Meteor/Fireball seen over southern NJ!

Hey, was driving eastbound in north Vineland around 1:15 when I saw what seemed to be a meteor.. it was breaking apart, was maybe 3000 feet above the ground, descending and heading from south to north.. toward the town of Malaga. just called their PD to see if my story could be corroborated and their lines are busy!

Just an amazing sight. Hope no one is hurt. Did stop at 7/11 and someone there had seen it too. Just wanted to post this thread to see if anyone else had seen it...

This sucker was BIG. I have seen the Perseids, was an amateur astronomer for a while, but I mean yeah. The size of a plane landing at a nearby airfield when it's half a mile up or so. It was glowing white and bits were breaking off as it passed my line of sight.. wanted to follow but lost it.


Still need to post more introductions to get into regular topics, thought this was a good one =)

reply to post by andboycott


1:15 am* bout half hour ago, should clarify. Didn't have time to snap a video

That must have been what I saw just north of Reading PA... it came in real low from west to east and then took a turn to the northeast before "exploding"...

To be quite honest the way it appeared I thought it was a helicopter flying out of the airport that was going down... the perspective just looked way off for it to have been a meteor... but it was right about 1:10-12 it passed over here... so I'm guessing it was what you saw...

Saw it over nyc , queens, it definitely looked like the planes from laguardia airport (low in the sky), 2000 fts max.

then more like a meteor with debris....

reply to post by SwissMarked


I suppose it could have been moving northwest.. familiar with Reading but if this is the case it must have been a lot higher and bigger than what I originally thought.. ???

And it was definitely moving mostly south to north and maybe east to west, what I saw, are these different occurrences?

Originally posted by prouvencao
Saw it over nyc , queens, it definitely looked like the planes from laguardia airport (low in the sky), 2000 fts max.

then more like a meteor with debris....

That's exactly what I thought... there are a lot of helicopters and small planes flying out of the airport here at all hours so at first when I saw the white light while I was sitting at a traffic light I just thought it was a helicopter... because of the apparent altitude but then it appeared to bank sharp to the left after what looked like traveling a couple thousand feet and then exploded...

I actually drove up on top of the mountain here to see if I could see emergency vehicles going to a "crash site" but there was nothing anywhere so I came back home and saw this...

Originally posted by andboycott
reply to post by SwissMarked

 

I suppose it could have been moving northwest.. familiar with Reading but if this is the case it must have been a lot higher and bigger than what I originally thought.. ???

And it was definitely moving east to west, what I saw, are these different occurrences?

edit on 3-1-2012 by andboycott because: (no reason given)

That's the thing... I just don't get how it could appear so low in the sky at three locations that are more than 90+ miles apart and seem to be traveling slow enough to appear to be some sort of aircraft... I've never seen any sort of meteor or "shooting star" traveling that slow or look as though it's that close...

I suppose it's possible it was separate events... but it's rather odd it would have been in the same time frame unless it was something real big that broke into several parts...

reply to post by SwissMarked


Yeah well no offense but what I saw wasn't a helicopter burning up or a plane, Queens and Reading are both about or over 100 miles away (as you said) so these had to be different events. It looked like a meteor burning up in the sky, somewhat low in altitude (maybe it was about 2 miles up, but that's the max)

Pieces were breaking off this thing similar to what you'd see if a meteor happened to be falling. And all the police lines were tied up in local towns, i think this may be a different event

And, should this not have been so high up and so colossal, probably would not have been seen by either a Queens or Reading resident? I am just playing devil's advocate here, bear with me =)

I wasn't going to bring this up because I thought maybe I was... well... I don't really know... but I recently started smoking again and I've been going out back to light up... I generally look for different stars and planets while I'm out sometimes using "Star Walk" on my iPhone to figure out some objects in the night sky I don't recognize...

There was a "star" that wasn't showing up on it that if you were looking to the west and that was "9" on the face of a clock was at about 8 and probably about 15 degrees above the horizon that was blinking like crazy and really bright... I figured it was probably Venus and got out the iPhone to "back me up"... but for some reason it was really buggy tonight... what should be due west was pointing more in the direction of this "star/Venus" or "8" than "9" like it should be...

Then there was the fact that the moon seemed to "no be going down" but moving south to north along the horizon at about 20 degrees to the west from about 8pm to 11pm... and then when I went out about 12:30 it was higher in the sky and further to the north...

Or maybe I'm just seeing things... I'd be a lot more certain that's the case if I was smoking pot instead of just cigarettes...

I saw it in North Central NJ at 1:08a. It didn't look like a shooting star or meteor shower, and it certainly wasn't a burning plane/helicopter. It was too big and looked like it was only a couple miles away from where I was. The bright white light shot from right to left in a straight line and was burning off. It was way bigger than an airplane. It shot by and disappeared

Originally posted by andboycott

Yeah well no offense but what I saw wasn't a helicopter burning up or a plane, Queens and Reading are both about or over 100 miles away (as you said) so these had to be different events. It looked like a meteor burning up in the sky, somewhat low in altitude (maybe it was about 2 miles up, but that's the max)

Pieces were breaking off this thing similar to what you'd see if a meteor happened to be falling. And all the police lines were tied up in local towns, i think this may be a different event

And, should this not have been so high up and so colossal, probably would not have been seen by either a Queens or Reading resident? I am just playing devil's advocate here, bear with me =)

That's the thing... when it first caught my eye coming in from the west it appeared to be at most a couple hundred feet up... and maybe a couple thousand feet out in front of where I was sitting... it then looked like it picked up speed... which again if it had been a helicopter or plane taking off from the airport wouldn't have been anything out of the ordinary... but then when it banked sharp to the left and appeared to "explode" similar to what you're saying like a meteor burning up or some of the shuttle footage I thought to myself "aright... now what the #@$% was that" and came home and grabbed my camera before heading up to the mountain to see if I could see emergency lights anywhere...

And you're 1000% right... if it was seen in Jersey, Queens, and Reading... it should have been way up there... and huge...

My dog has been acting really weird for the last half hour or so too...

I'm going to go out and smoke a couple cigarettes... I'll keep the camera running on my iPhone just in case something happens while I'm out...

reply to post by mhillmoose


Maybe we saw the same thing. I appreciate the other comments but feel like it was not the same thing, definitely was something falling from the sky..

Interestingly enough when I got to a clearing maybe 10 seconds after losign sight of it at first I couldn't see it anymore either

But then again, it could have been a similiar event..eegh I try to release myself from physic's constraints, knowing things can appear in different realms but it is tough sometimes =) time and space aren't so same as they seem..

Let's figure this out! Something happened.. what was it?

Originally posted by mhillmoose
I saw it in North Central NJ at 1:08a. It didn't look like a shooting star or meteor shower, and it certainly wasn't a burning plane/helicopter. It was too big and looked like it was only a couple miles away from where I was. The bright white light shot from right to left in a straight line and was burning off. It was way bigger than an airplane. It shot by and disappeared

edit on 3-1-2012 by mhillmoose because: (no reason given)

You know what... looking back through my texts it could have been close to that time when I saw it... it was definitely between 1:05am and 1:10am because I texted my daughter back at 1:05 when I got back into my truck and saw she texted me at 1:00am... I said to her "I don't know what I just saw... but at first it looked like a helicopter flying real low... but then it banked to the left and looked like it just exploded and crashed"... the next time stamp on the texts is at 1:15am when she replied to that but that was after I pulled up in front of my house and I looked at the clock on the radio and saw it was 1:12 and I thought "crap... missed 1:11 too late to make a wish" (it's a little thing my daughter and I always do)... and from where I was when I saw it is about 8 blocks... factor in a red light... and it very well could have been right around 1:08am...

Originally posted by andboycott
reply to post by mhillmoose

 

Maybe we saw the same thing. I appreciate the other comments but feel like it was not the same thing, definitely was something falling from the sky..

Interestingly enough when I got to a clearing maybe 10 seconds after losign sight of it at first I couldn't see it anymore either

Same deal here... I was sitting at a red light and there was an SUV in front of me... I lost sight of it when it passed behind a house... but it never "came out the other side" like it should have if it had been going in a straight line from what would be right to left at that point looking out my driver's side window... which was why I thought for certain it had to have been an aircraft that went down...

reply to post by andboycott


The way I saw it, it wasn't falling from the sky, but rather shooting across. It was in our atmosphere, only a few miles from where I was standing and it was BIG, but whatever it was disappeared. I didn't hear a crash or see it fall, I just saw it shoot across and that was that, it disappeared into the sky

It was definitely 1:08a, I made a note of writing down the time in my phone so I could compare to other people's sitings

Alright... I'm off to bed... I went outside to smoke and it's ridiculously cold outside now and my dog is acting really clingy... if I only leave the door open a crack she will never push it open with her nose to follow me and she just did that and she's making this weird "snorting" noise...

I'll check back on this in the morning and see if anyone has come up with anything...

Hey, I hope this isn't considered off topic, because I think it may be invaluable on these types of things as they happen in the future. This is a link to a site with has the most comprehensive index I've yet seen for online audio feeds of dispatch centers on Fire, Police and Medical, nation wide.

National Index of Emergency Responder Dispatch Feeds

This is opened to Hudson, New Jersey because I wanted to see if their county-wide alert system might have mentioned something about this meteor. Other areas may have, I didn't check anywhere else. The interface cam be navigated by the breadcrumbs or from the top by menu down to county and city level.

If people at home catch a fresh thread like this come up, just immediately pull up the audio feed of local police dispatch. They'll definitely be talking about it if a thing was large enough. It's the feds that may know what a thing is and not talk....not the local city cops. So Information locally there may add a lot in what they see and hear.

reply to post by mhillmoose


Let me ask, if it went from right to left (same as I saw) were you facing east? i.e., was it moving south to north, from your perspective?

and yes, it was more shooting across, not necessarily falling straight down.. from my plane of view was moving south to north as i was moving pretty much due east

I'm in NJ, thanks for the info OP. I will drive to work in about 30 mins, camera ready. If catch something, will post it later afternoon.

Did it look like this?




Because that is the QUADRANTID METEOR SHOWER: