Posted on 11/21/2008 11:30:07 AM PST by TaraP
A brilliant green fireball startled onlookers across western Canada on Nov. 20th (5:30 pm MST) when it split the evening sky and fragmented during a series of thunderous explosions. "The sky was lit up almost like daytime for 3 or 4 seconds," reports Gordon Blomgren of Alberta. Murray McDonnell of northwestern Saskatchewan says "my wife and I saw a brilliant flash of blue white light, like lightning. About one minute later a long rumbling sound shook the house."
Click to play video
Andy Bartlett video-recorded the event from a 10th-floor apartment in Edmonton, Alberta:
The brilliant fireball appeared to be closer than the airplane in the upper right corner of this video," says Bartlett. "I made the movie using a Canon A510."
The nature of the object is uncertain. The slow pace of the fireball favors decaying space junk and indeed it may have been a Soyuz rocket body reentering Earth's atmosphere a day earlier than expected. The Soyuz rocket launched a Russian Defense Ministry reconnaissance satellite codenamed Kosmos-2445 on Nov. 14th. We cannot yet rule out the possibility that this was a small asteroid disintegrating in Earth's atmosphere; in the statistics of fireballs, asteroids outnumber rocket bodies by a wide margin.
UPDATE: The Saskatchawan fireball was not Soyuz. The Russian rocket body that propelled Kosmos-2445 to orbit was still being tracked 10+ hours after the fireball sighting. This means the fireball was almost certainly a small asteroid. The only question now: Did fragments of the exploding asteroid reach the ground? Stay tuned.
Looks too slow for a meteor, perhaps a spy satellite coming in that no one wants to talk about.
I think it was that spaces ladies purse burning up, you’d be suprised how flammable those cosmetics are ...
I think it was that “space ladies” purse burning up, you’d be suprised how flammable those cosmetics are ...
pretty cool!
Anomalous sky event ping.
I saw a number of “falling stars” in the sky last night here in N Nevada, about 8 PM.
bttt
Saw one as a kid in the 60’s over New Jersey, like a lot of people we tried to follow it in the family car (red Ford Fairlane 500), thinking it came down locally. It exploded over Alaska. Appeared red and green, seemed to be spiraling or tumbling a bit, made a loud whistling sound, left a smoke trail I remember it clearly today. Some people reported seeing it as a spacecraft with aliens looking out the windows.
saw one in MI earlier this year, never did find out anything about it.
Wow that looks low.
Apparently this sort of thing happens a lot more often than we realize - there are just too few people noticing & reporting them.
We were camping in Northern New Mexico back in August. Saw dozen of these but, not quite so large.
In other news, MSNBC went off the air sometime Thursday evening. The exact time is not known because nobody noticed until this morning.
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