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

[dfischer at astro.uni-bonn.de]

> Pitiful...
>
> Now there is an article that says that the daylight
> fireball was a jet contrail

Actually further down the story admits that the fireball was for real but
the video was not - but the headline is bullsh*t for sure. Unfortunately
many other space 'news' outlets copied the originalv flawed LiveScience
story verbatim (that's called 'autosyndication' I've since learned)
without any factchecking: I immediately bombarded them with tweets, and
MSNBC, Discovery and Universe Today ran clarifications immediately once
they got their science editors got involved. Only LiveScience (and their
'sister' Space.com) had to ask a NASA man for permission first ... See
http://skyweek.wordpress.com/2012/04/10/und-was-auch-noch-gesagt-werden-musste
for links to the various bad and good stories and also links to several
general websites on contrails-taken-for-meteors - this happens so often in
our 'enlightened' times that it has become a little field of study for its
own ...

Dan