[meteorite-list] Flash Over Ohio Likely A Meteor

From: Ron Baalke <baalke_at_meteoritecentral.com>
Date: Thu Apr 22 09:52:11 2004
Message-ID: <200208120050.RAA27223_at_zagami.jpl.nasa.gov>

http://www.cincypost.com/2002/aug/10/meteor081002.html

No UFOs sighted; `flash' likely a meteor
By Craig Garretson
The Cincinnati Post
August 10, 2002

Call off the Men In Black.

A brief but spectacular sky show over Greater Cincinnati two weeks,
though not of this world, was almost certainly a meteor, not a UFO.

Reports of an early-morning flash on July 30 came in from as far
away as Franklin County and the Indianapolis area, but centered
around Greater Cincinnati.

Witnesses said it occurred between 1 a.m. and 2 a.m.

"It was the most awesome sight I will ever see," said Steve Mason of
Independence, Ky., who said he was doing some midnight fishing with
a cousin when a flash of light "lit up the entire countryside white."

"We saw the rock enter the atmosphere, burning red, at about 1:30 in
the morning. The rock looked like it was about three times the size
of a 747, like something out of `The Flintstones.'"

Mason said he only had time to exclaim "Oh my God!" to his cousin
"and then boom! It exploded, and then behind it came a trail of gold
that looked like sparklers across the sky.

"When that faded, there was a white streak that looked like a jet
trail in the full moon."

Jim Richardson, coordinator of the American Meteor Society's Fireball
Monitoring Program, said that the event "was most likely a meteoric
fireball."

Richardson said most or all of the meteorite likely was destroyed a
fter it entered the atmosphere, based on what witnesses saw and heard -
or didn't hear.

A sonic boom often, but not always, accompanies a meteorite of any
size falling to earth, he said.

He said his organization received three reports from Ohio and one
from Indiana about the sighting, saying it was brighter than the full
moon and lasted two to five seconds.

One observer told the society that he and other night-shift workers
at an Ivorydale factory saw a bluish-white flash, then looked up to
see an object streak "west to east at a high rate of speed, leaving a
trail behind it."

The worker said he'd seen a satellite in re-entry before "and it
looked nothing like this."

An Indiana witness said it "lit up the sky with a very bright blue
color" and left a glowing white trail behind it, making it look like
"a huge tear drop."

The National Weather Service in Wilmington and Wright-Patterson Air
Force Base in Dayton also received a number of calls about the sighting.

According to the American Meteor Society's Web site -
http://www.amsmeteors.org - there were only a handful of fireball
sightings in Ohio, Kentucky or Indiana last year.

The only one within 200 miles of Cincinnati was on July 27, 2001, in
Bellefontaine, about 30 miles north of Springfield.
Received on Sun 11 Aug 2002 08:50:42 PM PDT