(meteorobs) Central Texas daylight (noontime) fireball on April 3

Ed Cannon edcannonsat at yahoo.com
Wed Apr 11 00:25:53 EDT 2012


Pitiful...

Now there is an article that says that the daylight
fireball was a jet contrail:

http://www.livescience.com/19609-mystery-fireball-texas-jet-contrail-nasa-scientist.html

Well -- yes, a photo that was used on TV and elsewhere 
was indeed (unfortunately) a jet contrail at sunset 
(or sunrise?).  HOWEVER -- the actual fireball was 
observed just a few minutes before *noon* (daylight 
time)!  Good grief!  How badly downhill can science 
reporting go?!

Besides the above, people who saw the thing said that
it was visible for one or two seconds.  I don't know
that I've ever seen a jet contrail that was visible 
for only a couple of seconds....  And I'm sure that I
have never seen a sunset-reddened jet contrail at noon.

Reminder -- it's event 493 in the April log on the AMS
website.

Ed Cannon - Austin, Texas, USA



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