *flaking* off the main body instead of flying in formation with it, interesting perspective.
I’d just be cussing myself for not having the right camera, out and ready, and recording the moment.
I’ve seen (actually “analyzed”) radar tracks of the debris clouds from the Kosmos/Iridium collision and the USA-193/Aegis shoot down, as well as innumerable missile launches (and spent a couple months studying meteor trail backscatter clutter in HF radar) so your picture looked familiar, except you didn’t use matlab to draw it ;)
The most impressive meteor I ever saw was at 29 Palms, CA in the mid 80’s. Our training exercise had ended for the day and I was getting ready to hit the rack. I was admiring the stars in the desert sky for a moment when I saw this fiery ball more or less stationary. It lasted for about 4-5 seconds and then disappeared. It didn’t streak across the sky and there was no noise. Just a circular ball of fire. My guess is I saw a meteor coming straight at my location that burned up high in the atmosphere.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OZVBfiZvZos
might seem familiar. The difference in circumstances between a rock breaking up and loss of human life is stark, but the tracks are similar.
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