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Re: (meteorobs) Fwd: Very unusual meteor??? Re-entry??? Little green men??? I don't know...
Thanks Lew,
I'll keep the triple x thing in mind in the future. I don't know, I'm
not too sure what a bow shock looks like. The leading edge seemed very wide
and flat, not even close to any meteors I have witnessed in the past (I've
probably seen several thousand now, through 4 Yrs of Leonids and other
showers I have observed)
John N
John Newton <newtonj@ttc.com> (via Lew Gramer) on 06/24/99 11:28:27 AM
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Subject: (meteorobs) Fwd: Very unusual meteor??? Re-entry??? Little green
men??? I don't know...
FYI, the following message was "bounced" by our list because the original
used a
sequence of "x's" to represent what John saw: to avoid offensive spam, I'm
now
filtering out anything which comes to our list with three X's in it! :)
So I replaced "x" with "z" and "X" with "Z" - and here's the message...
John, I
wonder if you may have been witnessing a "bow shock" preceding a fireball?
Lew Gramer
------- Forwarded Message
From: newtonj@ttc.com
To: meteorobs@jovian.com
cc: newtonj@ttc.com
Date: Thu, 24 Jun 1999 09:50:26 -0400
Subject: Very unusual meteor??? Re-entry??? Little green men??? I don't
know...
I saw a very, very, unusual sight last night. Now I'm not as experienced as
some of you, but I have been observing showers regularly since the '96
Leonids. I was sitting outside last evening, gazing upward as I always do
when there are stars out. I was shocked as a gigantic, oddly shaped, very
bright, very slow, fireball-like object appeared, It wasn't even dark
enough for me to pick out the constellations at this point. I first saw it
approx 20 degrees SE of the zenith. The leading edge appeared sort of flat
and wide, almost half the width of a full moon. A trail followed off center
of the body. It was very close to matching the brightness of the moon,
(-7 or -8??) which was also in my view (Discounting last years leonid
fireball frenzy this was by far the brightest meteor-like phenomena I have
ever seen). It traveled very slowly (giving me time to exclaim "Holy sh**"
and lean forward so that I could look around my grape vines as it
approached the horizon. As it approached the horizon my view was obstructed
by my nieghbors tree, but through the tree I watched and it remained very
bright, well down into the haze and light pollution of wash. DC, traveling
SSE, I lost sight as it approached the horizon, I did not see it extinguish
but lost sight while it was still as bright as ever. This was observed from
LAT. 39 28' LONG 77 43' 30"
at 9:28 PM Eastern time.
I will try to give you an idea of the shape below, since it was so unusual.
Zzz
Zzzzz
Zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz
Zzzzzz
Zzzzz
Zzzz
Zzz
Zz
Z
This is not a very good representation, but gives an idea of what I mean by
large flat head, off center trail.
So..... What do you think?
John N
------- End of Forwarded Message
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