Comments on: Bright Meteor Seen Over Western Canada

By: Marleane

Marleane — Thu, 27 Nov 2008 06:19:42 +0000

I live in Vancouver, Canada. Last night (Nov. 25), as well as tonight (Nov. 26) I saw two small bright meteors with long sparkly tails coming down into the ocean. From my window in Kitsilano I see the Burrard Inlet, with the mountains of West Vancouver in the background. I could tell the meteors went into the ocean because the mountain was behind them. There certainly seems to be a great deal of activity in our skies lately.

By: Ramona

Ramona — Wed, 26 Nov 2008 21:22:24 +0000

Correction, it wasn't on 11/25, it was last week.

By: Ramona

Ramona — Wed, 26 Nov 2008 21:16:40 +0000

I live in Tucson, AZ and have a wonderful view of the Catalina Mt. range. The evening of Nov. 25th we had all of the blinds open, light dimmed and were watching a movie. It was beautiful to see the meteor, it just disapeared behind the mountain ridge. What a lucky break to be inside and still catch the show. It was breathtaking and better entertainment than the movie.

By: Atelescopeguy

Atelescopeguy — Wed, 26 Nov 2008 16:28:08 +0000

I live outside of Vail, Colorado in a pretty good dark sky area and on Friday the 21 I witnessed the sky flash bright at approx 5:30. It was similar to an Iridium Flash I witnessed a few years ago while at a star party on the Grand Mesa of western Colorado, where the atmosphere light intensity was similar to early morning or late evening for 5-6 seconds. On this last Friday the brightness of the sky went from twilight dark to the brightness of around sunset, which cast shadows, back to dark in about 6-8 seconds. I was inside and happen to be looking out the large windows of my house, allowing me to get a good view of the brightness on the ground and the shadows cast, as well as the overall sky brightness. I did not see any fireball or tail in the direction( south) I was looking. If this was the Canadian event, which I believe it to be, then the boloide/meteor must have been ignited in a higher altitude tajectory, allowing the sky to brighten over such a large area, perhaps even into Arizona, as other observers have noted. It sounds like the LA/ TX/ TN event and the Canadian(Colorado?) event are 2 different objects on different nites.

Good luck finding the pieces!

By: Jason

Jason — Wed, 26 Nov 2008 13:30:34 +0000

This is in addition to another comment by jmcboots who speaks about "junk" debris from the Leonid Shower that the earth drifted into. First of all, we don't drift into things being that the earth is extremely large and has a high gravitational pull. So strong is this pull that the Moon still graces us most nights. So as opposed to us drifting into things, we actually attract things. Having said that, jmcboots may be correct in assuming that the Leonid remnants had a little bit of straggling debris that we invited into Canada. lol

By: Jason

Jason — Wed, 26 Nov 2008 13:20:42 +0000

I will admit, I don't think I was outside and witnessed anything. I simply wanted to comment on the behavior of meteors that manage to penetrate the Earth's atmosphere.

Stated earlier, most if not all visible meteors that we see jet across the night sky go by at extremely high velocities. My high, I mean millions of ft. per second. There are small and by small, I mean that they are about the sice of semi-trucks. The one over Canada may very well have been about as large as a large building.

Since we have very little knowledge about the composition of meteors, we can go on what we do know. Certain metals, gases, and solid liquids are highly combustable when mixed and/or combined together. Thermite, for example, is a mixture of super fine metal particles and can burn slowly and incredibly hot. A meteor can contain any or all of those things and at the speed it was going and the more oxygen feeding the burn, it could have burned up all together or have been "stripped" during entry, split apart, and only light "grapefruit" sized objects remained. The bright intesisty suggest that it was highly volitile and quite obviously, from videos gathered, got brighter as it gained more oxygen closer to ground.

It is also possible to see an event like that from thousands of miles away. From places like Tennessee, Louisiana, and Arizona, I believe that what was seen was a bright falling object so far away on the curvature of the horizon that there could have been 2 to 3 more seconds until it hit. Remember, the Earth is round. Places like Arizona, New Mexico, Western Texas, Neveda .. It could have been 5-7 more seconds considering the Rocky Mountains.

I hope we are able to learn more about our solar system and even our galaxy by events like this one, but these events occur more often than people realize. Here's a fun fact .. "Shooting Stars" occur nearly 4 times a night and about 12 times in a 24 hour period. It'd be nice if we could see them during the day.

By: Dr. Michael Schmidt

Dr. Michael Schmidt — Wed, 26 Nov 2008 10:26:45 +0000

I saw it in Tennessee, I was not quite sure what I saw until I read about it here

By: Catrina

Catrina — Wed, 26 Nov 2008 07:31:30 +0000

My husband and I were traveling near Tunica, MS on the evening of Nov. 21. Suddenly over to the left there was a large super bright object traveling down at tremendous speed. My husband thought a helicopter had crashed. We saw no flash nor did we hear anything. He braked – we were both like OMG what was that?? I've never seen a meteor but that is my only guess as to what it was.

By: Vladamir

Vladamir — Wed, 26 Nov 2008 06:16:53 +0000

Once again Mother Russia has risen up to demonstrate its power to the puny west. May our missle strike fear into your capitalist hearts. When Russia flexs the world listens!

Vodka!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

By: SarahJoy

SarahJoy — Wed, 26 Nov 2008 06:13:30 +0000

I was also fortunate enough to witness the bright blue falling whatever from the east valley 101 southbound in scottsdale. Amaizing treat after a long week…

By: jmcboots

jmcboots — Wed, 26 Nov 2008 01:49:17 +0000

My guess is there must have been some "new" remnants from the leonid shower that have migrated into the path of the earth. The various meteor showers we see throughout the year are clouds of junk that the earths orbit travels through. The leonids, which were supposed to have peaked on the 17th of November, are remnants of the comet Temple-Tuttle. My completely uneducated guess is that the cloud has shifted some and the planet has run through some much more substantial particles (aka chunks!) than usual!

By: Colette

Colette — Wed, 26 Nov 2008 00:58:50 +0000

My friend and I were on the phone Friday evening in Glendale, AZ. We were both sitting outside on our patios when suddenly this giant fireball with a tail zoomed overhead. We were both stunned and awed. Since then all I could find out about it pertained to the sighting in Canada. I am so glad someone else in AZ saw it because we started to wonder if we were losing our minds! I have seen shooting stars before, but this was nothing like it. It was huge! Is it possible this was the same object apparently seen all over the world?

By: ACC

ACC — Tue, 25 Nov 2008 18:18:16 +0000

Hi there, I'm currently located in the Catalan Pyrenees, Spain, and at approx 00.00/00.30 last night saw a HUGE 'shooting star', something of such size I had never seen before, complete with visible particles and an evident trail. You could even see the heat forming around the shape, reds and blues. I woke this morning to tell the story, and was pretty excited to see the footage today from Canada. Whoop!

By: Ameez

Ameez — Tue, 25 Nov 2008 18:00:10 +0000

This is so cool, i live in Dubai, United Arab Emirates and i saw this white thing going across the sky and my friend said it was a shooting star but i didn't believe her as it was too close and slow in speed. This i saw in the day time. Canada is where is landed, that is so cool!!

By: Anjers

Anjers — Tue, 25 Nov 2008 17:16:42 +0000

I saw it in New Orleans! A large greenish light arced across the sky over the French Quarter right after sunset when I was walking home from the street car stop. It was really strange, I've never seen that kind of light in the sky before, and I felt ridiculous trying to explain it to people. It was surreal. I'm glad other people saw it in Louisiana, too!

By: Leah

Leah — Tue, 25 Nov 2008 03:41:13 +0000

My fourteen year old son was shooting hoops last Thursday evening while waiting for me to come out so we could run to the grocery store. As I walked out to my car he suddenly said Whoa! What was that? I walked around to the back of my car and said what are you talking about? He pointed up above our house and said he just saw a huge light go over the house and then it went out. It wasn't completely dark yet although the sun had already set. We live about 5 miles north of Lake Charles in southwest Louisiana.

By: RLT

RLT — Tue, 25 Nov 2008 00:32:59 +0000

My son was working on an isolated oil rig south of Lloydminster. They thought someone had aimed a phosporous flare at their rig as it appeared to be aimed directly towards them. My son turned away and watched the reflection on the machinery as he said it was far to painful to look at it. The one worker who stayed facing the event got a 'sun' burn… They said it turned into about a hundred pieces and there were the most amazing colours of red and blue and purple

By: Cindy

Cindy — Mon, 24 Nov 2008 21:35:38 +0000

I saw the one in Louisiana too. I am in north Lafayette/Carencro area. I only caught the end of it, to see it's last few explosions before it died out. It was just before sunset, so I know it had to be big to see without the dark night sky. I'm glad I found this page as I've been trying to find others who had seen it too.

By: Heather

Heather — Mon, 24 Nov 2008 20:09:44 +0000

I saw something at approximately 5:30 p.m. CST in central Mississippi November 20! I was on my way home from work at a stop sign in my car on the phone talking to my mom. They I saw this huge fire ball..had streaks of green and turquoise. I thought it was a plane crashing! I was screaming Oh my gosh!! and then suddenly it went away! It looked SO BIG!

By: Carol Sanders

Carol Sanders — Mon, 24 Nov 2008 19:53:57 +0000

I saw it too !! I was coming home from my daughters on thursday night around 6:30 or 7 . It was like a beam of light with a ball of fire at the end of it. I pulled over to the side of the road cause I thought it was going to hit the houses. I wasn't sure what it was. I live in Sarnia, Ont.

By: vickie

vickie — Mon, 24 Nov 2008 19:27:14 +0000

I live just south of Shreveport, La. On Thursday, Nov. 20 about 6:00 p.m., I saw a bright green meteor with a long silver tail going south, low in the sky. Breathtaking!!

By: Jeff

Jeff — Mon, 24 Nov 2008 19:18:58 +0000

I saw something simular on October 30, 2008 at 11:30pm from Walled Lake, MI. The flash of light went right over my house, as I was outside walking my dogs. It went South-east to Northwest and disappeared over the horizon.

By: Cherovis

Cherovis — Mon, 24 Nov 2008 13:23:48 +0000

During the past week, I have seen 2 meteor burn outs, or "shooting stars" over Lafayette, LA. Both times, they were as bright as looking into a welders torch & burned out completely approximately 100-200 feet above the ground. I'm not one to witness events like this & suddenly I see 2 in one week. Awesome.

By: Hex

Hex — Mon, 24 Nov 2008 08:15:07 +0000

Here is the link to the American Meteor Society:

http://www.amsmeteors.org/fireball/fireball_log2008.html

I see two candidates for my two sightings. I hope to have a more accurate report having had this experience.

By: Hex

Hex — Mon, 24 Nov 2008 04:59:01 +0000

I saw two different fireballs on two different nights last week in Roseville, California. Earth must be passing through a bunch of stuff right now. Hope nothing big to come.