(meteorobs) Mystery cloud observation... eastern Ontario

C.L. Hall chall at cyberus.ca
Wed Sep 1 10:49:20 EDT 2004


Fwd from the RASC email list in Canada

- Cathy Hall

----- Original Message -----
From: Jan Wisniewski <jwisn at sympatico.ca>
To: RASCals Discussion List <rascals at lists.rasc.ca>
Sent: Tuesday, August 31, 2004 9:57 PM
Subject: [RASCals] Bizarre meteor train


> Hi, Did anybody notice bright fireball over eastern Ontario this evening
> sometime around 8:30 pm EDT?
> I got a call from my friend who noticed strange glowing cloud about 45 deg
> above horizon toward SSW. Getting outside, I have noticed it immedately
with
> naked eye. Through binoculars it had the most bizarre shape: a narrow cone
> of light (brightest at the apex, forming about 20 deg. fan) crossed at the
> wide end by diffuze but bright X. It was located between pi and iota
> Herculis at that time (about 8:50 pm) and basically filled the field of
view
> of 10x50 binoculars. By 9:05 it drifted in front of gamma Draconis  and it
> was getting weaker. I could still notice it as just an elongated patch of
> light close to epsilon Draconis at 9:18 pm EDT.
>
> Obviously due to ominous shape and sudden appearance, my friend (who did
not
> see a fireball) was a bit concern about the time left to sort his matters
on
> this world... There may be many concerned voices in the local press in
days
> to come (well, probably numerous UFO claims as well ;-). On my side, after
> thinking about narrow loop of aurora for a few minutes, I eventually came
to
> suspect meteor train. This one was probably relatively head-on due to a
> compact size. There was not usual twisting by upper atmosphere winds -
just
> general fading- and bout 30-40 min. duration was not unusual.
>
> I am interested if anybody on the list saw or heard about it. It may have
> been a bright meteor - too bad I always see only their trains ;-(
>
> Cheers,
>
> Jan Wisniewski
>
>
>
> _______________________________________________
> rascals at lists.rasc.ca --- http://crux.stmarys.ca/mm21/listinfo/rascals
>
>




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