I just saw a fireball and nobody cares

[DaveC426913]

Friday night (9:27PM EST, May 1 , 2015) I was driving on the QEW when a fireball appeared low in the sky in front of me. Passed almost due East. A very distinct green disc with stubby tail falred twice before fading out.

(0:06 - 0:09) very low over the highway. I'm really sad that the dash cam is so wide-angle it looks like just a dot.

(I was away for the weekend, so it was two days of hand-wringing before I knew if the dash-cam caught it)

Here I thought I'd upload it to CTV and be on the 11 o'clock news. :(

 

[russ_watters]

Your wife had never seen a shooting star before? Really?

 

[Drakkith]

I remember seeing a magnificent meteor while accelerating up the on-ramp onto I-20 in Bossier City one night. I remember it being white streak with perhaps a hint of red/orange, then quickly flaring up to a bright green before fading away.

 

[DaveC426913]

Your wife had never seen a shooting star before? Really?

Nope.

And now she's seen a fireball.

 

[eurus]

Is there a way to estimate the size of a fireball based on it's brightness, distance traveled, and burn time before ablation? I recently witnessed a very large and very bright fireball traverse the visible sky (parallel to the horizon) just before dusk. Estimated burn time was 4-5 seconds. I have never witnessed one with this trajectory, brightness, burn time, or size.

 

[2milehi]

Your wife had never seen a shooting star before? Really?

I'd say that most people are oblivious to the night sky.

 

[Drakkith]

I'd say that most people are oblivious to the night sky.

It's generally pretty boring unless you live in a super dark area and/or know what you're looking at.

 

[davenn]

I'd say that most people are oblivious to the night sky.

in general that would be a correct statement and a pretty sad one at that ... doesn't say much for our education system huh !?

It's generally pretty boring unless you live in a super dark area and/or know what you're looking at.

uh huh ... people just don't realize that the night sky is constantly changing. Even just a little good education would open their eyes to the awesome things going on up there
variable stars; phases of the Moon and Venus; dust storms on Mars; the occultations and transits of Jupiters moons the coming and going of its belts;
the sunspot cycle and aurora; nova and supernova; comets and asteroids

just a few of the many things that even an amateur astronomer can get involved in observing

Dave

 

[tech99]

in general that would be a correct statement and a pretty sad one at that ... doesn't say much for our education system huh !?
uh huh ... people just don't realize that the night sky is constantly changing. Even just a little good education would open their eyes to the awesome things going on up there
variable stars; phases of the Moon and Venus; dust storms on Mars; the occultations and transits of Jupiters moons the coming and going of its belts;
the sunspot cycle and aurora; nova and supernova; comets and asteroids

just a few of the many things that even an amateur astronomer can get involved in observing

Dave

I saw one in the UK, very big and burning, and about a minute later I heard a sonic boom. Later, I estimated the delay by walking the route again with a stop watch, and I estimated the elevation angle with a sextant. There is a reporting centre, and although the ball was very prominent, only three people had seen it. But the locating centre located its position from the observations, about 30 miles from me horizontally.

 

[Dotini]

A few years ago my friend and fellow retiree Harvey and I were playing a game of Carcassonne after lunch at my home in Seattle. I looked up and saw a fireball in the daylight sky though the sliding glass door. We grabbed the binoculars, went out on the deck and took turns observing it with the Bushnell 7 x 35. I could tell more or less where it was, since it was between some scattered clouds that were in familiar places over the cityscape known to be about 5 miles away. It appeared to be as wide as an airliner body. The fireball was traveling horizontally and silently, blazing bright yellow, not too fast and leaving no trail. We watched it until it disappeared into a cloud. Scouring the papers and local news for the next few days, it appeared no one else saw it or reported it. Right over a city of half a million! IMO, too many people are looking down into their phones instead of up into the environment.