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(meteorobs) Fireball reports found on questionable site
During this slow season, below are some items possibly of
interest to those who enjoy reading fireball reports by
surprised, amazed, and sometimes puzzled members of the
general public.
On a cloudy night I decided, based on past experience of
finding some interesting reports of fireballs and
satellites on such sites, to spend some time perusing a
lot of (mostly brief) UFO reports online. Along with
"the usual suspects", going back to Dec. 1, 2000, I found
*multiple* reports of each of three genuine meteoric
fireballs, plus, for another fireball reported also to
Meteorobs, a single report.
Note that the reports are not perfectly clustered in the
database; you have to look for the date and time and
general location. (They're fairly close together, but
there may be unrelated reports in other locations at
about the same time on the same day.) The times of the
reports are all (or nearly all) in local time of the
location of the person reporting the sighting; I've added
UTC times.
Fireball #1 (reported to Meteorobs by Mike Linnolt on Jan.
21 and follow-up by Jim Bedient the next day, and seen by
a member of the Austin [Texas] Astronomical Society and
her husband who were vacationing in Hawaii) --
2001 Jan 20 19:02 Hawaii Standard Time (UTC-10 = 2001 Jan
21 05:02 UTC)
one report from Kailua-Kona, Hawaii (HI)
http://www.msatech.com/nuforc/webreports/ndxe200101.html
and, on the same page of the database (January 2001):
Fireball #2 --
2001 Jan 11 21:50 MST (UTC-7 = 2001 Jan 12 04:50 UTC)
several sightings from USA "mountain states", Colorado (CO),
Montana (MT), Wyoming (WY), New Mexico (NM); apparently a
generally southbound track of several hundred kilometers,
and also visible from very long distances -- a very bright
fireball on a very clear night, it seems:
http://www.msatech.com/nuforc/webreports/ndxe200101.html
Fireball #3 (reported to Meteorobs by Jim Bedient on
Dec. 27) --
2000 Dec 26 roughly 18:00-18:30 EST (UTC-5 = 2000 Dec
27 approx. 00:00-00:30 UTC)
New England (Massachusetts [MA], New Hampshire [NH],
Vermont [VT]), USA, along with one report from Montreal,
Quebec, Canada
http://www.msatech.com/nuforc/webreports/ndxe200012.html
and, on the same page of the database (December 2000),
Fireball #4 --
2000 Dec 01 approx. 04:30 (local/UTC-10 = 14:30 UTC)
Kauai, Hawaii, USA, five reports including sonic boom
(or perhaps strong rumbling thunder?)
http://www.msatech.com/nuforc/webreports/ndxe200012.html
On sites like this I've also found reports of what were
re-entries of artificial Earth satellites. And even some
of the reports that I can't make much sense of can make
for interesting reading. In some cases the nature of the
report really leads me to wonder what could have caused
the perceived phenomena they describe.
Ed Cannon - ecannon@mail.utexasdot edu - Austin, Texas, USA
http://wwwvms.utexasdot edu/~ecannon/meteorlinks.html
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