Back at the end of the year there were some media reports involving a meteor seen from Lafourche Parish
in far southeastern Louisiana, near the towns of Larose and Cut
Off. They reported a fireball seen moving west to east around 7:55 PM
Central Standard Time on December 26. A piece was seen to break off, and
some suggested that was responsible for a marsh fire about a mile long just
northeast of Cut Off. During the last week of the year, I was contacted by
several people looking for information.
There were other reports of a bright meteor that
night, one moving roughly south to north at about 7 to 7:30 PM CST. I
found first and second hand reports of that ranging from the small town of
Jennings, Louisiana, to the area around Pensacola, Florida, and throughout
southern and central Mississippi and Alabama. There has been some
discussion on meteorobs lately about an object seen from Hattiesburg,
Mississippi, and that seems to have been this object.
Two such fireballs within an hour of each other
seemed like a lot, and I suspected they were really reports of the same
object. That's what turned out to be true.
The time of 7:55 PM from the Lafourche reports
turned out to be the time logged by the sheriff's office when they were getting
calls, not the time of the meteor. The times reported to me by the
observers I spoke with were shakey, but it looks like the observations were
indeed more like 7 to 7:30 PM. The object seen there was in fact not going
west to east -- they all agreed it was going from south southwest to north
northeast. It was described as brighter than Jupiter and about the
brightness of Venus, pretty consistent with the reports of the other
object. I'm absolutely convinced everyone was looking at the same
thing.
The piece that fragmented appeared to do so only 10
to 15 degrees above the horizon as the object was moving away from Lafourche
Parish, and is clearly not responsible for the marsh fire. The sheriff's
department there indicated that marsh fires are not very unusual, and have a
number of different causes. One observer noted that it was a windy night,
and that the wind is what blew the fire eastward for about a mile.
I thought it might be possible that the object was
re-entering space debris, but I no longer believe that to be the case.
There were three Russian re-entries expected for December 26/27, but none of
them fit the bill. I think this was your basic natural fireball, visible
from over the Gulf of Mexico, going approximately across the Mississippi Delta
region, and then over Mississippi or Alabama.
I, of course, missed the whole thing.
My thanks go to Alan Pickup in Edinburgh, Scotland, for the information
regarding the satellite re-entries, and to the many planetarium curators,
amateur astronomers, and list members who I contacted about this.
Dave