Hundreds Spot Fireballs In Colorado, Nearby States

pingpong writes "Hundreds of people in Colorado and 7 surrounding states have reported seeing "fireballs" in the night sky. They are described as being 10 to 15 times larger than a normal shooting star and bluish in color. Two people even claimed to see one land, but it has yet to be found. The Daily Camera is reporting it online here." Field reports invited.

Explanation needed

[Drunken Coward]

I think this guy [slashdot.org] owes us an explanation. Does he know something we should know?

Better story

[jasoncart]

Over at the Denver Post [denverpost.com]

New Zealand as well...

[j3110]

After looking around for more info, I found a cnn article [cnn.com] describing another event like this only a few days ago.

Re:And the UK...

[thesurfaces.net]

... only 2 days ago:

Story on the BBC News site [bbc.co.uk]

Also in Southern IL early Monday morning

[Anonymous Coward]

I don't know if this is related or simply a coincidence. I was driving north on I-55 very early on Monday morning. I was somewhere around Springfield, IL, when a flash in front of me and slightly to my left and slightly above, maybe at 30 degrees, caught my attention. I didn't see the original event very well, since it was just in my peripheral vision, but I saw a very bright green tail that stayed lit for about two seconds. Unfortunately, since I was driving all night I don't remember now exactly where I was or what time it was, but it should have been around 2:00 am +/- 1 hour.

It was much more spectacular than anything I'd seen before. And this includes last year's Leonid meteor shower, which I watched in New Mexico, at 7,000 feet of elevation, and far away from city lights (and not behind a dirty windshield!). So this one was really something. It broke a very boring drive and helped keep me awake, thinking about it.

Picture of the Fireballs

[Grip3n]

If you're like me, you *want* to see some pictures.

http://www.cloudbait.com/science/fireballs.html [cloudbait.com]

Quite a bit of extra information is on this site as well.

Re:Could it be?

[echosilex]

Cu by itself burns blue/green, but CuCl2 is used to make the blue color seen in fireworks. Other copper compounds would work, too, but copper(II) chloride is the most common.

There were a bunch of these in the UK this week

[Varitek]

BBC News story (scroll down a little) [bbc.co.uk]

More likely it's an old one

[c0y]

http://comets.amsmeteors.org/meteors/showers/eta_c etids.html

"This stream ... seems to possess very weak, almost nonexistent
activity, with occasional fireballs thrown in. The duration of activity
stretches from September 20 to November 2, while the maximum occurs
during the first week of October..."

Re:Different directions?

[ColaMan]

Actually there is a term called the 'radiant' when discussing meteor showers - all the meteors in a particular stream will appear to come from the same patch of sky, radiating outwards.

It's similar to bugs heading towards your windscreen - they all appear to originate from one point (ahead on the highway) but as they get closer they radiate out and hit different parts of the windscreen from your perspective.

I presume that at this time the radiant was close to 90 degrees overhead - then they would appear to be heading in different directions.

Re:Could it be?

[Anonymous Coward]

Oh my god, LOL!

Re:Witness

[sniggly]

with an almost horizontal trajectory that can happen, the object would be streaking through the medium layers of the atmosphere, all the while evaporating its layers until it expires in a puff or blows up because of too much heat. There's no sound because the explosion could happen quite far away in what is a relatively thin medium so there isn't much sound. I've seen one explode too and waited for what in my mind would be a big booming sound, but nothing came.

Re:Could it be?

[Loligo]

A quick Google for electric pickle turns up some pictures and even movies here [membrane.com].

Along the same lines as the eletric pickle (but totally irrelevant to the rest of the topic), there's always the sparking grape trick [pmichaud.com].

-l

Fireballs in France too

[dolmen.fr]

Hey, I'm not the only one to have seen this!!

I live in France, in Choisy-le-Roi, at 12 km of Paris.
At about 20:00 UTC (22:00 localtime) with (+-10 minutes of error), I've seen one fireball falling. I don't know the size and the distance at which it falled. But the direction was 170 degrees from my position. It didn't falled directly from up to down but with a small deviation from east to west.

I've called the local autorithy (Gendarmerie Nationale) at about 23:40 (localtime) but they said they had no other report.

Am I the only one to have seen this in France ?

Re:Fireballs in France too

[dolmen.fr]

Correction: the small (less than 10 degrees) deviation was from west to east. 170 degrees is the azimuth of the land point.

I've seen it trough a window, while watching TV. The land point was hidden to me by the house of one of my neighboors.

Fireball in Russia also reported

[Anonymous Coward]

Apparently another one landed in Russia - there is a fresh impact crater reported at wired.com

Re:Better story

[SEWilco]

The usual meteor is a few millimeters, but its plasma plume is much larger. You can see an aircraft strobe at 30,000 feet (that's only 6 miles) but a meteor is much further and has to be brighter than that.

The AMS [amsmeteors.org] has a FAQ on the subject which includes brightness info. It also points out that nickel tends to produce the green color.

Also, there probably is a correlation between your bus-waiting guy and these other sightings. If you're in the northern hemisphere...there is more darkness right now than a few weeks ago. Easier to see meteors.

Re:Could it be?

[Anonymous Coward]

Stick a couple of old forks in a pickle...

Just make sure you do this OUTSIDE. You leave it going for a while and it starts to smoke. Burnt pickle smells nasty as hell.

(it also works with a couple of large nails if you don't have any spare forks)

Re:Better story

[Brainless]

http://comets.amsmeteors.org/meteors/showers/eta_c etids.html

Military testing

[Anonymous Coward]

There were a number of rumors of certain advanced aircraft being developed during the Reagan and elder Bush administrations. These dried up during the Clinton years (well, the DNC -did- sell our nuclear secrets to the People's Liberation Army in exchange for campaign contributions)

Now Bush jr. is in office for perhaps long enough for these to have been removed from mothballs and are again being tested, perhaps on an accelerated schedule.

These may include the diamond shaped craft and the boomerang shaped craft seen in Canada last week.

Pulse jets with orbital capability, plasma emissions to lower air resistance and increase lift, etc, could plausibly all be in testing at present.

Recall the UFO sightings prior to the unveiling of the late 70s technology B-2 bombers?

If they all had the same radiant, with random arrival times and locations, I'd be inclined to think a cometary debris field (though I'd expect lots of non-fireballs as well). But this is not the case.

One such object apparently crashed in northern Russia last week.

Re:No Photos?

[andrewski]

The 'they' that you refer to is retinal imprint - and it doesn't always go away. I have one from a flash in the face that has been with me for 15 years or so now.

So, please don't shine a bright light directly into your eye. Not that you would anyway... Would you??