Slashdot Mirror


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.

18 of 487 comments (clear)

  1. Explanation needed by Drunken+Coward · · Score: 2, Informative

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

    --
    Have you been stalked by Seth today?
  2. Better story by jasoncart · · Score: 5, Informative

    Over at the Denver Post

    1. Re:Better story by SEWilco · · Score: 3, Informative
      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 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.

    2. Re:Better story by Brainless · · Score: 2, Informative

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

  3. Also in Southern IL early Monday morning by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Informative

    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.

  4. Picture of the Fireballs by Grip3n · · Score: 5, Informative

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

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

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

    --
    To make a pun demonstrates the highest understanding of a language
  5. Re:Could it be? by echosilex · · Score: 4, Informative

    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.

  6. There were a bunch of these in the UK this week by Varitek · · Score: 3, Informative
  7. Re:Different directions? by ColaMan · · Score: 5, Informative

    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.

    --

    You are in a twisty maze of processor lines, all alike.
    There is a lot of hype here.
  8. Re:Could it be? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Informative

    Oh my god, LOL!

  9. Re:Witness by sniggly · · Score: 5, Informative

    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.

    --
    Of those to whom much is given, much is required.
  10. Re:Could it be? by Loligo · · Score: 5, Informative

    A quick Google for electric pickle turns up some pictures and even movies here.

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

    -l

  11. Fireballs in France too by dolmen.fr · · Score: 2, Informative

    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 ?

    1. Re:Fireballs in France too by dolmen.fr · · Score: 2, Informative

      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.

  12. Fireball in Russia also reported by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Informative

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

  13. Re:Could it be? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Informative

    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)

  14. Military testing by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Informative

    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.

  15. Re:No Photos? by andrewski · · Score: 2, Informative

    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??