[meteorite-list] Object In Michigan Sky Was Likely A Meteor

From: Ron Baalke <baalke_at_meteoritecentral.com>
Date: Thu Apr 22 09:48:10 2004
Message-ID: <200110081538.IAA20468_at_zagami.jpl.nasa.gov>

It seems to me that that the fireball sightings from Pennsylvania, Ohio, Canada,
and now Michigan were all of the same object.

Ron Baalke
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http://ja.mlive.com/news/index.ssf?/news/stories/20011005j105mustmeteor.frm

Object In Sky Was Likely A Meteor
By Steven Hepker
Michigan Live
October 5, 2001

A fireball that some Jackson County residents saw early Tuesday evening was
most likely a meteor that passed several hundred miles away. About a dozen
people called the Citizen Patriot to describe a bright, large ball of fire
that seemed to drop straight down in the area in response to a story in
Wednesday's paper that a Leoni Township woman reported seeing the object.

"That sounds very typical of a bright meteor," said David Batch, director of
Michigan State University's Abrams Planetarium. "People think it dropped in
a field next door and it is actually a few hundred miles away."

Jennie Crittendon, the Leoni Township woman, saw the apparent meteor while
driving home from dinner in Jackson on I-94 at about 7:30 p.m.

Rose Morris of Michigan Center and a friend, Bruce Nyeholt of Lansing, were
driving on High Street in Jackson to her home when they saw it.

"It was really the coolest thing," Morris said. "The sky wasn't dark yet. It
was a flash. I don't think I've ever seen anything like that before."

Some thought it was a plane on fire. Batch said that's understandable,
because it could have been space junk re-entering the Earth's atmosphere.

No one reported hearing noise, such as a sonic boom.That indicates the
object was quite a distance from Jackson, as does the description of the
trajectory.

"It's a perspective thing," he said. "A rule of thumb is that the farther
away the object, the lower it appears on the horizon. It looks as if it hit
the ground nearby."

The fireball was not logged on Internet sites that track comets and meteors.
The American Meteor Society's site lists more than 30 significant fireballs
reported in 2001.

-- Reach reporter Steven Hepker at shepker_at_citpat.com or 768-4923.
Received on Mon 08 Oct 2001 11:38:11 AM PDT