[meteorite-list] Bright Meteor Surprises New England

From: Ron Baalke <baalke_at_meteoritecentral.com>
Date: Mon Apr 25 16:58:47 2005
Message-ID: <200504252058.j3PKwIx09333_at_zagami.jpl.nasa.gov>

http://www.space.com/astronotes/astronotes.html

Bright Meteor Surprises New England
The Associate Press and space.com
April 25, 2005

A bright light that was likely a meteor sparked a flurry of frantic
phone calls to police departments Sunday night across New England, a
spokeswoman for the Federal Aviation Administration said.

Called a meteor shower in some news reports, the flash was more likely a
single object seen from different angles. It was spotted from as far
north as Portland, Maine, and as far south as Long Island, New York.
Some witnesses apparently mistook the sky show for a plane crashing in
Connecticut, the FAA's Holly Baker said.

"We've checked all around. There are no aircraft unaccounted for," she said.

An emergency management official in Massachusetts speculated that the
object was part of the Lyrid meteor shower, which peaked Friday morning.

"I highly doubt that this object had anything to do with the Lyrid
meteor shower," said Joe Rao, SPACE.com's Night Sky columnist.

"The characteristics are all wrong; Lyrids are not known for producing
brilliant fireballs like this," Rao wrote today in his Skyway E-Mail
Advisory, a newsletter he sends to astronomy enthusiasts. "More likely
it was an erratic chunk of stone or iron, probably related to something
out of the asteroid belt."

Firefighters in Branford, Conn., responded to several reports of a
possible plane crash in Long Island Sound in the Thimble Island area,
but a search did not turn up anything and was called off a short while
later.

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http://www.thewesterlysun.com/articles/2005/04/25/news/news3.txt

METEOR SHOWER LIGHTS UP PHONE LINES TO POLICE
by The Associated Press and The Westerly Sun (Rhode Island)
April 25, 2005

One local man reportedly told Westerly police at 8 p.m. that he saw a
UFO burning across the evening sky from Shelter Harbor to Misquamicut.

A young motorist headed toward the beach on Route 78 in Westerly
described the blue-green streak in the sky as a "phenomenon."

It was not a plane. It was not a flare from a boat in distress. But it
was a phenomenon, of sorts.

A meteor shower Sunday night sparked a flurry of frantic phone calls to
police departments across New England from people who saw bright lights
moving in the sky, a spokeswoman for the Federal Aviation Administration
said.

The FAA announcement came after the eyewitness accounts from boaters,
stargazers and concerned callers throughout the Northeast. And law
enforcement authorities searched for distress signals on the coast and
flaming aircraft. Westerly received two calls about the apparent meteor,
police Chief Edward A. Mello said.

Stonington police received six phone calls from residents informing
police that an airplane may have gone down.

Police suspected that wasn't the case.

"The characteristics did not fit the plane description," Stonington
Police Capt. Jerry Desmond.

Desmond explained that residents calling dispatch described the sighting
as a plane with flames shooting out of the back. Upon further
investigation, Desmond said dispatchers learned from other agencies that
the sighting could possibly be a meteor.

Desmond said no emergency crews were notified, but Chief David Erskine
and First Selectman William S. Brown were alerted.

"The trajectory of it did not put it in our area," Desmond said. He
added that other agencies placed the trajectory of the meteor as falling
somewhere in the area of Niantic.

The meteor shower was seen as far north as Portland, Maine, and as far
south as Long Island, where authorities also thought a plane may have
crashed and sent emergency personnel. Witnesses also apparently mistook
the meteor shower for a plane crashing near New London, according to the
FAA's Holly Baker.

"We've checked all around," Baker said. "There are no aircraft
unaccounted for."

The bright lights apparently came from the Lyrid meteor shower, which
was scheduled to be visible to the naked eye between April 20 and April
25, said Peter Judge, spokesman for the Massachusetts Emergency
Management Agency.

"We're getting various descriptions of lights in the sky," he said.
"Everything from green lights to planes going down."

Around 8:30 p.m., the National Weather Service in Taunton, Mass.,
started receiving dozens of phone calls from witnesses who saw a "huge
fireball moving from west to east," said meteorologist Eleanor
Vallier-Talbot.

Police and Coast Guard officials in Connecticut said there were reports
of everything from meteors and missiles to multicolored objects in the
sky from Windham in the eastern part of the state to Branford and along
Long Island Sound near New Haven.

Firefighters in Branford also responded to several reports of a possible
plane crash in Long Island Sound in the Thimble Island area. But a
search did not turn up anything and was called off at about 8:50 p.m.
after the Coast Guard learned of the meteor shower.
Received on Mon 25 Apr 2005 04:58:17 PM PDT