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(meteorobs)Re: Seattle fireball?
Brent>>We knew that the Leonid cycle was happening, or about to, but this
seemed
a bit too close, too real, and not like any meteors we had EVER seen
previously. <<
Well..dot it's quite apparent that this object wasn't a Leonid due to it being
too early in the evening and too slow. Are you very experienced with fireball
observations? From all accounts, it seemed to be a very bright event. I feel
quite confident that it was a piece of manmade debris. There was a good
posting about it on the astronomy folder the other day by Leigh Palmer. I
don't remember too many details, but I'll try to paraphrase it without too
much inaccuracy. Leigh is an astronomy professor at a university somewhere in
the Vancouver area? Apparently he was interviewed about it by some local tv
station. Anyhow, I believe he said that an initial announcement by someone
stated that NORAD claimed it fell in the ocean? I guess later it was
corrected and the statement was in error. There was a satellite, or it's
debris or a Russian rocket booster or something like that was due over/or
reenter at about that time and area. Leigh calculated the times and path or
whatever was necessary and was confident that this indeed was the re entering
object. I may have strayed a little on the paraphrasing, but I believe the
jest of it all is there? When it becomes apparent that it was a manmade
object, I don't follow the details much more.
Brent>>So, I have two questions about this:
[1] If it was a fireball from the Leonid cycle, then why didn't it get
appropriate coverage as just such a thing? Papers call it a booster, and none
of the meteor pages/newsgruops I've checked refer to anything other than
"fireball in Northwest", whose descriptions never seem to be even remotely
close to what I witnessed.<<
It definitely wasn't a Leonid. Irregardless what it was...meteor or re
entering satellite debris..dot it could look like a meteor fireball of
asteroidal origin and coming in at a very shallow angle. Some fireballs have
been of long durations such as the Wyoming fireball in 1972 that lasted 101
seconds. The typical fireball meteor that most folks see don't look like
this. So, it could very much look unusual to most people. As for descriptions
from inexperienced observers not resembling what you witnessed...a very
common thing. I once was called out to remove an unknown type of snake from a
house. There were over a dozen very excited people trying to describe to me
what they saw. I didn't want to barge in and surprise a large rattle snake or
something so a reasonable description was desired. We weren't making any
progress. Anyhow, thru all the confusion, my captain leaned over and
whispered something to the effect that "if we gave a pencil and paper to each
person to write down what they saw, we would be chasing 20 different snakes.
In the end, it was a regular harmless Gopher Snake. I wouldn't let the
variety of descriptions worry you any...sounds quite normal to me.
Brent>>[2] If it was a Booster from a Russian rocket, why would the coverage
for it
state that it landed in the Pacific Ocean when it obviously went right over
the
city? And seemingly continued. And furthermore, the Pacific isn't exactly
Pier
69 in Seattle, as you surely know. There's a bit of distance to get to the
true
Pacific. Nor would I consider the Juan de Fuca the Pacific.<<
Hey...an apparent assumption by the spokesperson that turned out slightly
wrong. My guess is that the military was expecting this object to re enter
soon and thought it would land in the water shy of the coast. Whoever made
the initial announcements probably was going on an earlier prediction? I'm
sure if the spokesperson was a witness, they wouldn't have said that it
landed in the water? If it landed on land , it's quite common to not be able
to find a returning dummy object if it landed in a remote area. Very few
apparent meteorite dropping fireballs are found despite all the info
available. I'm sure if someone comes across it, there will be some renewed
flurry of news for a spell. But that too will die down. It's happened before.
Brent>>So, what were these objects, and why is there no hard info on them? Is
it
possible that there were two events; the booster and a meteor, and confusion
assailed our fine media folk?<<
Most likely there was only one event...though two is possible.
Brent>> Is it just no big deal and so no one brings it
up? (Can't believe this one - it was absolutely spectacular!) Is there some
sort of issue here that I don't know about?<<
Well...for me, I have no reason to think that it was nothing other than a man
made object. Although spectacular, it becomes a no big deal to me...unless it
was gonna land on my house?...Then it's "feet don't fail me now"!
Brent>>If you have any solid info on this, I would love to hear it. My friend
and I
have been absolutely dying of curiosity and can't understand why people
aren't
talking about these objects. <<
A piece of man made hardware isn't as fascinating to me as a piece of extra
terrestrial material such as a meteorite. Once it becomes clear to me that it
wasn't a meteorite...nothing worth talking about in my book. No more
thrilling than a piece of falling aircraft. At first it's news...then after
you tell a friend or two...the story is old and not worth talking
about...time to move on.
George Zay