Thursday, April 15, 2010

Fireball in the Sky


Last night I was sitting on my front porch gazing at the sky just in time to see a huge fireball blazing down into the distance and disappearing. I was pleased to have seen such an especially large and close meteor, but thought nothing more about it until this morning.

Then this came to my attention. The skies in northern Illinois lit up last night when a meteor apparently created a strange and enormous ball of fire that flashed for but a second.

See a time-lapse gif of the event here. The lines in the sky are apparently unrelated jet trails.

NBC says the fireball was reported seen from faraway points such as Milwaukee and St. Louis around 10pm last night. I saw no explosive fireball, but I did see the mother of all meteors at right about that time, so I have to wonder if there was more than one, and if what I saw wasn't the same one seen in Illinois. It has also been suggested the phenomena could be space junk re-entering the Earth's atmosphere rather than a meteor.

See video of the fireball over Wisconsin here. This is very similar to what I saw here in Louisville, but I saw no explosion-like flash.

Anyone else see this thing?

2 comments:

The Grey Ghost said...

I didn't see it, but I've been reading about it. The National Weather Service is suggesting it was a meteor too, but don't meteors move a little faster than this during entry? I'm guessing space junk.

Or the last son of a dying planet.

=SHOW= said...

I was at a friends house in Union County Kentucky, and we were standing outside when my friend said he seen a shooting star that was red and very low. He said it looked like a plane crashing or something. I did not see it, but I did see what I thought was flash lightning, but I guess was the fireball, I don't know.