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Massive fireball reported across Midwestern sky

#41
Gopherbassist said:
You're not taking into consideration that we don't really know what angle we're looking at it from. The most we know is where the camera is pointed, but the sky isn't flat.

We also don't know how big it is. We know how large the glow is, but, as I said, there are lots of things that could create a huge, bright glowing area. That thing could be the size of a tire but have chemical reactions going on between things inside of it, and between those things, the byproducts of their reactions and the atmosphere, and just heat from friction creates light.

The article also says that it broke up into several pieces. More surface area = faster disintegration. It burned up.
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You're too quick to say it burned up.
There isn't enough data presented by the media to say one way or the other. I haven't seen footage of it doing so and I'm going purely on the footage in this discussion.

I'm certainly no "expert" but I did live at an airport for five years, I have over 1000 hours as a passenger in helicopters and a couple hundred in fixed wings. I have a legitimate claim to have developed an eye for objects moving in the sky to back up my opinions. The evidence is not conclusive. Is it a meteor? Did any of it hit the ground? I don't know and neither do you. There are a lot of questions that still need to be answered and all I'm really doing is asking.
 
#42
Hope it's not a bug! :eek:


edgar.jpg
 
#46
I saw one in CT when I was a kid - relatively the size of the Moon, moved slowy across the horizon at sunset, as bright as the setting Sun. It made a hissing, sizzling noise. It looked low enough to have landed a few miles away, I found out later that it landed in Maine, several hundred miles away.
 
#49
They can streak by in a second or can take quite some time to pass through the atmosphere, it depends on what angle and relative speed they travel at, which can vary wildly. A large, relatively-slow moving rock coming at a very oblique angle can make a long, lazy, but spectacular journey through the atmosphere. If it's moving somewhat slowly at an oblique enough angle, but still has enough speed and momentum to avoid get additionally slowed down enough by the atmosphere and pulled in by earth's gravity, it can pass back out into space again....
 
#50
lunarpollen you make excellent points. The more I think about it the more I think it was a meteor. One of my uncles flew in the USAF 12 years in the late 60's early 70's and it's common knowledge among professional pilots there are aircraft flying around up there the public isn't being told about. What you NEVER see though is footage of those things on CNN or in any other mainstream media. If it was anything other than a meteor we probably wouldn't be having this discussion.
 
#51
Looked plenty fast to me. Compared to the speed of a jet liner traveling at altitude, this thing seemed to be moving a lot faster than that.

Probably also bright enough for the light to pass through cloud cover, giving the impression that it is flying "under" the cloud layer, when in fact it is a few hundred km up.
 
#55
Most meteors are visible at a height of about 100 Km. Being a longtime amateur astronomer I've seen dozens of very bright meteors (called bolides) and they usually light up the entire sky and stay visible for perhaps 10 seconds or more. Often they break into multiple pieces and leave glowing trails that very much resemble fireworks, specifically roman candles. I've seen them just about every different color; blue, green, orange, yellow, red, purple.

I actually did see the one on Wednesday as I was working at my computer by the window and I noticed the whole sky lit up so I pulled back the shade and saw about the last 4 or 5 seconds of the meteor trailing off toward the horizon behind the trees across the street from my house. It seemed almost like daylight and it was by far the brightest bolide I've ever seen.

The IAU now estimates the meteor was a boulder about 1 meter across that partially broke apart while the main mass skipped off the atmosphere and back into space. It's very likely there are numerous pebbles and chunks that made it to Earth and are sprinkled across the landscape in southern Wisconsin.
 
#57
nic salsus said:
Where's the pics of the impact site? I couldn't find any. That thing was very large and very low. If it hit the ground there was still a lot of it unburned and would have it left a mark of some sort. Links to pics of the impact anyone?
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The "impact site" is probably the stratosphere, where it got done disintegrating at extreme heat.
 
#58
nic salsus said:
Where's the pics of the impact site? I couldn't find any. That thing was very large and very low. If it hit the ground there was still a lot of it unburned and would have it left a mark of some sort. Links to pics of the impact anyone?
Click to expand...

Imagine a sack of flour. If you dropped it onto soft earth you would leave some sort of crater. But if you opened the bag and poured out the contents on the same sort of earth, you wouldn't leave a dent at all. If the meteor broke up in the air, the atmosphere would make short work out of it.

I'm just saying - even a large object may not impact the ground at all.
 

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