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Fireball in central Massachusetts
Did anyone in the New England area happen to see the meteor/satellite
flameout at around 7:30 this evening? I was in Ware, Mass (reasonably close to the Quabbin reservoir). My daughter was with me, and we were getting into our car when she shrieked "Cool! Look at that!" By the time I turned around, the fireball was behind a house & a tree, so I said that it was Venus that she was seeing. Venus looked nice with a misty halo around it. In another second or so, the fireball came out from behind the house. It was a large object followed by a smaller one. In the 1/2 second that I watched it, I couldn't detect any loss of brightness. It was a good 2 seconds at least from when my daughter called out to when I lost sight of the object behind another house. She said that she saw it break up when she first glimpsed it. Based on its behavior, I'm guessing that it was a satellite breaking up on reentry, but I'm not certain. It was indeed very cool. Regards, Dave B. |
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Fireball in central Massachusetts
On Mon, 15 Mar 2004 23:11:53 -0500, "Dave Bartolini"
wrote: Did anyone in the New England area happen to see the meteor/satellite flameout at around 7:30 this evening? I was in Ware, Mass (reasonably close to the Quabbin reservoir). My daughter was with me, and we were getting into our car when she shrieked "Cool! Look at that!" By the time I turned around, the fireball was behind a house & a tree, so I said that it was Venus that she was seeing. Venus looked nice with a misty halo around it. In another second or so, the fireball came out from behind the house. It was a large object followed by a smaller one. In the 1/2 second that I watched it, I couldn't detect any loss of brightness. It was a good 2 seconds at least from when my daughter called out to when I lost sight of the object behind another house. She said that she saw it break up when she first glimpsed it. Based on its behavior, I'm guessing that it was a satellite breaking up on reentry, but I'm not certain. It was indeed very cool. I had similar reports from New York and Connecticut. There is a good chance this was a component of a Russian weather satellite system, the Molniya-M Platform, that had a predicted decay over the Eastern Seaboard at 7:31 EST (plus or minus a day). _________________________________________________ Chris L Peterson Cloudbait Observatory http://www.cloudbait.com |
#3
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Fireball in central Massachusetts
"Dave Bartolini" wrote in message ... Did anyone in the New England area happen to see the meteor/satellite flameout at around 7:30 this evening? I was in Ware, Mass (reasonably close to the Quabbin reservoir). My daughter was with me, and we were getting into our car when she shrieked "Cool! Look at that!" By the time I turned around, the fireball was behind a house & a tree, so I said that it was Venus that she was seeing. Venus looked nice with a misty halo around it. In another second or so, the fireball came out from behind the house. It was a large object followed by a smaller one. In the 1/2 second that I watched it, I couldn't detect any loss of brightness. It was a good 2 seconds at least from when my daughter called out to when I lost sight of the object behind another house. She said that she saw it break up when she first glimpsed it. Based on its behavior, I'm guessing that it was a satellite breaking up on reentry, but I'm not certain. It was indeed very cool. Regards, Dave B. Here is a posting from the SeeSat list. It sounds like it was the same thing you saw: --- From: Edward S Light While going out to observe some satellites, we saw a rapidly moving object pass between Alkaid (eta UMa) and Mizar (zeta UMa), moving horizontally to the right. It was moving very quickly, passing above Alkaid at approximately 19:27.7 EST (2004 March 16/00:27.7 UTC). It had a distinctive gold color and was as bright as Jupiter (mag -2.5). It left a trail and split into two major pieces, the largest one continuing onward into the trees (we didn't have time to move so that the trees wouldn't obscure its path). Did anyone else happen to see [or hear] of this? Was anything scheduled to reenter about that time over the NE USA? We've never seen a reentry, and have seen several meteors and my guess would be a reentering object, but I really don't know. (Alas, we were so surprised by this apparation that I didn't think to time its apparent angular velocity ) Clear and dark skies! Ed Light Lakewood, NJ, USA N 40.1075, W 074.2312, +24 m (80 ft) |
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Fireball in central Massachusetts
"Dave Bartolini" wrote in message ... Did anyone in the New England area happen to see the meteor/satellite flameout at around 7:30 this evening? I was in Ware, Mass (reasonably close to the Quabbin reservoir). You sure this wasn't a grey boy out of Dreamcatcher heading there? |
#5
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Fireball in central Massachusetts
"Chris L Peterson" wrote in message
... Did anyone in the New England area happen to see the meteor/satellite flameout at around 7:30 this evening? I had similar reports from New York and Connecticut. There is a good chance this was a component of a Russian weather satellite system, the Molniya-M Platform, that had a predicted decay over the Eastern Seaboard at 7:31 EST (plus or minus a day). Thanks Chris. This sounds like a good candidate. |
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