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Re: (meteorobs) Fireball, 5:54 EST NJ

In a message dated 9/6/01 7:15:21 AM Eastern Daylight Time, kzgrey@ntplxdot net 
writes:

<< I was driving out to Sandy Hook NJ this morning and at about 5:54 am I saw
 bright white fireball streak across the eastern horizon with what looked
 like a very small angle of descent.  It lasted about 30 seconds and moves
 south to north.  It left a very long smoke trail behind it and broke into
 several smaller fragments just before it went out.  Anyone else see this? >>

    Apparently quite a few other people did.  According to Tom Kaminsky (sp?) 
who reports morning drive traffic for WCBS Newsradio 880 in New York, he was 
walking out to his traffic helicopter in Linden, New Jersey at approximately 
5:50 a.m. when this object caught his eye . . . and the eye of several others 
who just happened to be outside at that moment.  

    He described it as " . . . looking like an aircraft that was on fire. . . 
it appeared to be trailing flames."  He says that it appeared to be traveling 
rather slowly across the sky, taking fully 90 seconds to move from the 
southeast to the northwest.  He also said that smaller pieces were visible, 
breaking off the main object.  Lastly, he says that it left a " . . . long 
and distinct contrail which remained visible for at least 10 minutes."

    Another eyewitness talking to WCBS reporter Peter Haskell said that he 
didn't see the flames that Kaminsky saw, but confirmed that the object 
appeared to him moving across the northwestern sky.  This person (also in 
northern NJ) also said of the object that there were "two very bright 
concentrations of light within its nucleus."  

    These reports seem to indicate that it was an unusually large meteoroid.  
There has been talk that it might also have been a piece of "space junk" 
although the trajectory described (southeast to northwest) doesn't seem to 
fit the path of an artificial satellite.

    I was initially alerted to this at 6:13 a.m., when I was awakened out of 
a sound sleep by Bonnie Schneider, the morning weather anchor at News 12 Long 
Island, who reported that the newsroom had received " . . . literally dozens 
of calls " by folks who wanted to know about the "meteor shower" that had 
just taken place and "was there anything on the celestial schedule this 
morning" for such an event to occur?

I told Bonnie that if there was, do you think I would have been in bed?   :(

-- joe rao
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