Thank you for posting. Yes, a fireball over Texas; I read a few witness reports this morning (some posted below). This is a strangest looking fireball video I have ever seen; slow but very bright (magnitude -13) without a prominent plasma tail. Can anyone speculate why "white plasma" debris is not observed trailing from a reentering object this bright? Chris Zietkiewicz >From www.spaceweather.com Eye-witness Daryn Morran reports: "At approximately 756pm CST, over Abilene, Texas, I saw an object falling from the sky much brighter and long-lasting than anything I've seen. [The fireball] lasted close to 8 secs before completely burning out. At first, it was bright white, and then started slowing down and getting brighter. Then it exploded like a firecracker artillery shell into several pieces, flickered a few more times and then slowly burned out... awesome!!!" Another observer in Coppell, Texas, reported a "double boom heard at 8:00:30 CST. [The object appeared to be] 1/2 the size of the waxing moon, and broke into two major chucks with many smaller pieces. It had a 'white plasma' (sun-colored) look with a long golden tail." (This report was relayed by NWS meteorologist Joe Harrris in Frt Worth.) According to Bill Cooke of NASA's Meteoroid Environment Office, this was probably a natural object--a small asteroid about the size of a car or bus--not a decaying satellite or other manmade space debris. The fireball, which disintegrated in the general vicinity of Dallas-Fort Worth, was bright enough to be seen on NASA cameras located in New Mexico more than 500 miles away. "It was about as bright as the full Moon (astronomical magnitude -13)," estimates Cooke, who is still analyzing data and sighting reports in hopes of calculating the object's orbit. He might yet figure out where the Texas fireball came from. Stay tuned for updates. -----Original Message----- From: seesat-l-bounces+mtnresearch=gmail.com@satobs.org [mailto:seesat-l-bounces+mtnresearch=gmail.com@satobs.org] On Behalf Of Jesus Leonardo Pacheco Fajardo Sent: Thursday, February 02, 2012 3:15 PM To: seesat-l@satobs.org Subject: Fireball over Texas A fireball was observed by a police car camera last night http://www.spaceweather.com/images2012/02feb12/dashcam.mov?PHPSESSID=9esf2fd pkuumlcs7dkva6350f3 -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: http://mailman.satobs.org/mailman/private/seesat-l/attachments/20120202/9dee 10f1/attachment.html _______________________________________________ Seesat-l mailing list http://mailman.satobs.org/mailman/listinfo/seesat-l _______________________________________________ Seesat-l mailing list http://mailman.satobs.org/mailman/listinfo/seesat-l
This archive was generated by hypermail 2b29 : Thu Feb 02 2012 - 23:04:48 UTC