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(meteorobs) Re: NWM more green fireballs



The green fireball activity continues.  I personally saw one myself at about
1210AM EDT  1998 Sep 22/23 while driving.  The downtown bridge and two
blocks of the approach are blacked out for some construction.  I went out to
get a few more gallons of water for hurricane supplies.  Starting up the
bridge facing north, I was treated to a very slow and richly colored
fireball of magnitude  -5.  The whole thing was visible out the windshield,
below Polaris, falling  only  15 degrees in 5 full seconds.  Angle of
descent about 10 degrees right of vertical.  It was blue-green, with a tinge
of orange most of the way.  At its brightest it was a quarter-degree wide.
Somebody far upstate must have had quite a show.   Back home I looked up the
Kappa Aquarid radiant, and I have a good match with both the very slow speed
and the backwardly projected path.

A day later there was another hour of fireball action on the radio, same
parties as the previous time.  The crowd was going ga-ga over what sounds
like a fine fireball seen from Seattle and Vancouver (which of the latter
cities by that name, I didn't get) around 9PM Sep 23 local time.  "It didn't
look like any meteor  we've seen before, therefore it wasn't a meteor."
"Something is going on out there."  "It doesn't fit any description of the
usual phenomena."  "There are so many reports coming in that we can't keep
up with them all."   Well, there were no screwy reports of  this meteor
changing directions or hovering, remarkably.  Several people gave a classic
description of a meteoric fireball without even  knowing that was the
obvious cause.

I deleted a block of messages unread  this morning all sent by the same poor
soul struggling to get himself off the meteor list.  If only he would read
the instructions on how to accomplish same...

Norman