Kieran Healy

Light in the Sky

Just now—around 9:55pm—Laurie and I were sitting watching a DVD when we both saw a large white ball of light (with a greenish-blue tinge) flash across the sky, burning like mad. It seemed to be heading roughly south to north and had a long tail. I suppose it was a meteor of some variety, but certainly not your common-or-garden shooting star. It was enormous by comparison, even bigger, I think, than a burning airplane would have been, and travelling much, much faster and clearly higher up. I’ve never seen anything remotely like it. I expect that many people spotted it, doubtless including the folks nearby at Kitt Peak. I’ll be looking out for news reports about what it was, where it was headed and how much of it, if any, made it to the ground.

Some twenty, or so, years ago I witnessed a quite similar sight. After taking the garbage to the curb I turned back into my driveway and straight ahead, above the roofline of my garage, I saw a quite-large and colored ball throwing a trail of sparks. It moved slowly compared to a typical shooting star and it was like nothing I had ever seen before. I called my local newspaper to report the sighting (desperately making sure the person understood that I was NOT trying to report a UFO) and asked if they would call me back if they obtained any further information. About an hour later they phoned to say that quite a few other people had reported the same thing. He said their authority on the matter stated it was most likely a small particle burning up in the atmosphere…though it sure as hell did not look very small to me. Never saw anything like it again.

I’m going with UFO.

they’re coming for you, durn lib’rals…

Aww who cares about the space junk, what enquiring minds really want to know is what DVD were y’all watching?

Went down to Tuscon two weeks ago and saw 20 of em flyin in formation!!

I was in Alabama 10 days ago and at about 5 in the afternoon suddenly there were two incredibly loud booms, so loud they shook doors and windows for miles around. There had been three similar booms just a couple weeks before, and no one knew what they were.

Weird stuff going on.

Watch out of Dakota Fanning wearing a necklace with star pendants. Maybe she’s returned for the next twenty-hour installment of Taken. And if a strange visitor who looks like Eric Close comes knocking, do keep Laurie away from her. :P

Found out anything about it yet?

Yeah, and I was going to post about it but then a couple of black Chevy Suburbans pulled up outside my house late one night and I, uh, don’t think I know anything about it.

Actually, it doesn’t seem to have made the news around here, so I think it was just a somewhat bigger-than-average lump of rock or something. I know what a regular shooting star looks like (I watched the Leonids here last year) and this was nothing like that—much bigger and brighter. Maybe it was a bit of space junk or something.

Could well have been a bolide that just glanced off the atmosphere. They happen all the time, but are rarely seen for various reasons. A few years ago one was actually videotaped by someone at a football game. Basically it’s a chunk of stone or nickel-iron that comes in at a very shallow angle, is too big to burn up, and ends up going right back out again. If I recall correctly, they can be accompanied by sonic booms.

I actually think I saw one myself when I was a teenager. Unfortunately, the event coincided with the consumption of intoxicants, so my memory of it is a little clouded.

Cool stuff, nonetheless.

Could well have been a bolide that just glanced off the atmosphere. They happen all the time, but are rarely seen for various reasons. A few years ago one was actually videotaped by someone at a football game. Basically it’s a chunk of stone or nickel-iron that comes in at a very shallow angle, is too big to burn up, and ends up going right back out again. If I recall correctly, they can be accompanied by sonic booms.

I actually think I saw one myself when I was a teenager. Unfortunately, the event coincided with the consumption of intoxicants, so my memory of it is a little clouded.

Cool stuff, nonetheless.

Oops, sorry about the double comment. I got an Internal Server Error the first time…

Most likely space junk…old booster rocket burning up or something like that. Stuff like that almost never makes the news. If it were a rock of some sort skimming the atmosphere, that’d most likely not make the news either.
Saw something similar years ago, but no sonic boom.