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(meteorobs) Chirping fireball
Last night (11/12 August) I was observing Perseids here in southern
Finland and I saw a bright fireball, which wasn't a perseid, though.
At about 21:47 UT, at a height of 25-30 degrees, about 15 degrees below
the Big Dipper, flared rather slow fireball. My wild guess is that it
was about -8 magnitude, but that really is a rough estimate since it
happened behind trees and bright fireballs run out of my scale anyway.
I first though the light was coming from the nearby road. But with no
noise of an engine, my bet then was a bird as it made alike sound. When
I got so far that there're no birds that shine and I should turn my head
and make sure of that, few seconds had already passed.
The sound was simultaneous with the fireball, clearly audible and coming
from that direction. It sounded like a bird, kind of kwiek-kwiek-kwiek
noise. Or like a sound that holes in a fast flying, rotating (bowling)
ball would make when travelling through air. These, maybe 6-8, kwiek-sounds
had a sliding down pitch, lasting about half a second each and it seemed
to occur at the same time as the fireball was getting brighter, flaring.
But I can't be sure of this because I saw it through the trees. The
tree trunks might have caused that, but the sound beat was so regular
and the trunks are so unevenly lined up that, the sound itself couldn't
have been constant and broken down by the trees.
My observing place was the same as the last time, and the first time
(in 1992), I heard a noisy fireball - on the roof, in a lawn chair.
This fireball last night, I saw it about half the length of the Big
Dipper, but it probably travelled at least twice that long and from
the handle to the bowl direction. It took me by surprise, so all
the above are very, very crude estimates of it. I wonder if anybody
else in Scandinavia saw it with or without the sound.
Make
61N25W
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