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(meteorobs) Hawaii Fireball, 0503 Jan 21 2001 UT
The object that briefly lit up the cloud-covered Hawaiian Astronomical
Society star party at about 0502 UT on Jan 21, 2001 (7:02 pm Jan 20, local
time) was indeed a brilliant fireball.
I talked to Mike Morrow on the Big Island on Sunday afternoon, and he was
outside at the time, looking north to northwest for artificial satellites,
but he saw nothing unusual. This afternoon, however, I received a report
from Mr. Art Durand on Maui, who, along with two companions, witnessed the
"blue/brilliant white" fireball from a point about halfway between Kihei
and Kahului. The fireball appeared in the northeast from his perspective,
and traveled westward, covering an apparent path of about 110 degrees, and
according to Mr. Durand was as bright as the full moon. Quoting further
from his report, "This was the brightest thing any of us had ever seen in
the sky. The thoughts spoken of what it was while viewing it, discussed
after it broke up were as follows..." ...thought it was a plane crashing",
"...thought it was a rocket of some sort streaking by" , "... it was so
bright I thought it was a "firework" of some sort", " ..dot it was far too
bright and far too low to have been a "shooting star" ". If it was as large
as the moon it would have been far brighter than the full moon."
Several thousand meteors of fireball magnitude occur in the Earth's
atmosphere each day. The vast majority of these, however, occur over the
oceans and uninhabited regions, and a good many are masked by daylight.
Once again one of these events occurred over Hawaii, and we at the HAS star
party were fortunate enough to at least see the light generated by this
object diffused through the clouds.
Jim Bedient
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