Saw Two "Elongated Shooting Stars" east and then south

BTW: Meant to post this in The Gray Area. Weed is funny.


In a nutshell:

I was driving around my town, a small town in New Mexico, when I saw what I thought was a shooting star directly in the east. What threw me off is it grew a bit brighter and did not die out like shooting stars do. It flew at an impressive speed until it disappeared behind the mountains.

Then, later, I was following my friend home driving south when we saw one similar, although this one did not grow brighter, just looked like a shooting star that didn't seem to end. It was the same speed and we lost sight of it behind the mountains too.

So my best guess is a meteor shower. But would there really be a meteor shower that spread out? They were directly east and south, ninety degrees.

reply to post by PlanterZ


Wow you saw a "shooting star"

2nd line

reply to post by mileysubet



Shooting stars last 1-3 seconds max.

"2nd line"

Sounds like your regular ole fireball event no worries seen many. But thanks for posting your experience.

reply to post by Golithion



Ah that's what I figured because I remember seeing one of those last year but they were all in the same general area. I was just amazed they happened to be so far apart.

You get to make two wishes!!

reply to post by mileysubet


That comment does not help the OP's thread. If you have nothing worthy to say..well dont say anything. Derr!!

OP it sounds like you saw something quite special. I regularly see shooting starts and they are quite brief. The fact you said it was very long may indicate something else. Pics would have helped but I understand why you didnt get any.

And so it begins.
May God help us all.

I live in the Texas panhandle, and saw the same thing. I only saw the one to the east though. It happened at 8:46 PM central time so that woud have been 7:46 your time. I don't know if it was the exact same occurance, but it was identical to what you describe. I know the exact time because I had just grabbed my phone to call someone at the exact moment I saw it, and the phone logged the call time. It was low on the horizon, and seemed to last forever. 5-7 seconds easily, and it was big, really big. I would say half a full moon in appearance. It started out brilliant green, then had some flashes of blue then went pale yellow just before going out.

Here's the weird thing I swear I could still see the dark silhouette after it stopped burning. It could be the accomodation of rods, and cones in the eye, and the mind playing tricks, but the outline wasn't stationary, it tracked the same zenith as the lit object did for a few seconds before I lost it. I actually turned the police scanner on for an hour to hear if it hit someone's house or something.

I have watched the perseids, and other astronomical happenings many times. I love to catch meteor showers, and I have never seen one this big or that lasted even half as long. It looked just like a meteor, nothing unusual there. It was just really big, really low, and burned a really long time.

Binder, and PlantarZ--- Did the objects appear to have a fiery tail, trailing behind it?

Did it appear to be going as fast as a regular meteor? I believe, larger meteors, that travel horizontally thru our atmosphere, travel a bit slower than a micro-meteor

PlanterZ--- What was the color of the lighted object in the sky?


Thanks,

Erno86

reply to post by PlanterZ


Stop lacing your weed with '___' and you will stop seeing things!! One or the other bro, but stop mixing..

When did you see the fireball PlanterZ?

There was at least one nice fireball seen from a few states in the last day or so.

There are no major meteor showers active at this time, but random meteors are present throughout the year. There are over 1000 fireball class meteors around the world every day on average it's been estimated. Most occur over ocean, or in daylight and are not seen.

Originally posted by Erno86

Did it appear to be going as fast as a regular meteor? I believe, larger meteors, that travel horizontally thru our atmosphere, travel a bit slower than a micro-meteor

Actually, that's not quite right...

Micro-meteors are so small that they are quickly consumed, where as a large meteor will usually keep going for longer before it is consumed. All of this depends on the angle of entry/composition though - meteoroids that hit at a high angle will usually be consumed quickly and often explode due to the forces involved. If the angle is low, then the forces and stresses on the meteoroid will tend to be less, and the meteor will usually last longer.

Meteors that cross a large part of the sky are caused by meteoroids that graze the outer edge of the atmosphere, rather than plunge straight down. Since they are only grazing thin atmosphere at high altitude they do not "burn up" as quick. Some of the most impressive meteors I have seen have been such "earth-grazers".

Large meteoroids skimming the atmosphere if anything are not slowed down as much as a small meteoroid, which has little momentum in comparison, and what little it has tends to be quickly ablated away.

Of course perspective (weather the meteor was traveling towards you or at right angles to you) will heavily influence the apparent speed of a meteor. The longer meteor that PlanterZ saw later on would have been traveling at right angles to him, but bright/long lasting meteors with short paths are probably heading at least slightly towards the observer, and so would appear to be moving more slowly than if they were viewed at a right angle.

reply to post by C.H.U.D.


Thanks for the link to the meteor blog site that's really cool The photos look just like what I saw, but the time stamp is about 5 1/2 hours later than the one I saw. The ones photoed happened at 2:20am CDT. I saw this one at around 8:45pm. Maybe there was more activity than anticipated that night. The photo from the one in Hawley Tx is nice as it shows it in comparison to the moon, and you can really see how big these fireballs were. I wasn't exagerrating when I said it was half the size of a full moon, to the observer anyway.

Originally posted by Binder
I live in the Texas panhandle, and saw the same thing. I only saw the one to the east though. It happened at 8:46 PM central time so that woud have been 7:46 your time. I don't know if it was the exact same occurance, but it was identical to what you describe. I know the exact time because I had just grabbed my phone to call someone at the exact moment I saw it, and the phone logged the call time. It was low on the horizon, and seemed to last forever. 5-7 seconds easily, and it was big, really big. I would say half a full moon in appearance. It started out brilliant green, then had some flashes of blue then went pale yellow just before going out.

Here's the weird thing I swear I could still see the dark silhouette after it stopped burning. It could be the accomodation of rods, and cones in the eye, and the mind playing tricks, but the outline wasn't stationary, it tracked the same zenith as the lit object did for a few seconds before I lost it. I actually turned the police scanner on for an hour to hear if it hit someone's house or something.

I have watched the perseids, and other astronomical happenings many times. I love to catch meteor showers, and I have never seen one this big or that lasted even half as long. It looked just like a meteor, nothing unusual there. It was just really big, really low, and burned a really long time.

edit on 24-3-2011 by Binder because: (no reason given)

This sounds more like a satellite. The ISS can be very bright depending on reflections from the Sun.

reply to post by mbkennel


Only if the ISS has suffered a catastrophic failure, and burned up in the atmosphere this week. This sucker had a bright green/blue tail a thousand miles long. It moved WAY faster than the ISS. It covered a quarter of the distance from horizon to horizon in about 5 seconds. Look at the pictures in the link that C.H.U.D. posted. It shows exactly what I saw, but in B&W. If that's the space station then it WAS the space station, and the media is really covering something up!

reply to post by Binder


You're welcome Binder
The American Meteor Society also keep a log of all reported events that's available to view on line.

It's easy to underestimate how many fireballs occur, and some nights can be busy. Although we can't predict exactly which nights, we know that this time of year is "fireball season".

Regarding the fireball you saw, and the after image. It does sound like an optical illusion, a bit like the one Arbitrageur posted towards the bottom of this post (the rest of the thread is worth a read too IMO, and there are quite a few references to meteors later on) . I've also seen optical illusions where the after image will continue to move, like yours did. If I can find one I'll link to it here. Meteors can play quite a few tricks on our eyes.

I also agree that what the OP saw was unlikely to be the ISS from the description. The ISS is visibly quite slow in the sky, and the OP's description describes it as being fairly fast. If the OP takes the time to observe an ISS pass, and compare it to what he observed, that would rule out any doubt, if there is any...