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Re: (meteorobs) Fireball reports found on questionable site

>>>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.

    About two weeks ago, lying on the sofa exhausted after a workday,
I awoke from a slight, short doze to some program about UFO's on
the History Channel (of all places).  To tired to get up and find the
remote
and find better garbage to watch, I lay there and enjoyed several clips
of
"filmed, eyewitness accounts" of the usual hokeyness.
The interesting thing was that among the several amatuer film clips
of "UFO's" shown, there were about three that were obviously
daylight fireballs.  One was of what is probably among the rarest of
observable
meteoritic occurances...a daylight point fireball that left a lengthy
persistant train. Three points to be made here:
1)  Naturally none of the fireballs were identified as such on the show.

2)  Too bad these films aren't turned over to science for what they
truely are (if they haven't been).
3) That persistant train was visible in broad daylight(?) !!!

Kim Y.

Ed Cannon wrote:

> 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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