Just saw the CRAZIEST thing in the sky over Houston!!

Not enough information to form a hypothesis. There are hundreds of possibilities.

Originally posted by jadedANDcynical
reply to post by My.mind.is.mine

 

Still too far across town IMHO. Your work commute is hideous, I used to have to drive from here to 59S & Beltway 8 until I change companies.

Being as I did not witness what you did, I must defer to your insistence that what you saw does not match with known bolide experiences; I was only going by what I could imagine from your description.

Hopefully you'll be able to find a webcam that caught the phenomenon.

On that map, what I saw was pretty much right in the direction of Rasharon. Just for references sake. I think given that the Sugarland airfield is just south of my I should be able to find a webcam or something in that area.

Originally posted by FireballStorm

Just because you have not come across another example, does not mean that what you saw was not a meteor.

Having seen many thousands of meteors myself, and watched hundreds of videos, I would have to say that there are many meteors that I have observed that do not look like any footage out there.

Not to mention that seeing a meteor or fireball in real life looks nothing like it does on camera in many cases

I'll ask you the same question I asked the OP - what characteristics would you describe as being non-meteor like?

It appeared out of thin air, as if turning on a light switch. It did not obey the law of gravity, it just hung out in the sky and moved ever so slowly to the right leaving a perfect green line, with the original point of where it appeared still intact. Then the whole thing disapeared at the same time. Last time I checked meteors don't have hover mode capabilitys.

Originally posted by jaws1975

Originally posted by FireballStorm

Just because you have not come across another example, does not mean that what you saw was not a meteor.

Having seen many thousands of meteors myself, and watched hundreds of videos, I would have to say that there are many meteors that I have observed that do not look like any footage out there.

Not to mention that seeing a meteor or fireball in real life looks nothing like it does on camera in many cases

I'll ask you the same question I asked the OP - what characteristics would you describe as being non-meteor like?

It appeared out of thin air, as if turning on a light switch. It did not obey the law of gravity, it just hung out in the sky and moved ever so slowly to the right leaving a perfect green line, with the original point of where it appeared still intact. Then the whole thing disapeared at the same time. Last time I checked meteors don't have hover mode capabilitys.

but how awesome that would be!!

Originally posted by jaws1975
It appeared out of thin air, as if turning on a light switch.

What would you expect a meteor to do? Announce it's self before it arrived?

Originally posted by jaws1975
It did not obey the law of gravity

Meteors hit the atmosphere traveling at anywhere between 10-73 km/s.

If you fire a bullet from a rifle (~3000 fps), bearing in mind this is between 1/10th and 1/70th the speed of a meteor, does it just leave the barrel and drop straight to the ground (assuming the barrel is horizontal)?

Every solid object obeys the law of gravity, but in the case of objects traveling at hypersonic-velocities, their momentum overcomes gravity enough that flight path is only subtly affected over long distances.

Originally posted by jaws1975
it just hung out in the sky and moved ever so slowly to the right

Apparent or perceived velocity does not necessarily equal true velocity, and the same also applies to direction.

How much apparent motion would you see is you looked at a meteor that was heading directly towards you?

Yes, that's an extreme case, but it does happen - I've seen it myself.Meteors that do this are called point meteors.

Disk and point-source meteors are due either to a meteor heading directly towards the observer, or because the meteor is below naked-eye visibility for most of its flight but suddenly flares towards the end, thus becoming visible.

Source: Anomalous Meteor Phenomena

Obviously what you saw was not flying directly towards you, but if it was headed slightly away from you, the angular speed, to give it the correct name, would be greater than if it was heading directly towards you.

Now if the meteor was traveling half way between directly towards you, and directly away from you, perspective no longer masks the meteor's true angular speed.

If you take a handful of meteors, belonging to the same shower like the Leonids for example, which are all traveling at the same speed relative to earth, but each hits the atmosphere at a slightly different place and therefore angle relative to you, just as happens during a real meteor shower, and you plot the angular speed against the position at which the meteor enters or hits the atmosphere - even though they are all traveling at the same speed, some will appear to travel faster than others.


How Fast is "Swift": An Exploration of Meteor Angular Speeds

So yes, meteors can seem to hardly move at all or even be completely stationary.

Originally posted by jaws1975
leaving a perfect green line, with the original point of where it appeared still intact.

Again, a relatively common phenomena where meteors are concerned, usually known as a short/long duration persistent train.

When a meteoroid hits our atmosphere it slams into air molecules, ionizing them, and the plasma cloud created surrounds the meteoroid, and forms a trail of plasma which glows a different colour depending on the element/s involved.

Green actually happens to be quite a common color, since there is a prevalence of oxygen at the altitudes at which many meteors start to become visible, and oxygen emits light at a wavelength that coincides with the green part of the visible spectrum when excited.

Whilst persistent trains are more often than not quite pale (if they are present at all), if you are looking along the train's length, then you are looking through more (or "thicker") glowing green plasma, which would make the train seem more intense in both colour and brightness, than in the case of a train being at right angles to you.

Originally posted by jaws1975
Last time I checked meteors don't have hover mode capabilitys.

Appearances can be deceiving, and if you don't know the physics behind meteors and haven't spent much time observing them, some of the things they are capable of can seem very odd, but just because something seems odd, does not mean it is (in relative terms).

So I don't think anything you described is particularly odd behavior for a meteor.