(meteorobs) Re: Very bright fireball over central Texas

[Thomas Dorman]

Hi.Ed
Your event was a bolide meteor.Just from the video of
the event it was moving more than 2 degrees a second
that is plain to see.This was mother nature's
fireworks
Just a note on July 21 we had another event over here
in far west Texas.The event was at 10:09PM MDT.Jim
Gamble thinks it reach the magnitude of near the full
Moon.This was with the bolide near our horizon.So it
had to be over two hundred miles out to our
south-southeast over old Mexico.
I do not know if you have any seismographic station in
your area but you may wish to check an see if they
have a record of the sonic boom event.Also since you
are talking to the news media you may ask them to ask
local business to check their security system for
video and audio of the sonic boom.
Regards
Thomas Dorman
Horizon City,Texas
--- Ed Cannon <ecannon at mail.utexas.edu> wrote:

> The local TV station's story page about this event
> now has
> their 6:00 PM report, which includes a police car
> dashboard
> camera video of the fireball and a few seconds of
> yours
> truly, along with his stopwatch that still said
> "05:09.21"
> (i.e., 04:05:09.21 August 2 UTC) saying it was a
> natural
> fireball:.
> 
> http://kxan.com/Global/story.asp?S=5230270
> 
> The comments at the end of the story include one
> from
> Liberty Hill, TX, signed "the Duke Family" that may
> amount
> to a report of a sonic boom.  One of the later ones
> is
> from an observer in Texarkana, hundreds of miles to
> the
> NE, saying that he saw the southwestern sky light up
> twice
> at the time of the fireball.
> 
> That leads me to mention something from a couple of
> weeks
> ago.  My observing buddy and I were at our suburban
> site
> and both saw a bright flash light up the sky.  We
> thought
> it was likely a fireball somewhere.  Then about
> eleven
> minutes later there was a very similar flash!  So
> then we
> thought it might be lightning.  (Sometime later
> there was
> a third, much fainter flash.)  The problem was there
> was
> not really any lightning type within quite a long
> way
> around.  Well, then, in e-mail with the local
> astronomy
> club, someone at the observatory about 55 miles (88
> km)
> northwest of our site reported that he saw the
> flashes
> also.  So my observing buddy then thought that with
> the
> weather not seeming to support lightning, maybe they
> were fireball flashes.  But I was at a loss as to
> whether
> or not to report such ambiguous or uncertain data. 
> I did
> get exact times for the first two flashes, but that
> was
> all.
> 
> Ed Cannon - Austin, Texas, USA
> 
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