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(meteorobs) Ontario fireball Sept. 18/19
Greetings all,
The following 2 messages are cross-posted from the RASC email list
tonight... Doug George is from Ottawa and Mark Turner is from Toronto, Ontario.
- Cathy Hall
Ottawa, Canada
Date: Sat, 19 Sep 1998 17:35:01 -0400
From: "Douglas B. George" <dgeorge@cyanogen.com>
Organization: Diffraction Limited / Cyanogen Productions Inc.
Subject: RASC List: Unusual Fireball Observation
Last night I was at Peter Ceravolo's for a late night observing session.
Shortly after I left, at about 3:35 am, I saw a bright fireball while driving
East along Beach Road. It was ahead of me, just off to the left, on an almost
vertical trajectory; about a 10 degree angle to the right. Since there aren't
any comparison stars that bright it's hard to estimate fireball magnitudes
(never mind that I was driving a vehicle at the time), but I would estimate the
magnitude as about -10 or so.
I didn't see the whole fireball because it started above my windshield. By the
time I saw it, it was already dropping pieces off. It passed through the front
legs of Ursa Major, just to the right of Theta UMa.
Now for the weird part... immediately after the fireball extinguished,
something strange happened. I had been listening to the CBC late-night program
on the radio, and the entire program was drowned out by static for a few
seconds. I'm wondering if this wasn't somehow caused by the train from the
meteor. (I suppose I can't be absolutely certain that the sound came from the
radio, but the program was completely drowned out).
Back in '85 Mercedes and I witnessed an "anomalous meteor sound" from another
fireball, but that was rather different. The "anomalous" sound occured during
the bright part of the fireball, and stopped at the same moment the fireball
faded. I was not in the vicinity of a radio at the time; the sound seemed to
come from nowhere. This time the sound started when the fireball faded out,
and lasted for a few seconds afterwards.
Doug George
Diffraction Limited / Cyanogen Productions Inc.
Phone: (613) 225-2732
Fax: (613) 225-9688
dgeorge@cyanogen.com
http://www.cyanogen.com
From: markt@interlog.com (Mark Turner)
Subject: Re: RASC List: Unusual Fireball Observation
Date: Sat, 19 Sep 1998 22:15:00 GMT
I was observing north of Cobourg at the time. I didn't see anything
(had my head buried in MaxIm for most of the night 8-). I too was
listening to the CBC late night programming on the radio (740 am radio).
I didn't notice any signal interruption all night, other than the usual
late-night am radio hiss and signal fluctuation.
________________________________________________________
Mark Turner ©¿© Things are Looking Up !
Toronto, Canada