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It could be a star, a planet, an airplane, a meteorite, or even a satellite. I have been fooled by all of them into thinking I had seen something unexplained. The key is to keep looking and do your research.

Stars tend to twinkle - planets do not typically twinkle unless under certain atmospheric conditions – haze, high humidity, but will usually appear as a bright and steady light, brighter than any stars. And neither stars or planets move perceptively, at least not to the human eye over a relatively short time span of normal observation and they will seem to be stationary in sky in relation to other celestial objects. An airplane or satellite will move. An airplane can seem to be stationary for a time if you and the airplane are in the right position with the airplane flying directly toward your viewing perspective but will eventually move and more rapidly the closer it gets toward or away from your line of sight (if that makes sense).

As for a meteorite – there’s no way to mistake that for either a star, a planet, an airplane or a satellite or for anything else as it moves rapidly across the sky, sometimes with a tail and sometimes breaking apart into several smaller fireballs, sometimes appearing white, orange or green.

I had just finished the 2nd grade in the early summer of 1969 in Camp Hill, PA. It was a beautiful clear, warm not yet hot or muggy night in early June and my best friend Kay who lived a few houses away and I were playing in my back yard, well after sunset while my mother was sitting on the back patio reading a magazine under the back porch light, keeping an eye out on us.

We had been chasing and catching fireflies but then started playing, as best as I can remember “Cat Women from Mars”; pretending we were astronauts landing on a strange planet (the back yard) inhabited by “Cat Women” and fighting them with our pretend “phasers” (wooden sticks) and capturing them (fireflies) in our force fields (pickle jars). “Pwew! Pwew! Pwew!” Running around and having great fun playing in the dark, a rare treat.

You’ve also got to keep in mind that the Apollo missions were in full swing and Apollo 11 was launching that July and my whole family but especially my dad and I were very much into watching all the launches and following all the coverage quite intently.

I had a complete model Apollo 11 craft including a lunar lander that IIRC came in a box of Captain Crunch cereal and a lunar map from a National Geographic and a world map and I used to play and “practice” launches from Cape Canaveral and Moon landings and splash downs in the Pacific using the ships from my brother’s Battle Ship game as the recovery ships, mimicking what I’d seen with earlier Apollo missions on TV and what Apollo 11 was expected to do. And our family were also fans of both Star Trek and the Batman TV shows. As a result, I had both a keen scientific interest and a very vivid imagination.

As Kay and I were battling the “Cat Women from Mars”, all of a sudden the ground lit up as bright as if it was daytime and as I looked up I saw the most amazing sight.

A blue-green sort of turquoise colored ball of the most intense color and brilliance, a color I can still vividly remember all these years later but have never quite seen before or since - a color I know in my mind’s eye but have never been able to quite describe or point out as being the exact same color, with a tail of silver, sort of like a stream of silver colored sparklers streaming behind it. It was there and gone in a flash but for a brief moment I saw it. I was both awed and scared out of my wits. And then there was the sound - a whistling sort of screaming sound as it passed by right over our heads.

My mom saw too and jumped out of her chair on the patio, her magazine and glass of ice tea falling to the ground.

My older brother had been in his room listening to a baseball game on his transistor radio and saw the bright flash of light and came out side, to the back patio to see if we, my mother and I had seen it too.

Kay and I thought it might actually be the “real” “Cat Women from Mars”, but my mom and older brother had more serious concerns being this was the Cold War era, could it have been a Russkie rocket, a Nuke?

My mom was concerned enough to wake up my dad, my dad working a construction job that got him up a 4AM and to bed very early. Meanwhile my brother scanned all the AM radio station for any news. By now my friend Kay was in tears.

When my dad, after being woken up, was told what we saw, he said “You saw a meteorite, congratulations and I’m sorry I missed it but I’m going back to sleep now”. And he did.

My brother walked my friend Kay home and when he returned, found a local AM radio talk/news station that was reporting the strange sighting coming in to them from listener’s phone calls to the station.

The next day some local astronomers confirmed it was indeed a meteorite. While it appeared big and brilliant, by the time it flew over our house, it was probably quite small, the size of a baseball or even much smaller, as small as a marble perhaps, likely iron-nickel in composition hence the blue-green color and appeared to have last been seen near Peter’s Mountain north of Harrisburg and west of Fort Indian Town Gap, either having burned up completely before hitting the ground or being so small as to not leave a crater and still to this day, yet to be found.

It was the most amazing thing I’ve ever seen.

About two years ago I did see a fireball meteor as I was coming home late from work one night. It was quite a distance away, just above the horizon, big white ball and tail that broke up into about 3 or 4 pieces before disintegrating. Beautiful, but not as beautiful as the “Cat Women from Mars” meteor.