(meteorobs) Fireball & sonic boom

[Graham and Amy]

Hi all.
I was out observing on Friday night. About 10:35PM local time (09:35 March
11 UTC) I was looking down for a moment, when there was an incredibly bright
flash behind my left shoulder. The light left a very clear shadow on the
ground. I looked up and saw a fast moving meteor that was heading
approximately north-east to south west. It passed almost directly overhead.
At first, it was too bright to look at directly, but faded quickly, until I
could see green and gold sparks flowing off it. In total it lasted about 3
seconds and covered roughly 45 degrees of sky, by which time, it blew apart,
and faded away. Little smoke was evident as a train. At its brightest, I
estimate it reached between -12 & -13 magnitude. Definitely brighter that a
full moon.

I sat there awestruck, just wishing someone else had got to see it. Roughly
1 1/2 minutes later,  I was startled by a single, deep boom . This was in a
rural area (Stonehenge Aotearoa Astronomy centre) and there was no other
easy explanation for the sound - A sonic boom!

I am no expert on such matters, but roughly calculated the altitude of the
meteor at the time the boom was created, and came up with a figure of about
30-40 kilometres.

Wow, what a ripper!

Graham Palmer
1/622 Nelson St. North,
Mahora.
Hastings, New Zealand.
Home phone: 06-8735951
Graham's cell No: 021-2650487