(meteorobs) two fireballs

[Bruce McCurdy]

> Well, it would be nice to have someone in the 'neighborhood' corroborate
> what I 'sort of' saw. I believe it was 11:13 PM local time.

    Of course. In this case my bedroom observer lived in a metropolitan area 
so there were lots of eyes in the neighbourhood.

> I don't know how many other 'watchers' we have around here.
> What would be the radius of 'visibility' for something like that?
> For instance, would an observer in Salonika, Greece (more than 12 hours by
> train from the Turkish/Greek border) have been able to
> see it. (assuming 'it' WAS a fireball)

    Depends on trajectory, altitude, brightness ... and, no doubt, other 
factors that I will leave to the experts on this list. But the Alberta event 
was observed from at least Ponoka to Athabasca, which is some 200 km N-S, 
and was also recorded by an all-sky camera in Saskatoon, over 500 km east. 
So potentially these things can be seen over a very wide area.

    I assume from your description of "dead silent except for the owls" that 
you did *not* hear anything associated with the fireball. I'm hearing 
conflicting reports about whether ours had an audible component.

    Bruce
    *****