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Hundreds Spot Fireballs In Colorado, Nearby States

Posted by timothy on from the calling-all-coloradans dept.

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.

6 of 487 comments (clear)

  1. Witness by dargaud · · Score: 5, Interesting
    As a mountain climber I often sleep out and high up, so have an excellent view of shooting stars. But the weirdest of all looks like that report. It was 54 years ago in central Italy, driving at night on a desert mountain road. I saw a fiery fireball in the sky, moving slowly from left to right.

    I had the time to: understand (maybe) what it was, wake up my wife, stop the car, get out an look. Total time maybe 20 seconds. The 'object' was moving slowly, spewing green flames and eaving a long lasting orange trail behind. Trajectory was more or less horizontal. It disapeared in a flash. I tried to listen but there wasn't any noise besides the cooling car engine.

    --
    Non-Linux Penguins ?
    1. Re:Witness by Afrosheen · · Score: 5, Interesting

      I saw something unbelievable one time, true story. About 5 friends and I and an old girlfriend were hiking one night at Turner Falls. We sat on top of this cave and watched the stars since it was such a clear night and we were accustomed to seeing just a few stars in the city. One person noticed a darker star that was moving. We got excited and everyone looked for it, and saw it. It was probably a satellite because it was moving in a straight line.

      Here's where the craziness comes in. The more we looked at the sky, the more people started to see more satellites. In all there were probably 8 we could watch moving, all in vector paths from the horizon to some point in the sky. That point ended up being nearly directly overhead from us.

      Once the dark stars reached a central point, they formed a slowly rotating circle. None of us could believe what we were seeing and we were all scared shitless. None of us could look away either because it was so unreal.

      After less than ten minutes, we saw clouds blowing in hard from the south. The wind probably hit 20mph in a matter of minutes and we decided it was probably a good idea to leave. The dark stars were still circling overhead when the clouds fully obscured our view of the sky.

      We drove fast and hard all the way home and nobody said much of anything. We beat the storm home and it was fairly clear outside except for the clouds coming up from the south where we had been. I don't know if anyone else besides myself has told the story but I don't blame them if they haven't. It sounds like bullshit to anyone who hears it, and it still freaks me out to this day.

  2. I saw a bunch one night, 40 years ago by mesocyclone · · Score: 5, Interesting

    Many years ago, my family was driving from El Paso, TX to Albuquerque, NM, when we saw a number of fireballs. The first occurred just after sunset, was visually a large, bright green glowing object leaving a smoke trail. It traveled east to west and lasted about 10 seconds, then broke up into two pieces and disappeared. We were just north of El Paso, and were listening to KOMA in Oklahoma, City - there were many reports called in to them from many states.

    As the drive continued, we saw about 6 more fireballs, all red, all running east to west, through the rest of the evening.

    Quite a show. The clear and thin high altitude air of the rockies, along with the lack of city lights, makes these sitings a lot more common in those areas.

    We didn't see any LGM, however.

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    The only good weather is bad weather.

  3. Nibiru by Jin+Wicked · · Score: 5, Interesting

    is the planet's name, for anyone who wants to do a Google search or look on Art's site about it. I should also mention that they expect highly evolved alien races to accompany this giant planet/spaceship. :)

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    My Webcomic: Asylum on 5th Street
  4. This seems to be some cloud by Ektanoor · · Score: 5, Interesting

    I read a few days ago that near Irkutsk, Russia a big meteorite seem to have fallen in a remote location. The thing seemed to be huge and it seems to have landed as there was a small quake after getting out of view.

    Besides, if I don't miss things it looks like that there is one more account about a similar phenomena out of the USA. Unfortunately I don't remember the place.

    So, it seems that we are inside some fresh new cloud of cosmical debris. The events we see are probably the result of Earth crossing the trajectory of Kuiper belt newcomer. Usually, when this happens, we get some spectacular phenomena on the skies, usually presented as meteorite showers. However this fireball show is surely less usual to see. The fact that this lasts for a few days is probably the result that the newcomer crumbled to pieces while approaching the Sun.

  5. Different directions? by Captain_Chaos · · Score: 5, Interesting

    It's very odd that the CNN article said the second fireball was going the other way from the first one. If they were both from a debris cloud and occurred at the same time in the same place they should have been going in exaclty the same direction since they would be travelling in more or less the same direction and the orientation of the Earth in relation to their path would be more or less the same...

    If the article is correct, one or both of the fireballs must have been something else, such as a sattelite reentering the atmosphere, despite all the quotes from experts saying that they were meteorites...