[meteorite-list] Bright Flash in the Sky in Alaska Reported

From: Ron Baalke <baalke_at_meteoritecentral.com>
Date: Tue Apr 26 13:19:42 2005
Message-ID: <200504261712.j3QHCit00178_at_zagami.jpl.nasa.gov>

http://www.news-miner.com/Stories/0,1413,113~7244~2833805,00.html

Official weighs in on reported flash in the sky
By AMANDA BOHMAN
Fairbanks Daily News-Miner (Alaska)
April 24, 2005

As 37-year-old John Kempen traveled the Parks Highway to Nenana at about
2 a.m. Saturday, he watched the sky, hoping to point out the northern
lights to his girlfriend.

But instead of spotting a blur of emerald green, Kempen saw a bright
flash of bluish white with sparks for a tail and fiery "chunks breaking
off."

The comet-like object, maybe the size of a basketball, slid across the
sky from the southwest to the northeast.

Kempen figured the object was a meteor.

According to Neal Brown, director of the space grant program at the
University of Alaska Fairbanks Geophysical Institute, Kempen probably
saw a piece of space junk.

An estimated 5,000 to 10,000 pieces of useless debris orbit the Earth,
Brown said, and more is continually added. Among the objects are rocket
motors, and bolts and flanges, which are adapters between rocket motors.
Also orbiting the earth are old satellites and out-of-commission
spacecraft.

"From about 100 to 5,000 miles away from the Earth, it's a virtual
junkyard," Brown said. "I think there's an astronaut's glove still out
there."

Gravity pulls the junk back to Earth.

"It's coming in all the time," Brown said.

The main reason Kempen's sighting sounds more like junk than a meteor is
that it exhibited color, Brown said.

"Meteors don't have any blue or green or any colors," he said. "Most of
the meteors are just rocks."

Secondly, the sighting was in the wrong part of the sky to be a Lyrid
meteor, which would likely travel from northeast to southwest.

"It's the exact opposite of what they described," Brown said. "It still
could have been a meteor, but I really don't think so."
Received on Tue 26 Apr 2005 01:12:44 PM PDT