What henkster mentioned about sound — that is something that observers have reported from time to time, it probably has to do with how near the object is once it reaches the lower atmosphere.
Each time since childhood that I’ve tried lying out in the cool grass watching for ‘shooting stars’ I’ve gotten bored and just come inside for the night. Except for one time, the only things I’ve seen have been that quick motion detected in my peripheral vision, which leaves nothing by the time I’ve turned my head; occasionally I’ve been looking dead-on, but there’s been almost no ‘streak’ because these objects (usually smaller than one’s thumb, or even thumbnail) burn up after a second and ten to twenty miles of upper atmosphere.
The one I saw in 2002 happened during the day, and while it made no noise that I could hear, and I never heard anything about it on the news and whatnot, someone pointed it out, asking me, “is that a shooting star?” He’d been watching it for at least a few seconds by that time, and I watched it perhaps ten seconds before it sank below the trees and hills and whatnot. It was large enough at whatever distance it was to appear irregular in shape and tumbling, leaving a trail of light and dark, as it was apparently falling apart. Wish I had vid of that.
This is my photo shop representation of what I saw.
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.
This happened in April of last year.
I guess I observed it for 10 seconds and lost it when a tree was in the way.
No sound or boom, didn't see the final outcome because of the tree.
Even made a thread about it.