(meteorobs) Alaskan Fireball - April 23, 2005 - 2AM PDT

[Robert Verish]

http://www.news-miner.com/Stories/0,1413,113~7244~2833805,00.html

"Official" weighs in on reported flash in the sky 

By AMANDA BOHMAN, Fairbanks Daily News-Miner (Alaska)
April 24, 2005


As 37-year-old John Kempen traveled the Parks Highway
to Nenana at about 2 a.m. Saturday, he watched the
sky, hoping to point out the northern lights to his
girlfriend.

But instead of spotting a blur of emerald green,
Kempen saw a bright flash of bluish white with sparks
for a tail and fiery "chunks breaking off." 

The comet-like object, maybe the size of a basketball,
slid across the sky from the southwest to the
northeast.

Kempen figured the object was a meteor. 

According to Neal Brown, director of the space grant
program at the University of Alaska Fairbanks
Geophysical Institute, Kempen probably saw a piece of
space junk.

An estimated 5,000 to 10,000 pieces of useless debris
orbit the Earth, Brown said, and more is continually
added. Among the objects are rocket motors, and bolts
and flanges, which are adapters between rocket motors.
Also orbiting the earth are old satellites and
out-of-commission spacecraft.  

"From about 100 to 5,000 miles away from the Earth,
it's a virtual junkyard," Brown said. "I think there's
an astronaut's glove still out there."

Gravity pulls the junk back to Earth.

"It's coming in all the time," Brown said.

The main reason Kempen's sighting sounds more like
junk than a meteor is that it exhibited color, Brown
said. 

"Meteors don't have any blue or green or any colors,"
he said. "Most of the meteors are just rocks."

Secondly, the sighting was in the wrong part of the
sky to be a Lyrid meteor, which would likely travel
from northeast to southwest.

"It's the exact opposite of what they described,"
Brown said. "It still could have been a meteor, but I
really don't think so."

Reporter Amanda Bohman can be reached at
abohman at newsminer.com or 459-7544.