Reports: 'Fireball' Crashes into Water Off New Jersey

1010 WINS ^ | September 2, 2007 | 1010 WINS

[LurkedLongEnough]

TOMS RIVER (1010 WINS) -- A fiery streak across the sky got the attention of the Coast Guard Saturday night, after the reported fireball crashed into the waters off the Jersey Shore.

Concerned calls started coming in from South Carolina to Long Island about 9 p.m.

Coast Guard boats were searching near the site of the reported impact, off Normandy Beach in Toms River, about 10 miles off shore. No debris has been found in the water.

The Toms River Fire Department says it also got some calls and there were at least 20 people on the beach with the same story.

The FAA has not reported any missing planes and they doubt it was part of an aircraft. Even NORAD (North American Aerospace Defense Command) chimed in, saying it probably wasn't space junk.

A Coast Guard spokesman suggested the sightings could be the result of the Aurigid meteor shower.

Astronomers had predicted a possible light show over the western parts of North America Saturday.

[RightWhale]

we don’t see fireballs daily.

Perhaps. OTOH others do. They are detected every day by other means than your eyes. What is unusual is that this one was seen by several people who have no way to describe what they saw.

[Amelia]

Concerned calls started coming in from South Carolina to Long Island about 9 p.m.

SOUTH CAROLINA? They could see something land in the water in NJ from SC??

If they could see it in SC, I'm guessing meteor. Or then again, maybe it's a typo.

[mewzilla]

Flaming blue ice?

[rawcatslyentist]

Because they're cousins, identical cousins~~~~

[missnry]

OH MY GAWD, MY EYES, MY EYES!

[Caramelgal]

Call me an alarmist

OK! You are an alarmist. :),

…this is almost weird. we don’t see fireballs daily.

Actually it is rather common.

Meteor showers occur all throughout the year but only some of them are strong enough for us to take notice like the Leonids that occur every November and the Perseids that occur every August.

Meteors or “shooting stars” burn up in our atmosphere. Very large and bright meteors are called Fire Balls. Sometimes they are so bright they can be seen in daylight. I’ve seen many shooting stars but only one fire ball.

“Fire Balls” may also be a Meteorite that makes Earth impact and while rarer, hundreds of meteorites hit Earth every year. Many of them land in the ocean or in remote areas or by the time they hit, they are so small (smaller than a baseball) and don’t make a large crater and so they often can’t be found.

I’ve been fascinated by meteors and meteorites ever since I had a “close encounter” with one. I was about 7 years old and was playing with a friend in my back yard one summer evening. We were playing something and pretending we were “Cat Women from Outer Space”. My mother was sitting on the back porch keeping an eye on us when all of a sudden the whole ground lit up like it was daytime and as we looked up we all saw this object fly directly overhead. It was a fire ball with a long tail. I remember distinctly that it had a bluish-greenish glow about it and the tail looked like hundreds of sparklers and it was close enough to us that we all heard it; it made a whistling- whooshing sound sort of like a big bottle rocket.

Needless to say my friend and I were terrified and ran to my mother who was a bit shaken her self.

Just as she was taking us back to the house, my big brother was coming out to see what happened. He had seen the light from inside the house and was listening to a baseball game on the radio when the local news broke in about reports of a mysterious object in the sky, a UFO, a Soviet rocket, etc. This was the late sixties and the height of both the cold war and the Apollo missions to the Moon.

As it turned out it wasn’t little green men or those nasty Ruskies, but a meteorite that disappeared into a high hill top called Peter’s Mountain.

[Old Professer]

http://www.space.com/spacewatch/070817_ns_aurigid_meteors.html

[EGPWS]

OK! You are an alarmist. :),...

No wonder I don't partake in the pleasures of sugar much anymore to please my palate.

FR gives me an overdose of sugar coating. LOL!

Pragmatic and to the point Caramelgal!

I like that. : D

[EGPWS]

Dont run we are your freinds

AFLACK!!! LOL!

[onedoug]

[EGPWS]

I'll call you semi-literate.

Now that wasn't very nice humblegunner.

Accurate, but not very nice. /snicker

Good morning my FRiend.

[humblegunner]

Good morning my FRiend.

Good morning right back atcha!

[WireAndWood]

Would you be willing to expound a bit on the subject of “Cat Women from Outer Space” ?

:)

[calex59]

Ack, Ack, Ack back at ya!

[calex59]

We were playing something and pretending we were “Cat Women from Outer Space”.

Cat women for outer space, I love it! I grew up in the 50s(graduated HS in 1959 at 17)and we used to play stuff like that all the time except of course we were boys(we did let our sisters play too, but only if they were the heroins who needed saving). The 1950s and 60s were science fiction heaven, you could imagine anything then before science ruined it:).

[Don W]

I can’t watch that movie with the dogs in the house: They go absolutely buggy when the Martians start “talking”. That “Ack ack, ack ack ack-ack” sends them right off the deep end. I can’t hear the soundtrack for their barking, and my laughing.

I agree that it was probably a small meteorite. Space junk, for whomever was incredulous that NASA would say anything about it, is stuff that people put up there. NASA is tracking over 4000 pieces of such junk, so they would probably know if it was manmade.

[Libloather]

[NCC-1701]

[Talking_Mouse]

A scary idea from one of my other boards. Mr. Reeves is going to play Klatuu in the new re-imaging of The Day The Earth Stood Still.

[VaRepublican]

have not seen this one yet, very funny.