Some fellow amateur astronomers and I were at a remote forest preserve, oh, I want to say the late 1980s, it was dark, we were all set up ready to start observing the sky, when we noticed, from the East, something light up and get really bright, moving straight East to West. It got so bright it lit up the entire countryside like daytime in an eerie green glow. I estimate it traveled across the sky for about 7-8 seconds to the West before it broke apart into smaller pieces and disappeared about 30 degrees above the horizon.
It left a smoke trail that we could see for about 20 minutes before it disappeared.
Haven’t seen anything like it since.
Yep the one I saw lasted about 8 seconds or so too, but was going from south to the north up towards Canada. It lit treetops, but wasn’t quite as bright as the one you saw to light the whole area.
There apparently has been an increase in fireball sightings- but I’ve probsbly seen my last one personally as I don’t smoke anymore, so I don’t go out for a cigg anymore either.
It was a very memorable sight to behold though. Glad I got to see it.
We used to like to watch the skies during meteor storms- but where we live now the skies are very often cloudy at nigh, but every now and again, we still get to see them still- but the fireball was special, unique.