[meteorite-list] Flash in Louisiana Sky Likely a Meteor

From: Ron Baalke <baalke_at_meteoritecentral.com>
Date: Tue Mar 14 10:30:59 2006
Message-ID: <200603130531.k2D5Viw05614_at_zagami.jpl.nasa.gov>

http://www.2theadvocate.com/news/suburban/2446497.html

No alien attack; no green men

Flash in sky likely a meteor, but no evidence of impact found
By PATRICK COURREGES
The Advocate
March 11, 2006

Southern Louisiana residents who spotted a green flash in the sky
Thursday night can get the kids out from under the kitchen table and put
away the gas masks. It was likely only a meteor and may not have even
survived long enough to touch the ground.

Reports from Baton Rouge in the east to Jefferson Davis Parish in the
west were called in to news outlets about a greenish light seen in the
skies around 8:30 p.m.

Randy Belleau, 24, of Lawtell in St. Landry Parish said Friday that he
believes a meteor hit in his neighbor's field across the road from his
home, though he neither heard nor felt an impact and wasn't able to find
anything in a Friday morning search.

He said he looked outside the door of his home at about 8:30 p.m.
Thursday and saw a greenish streak of light lasting "a split-second"
that appeared to pass behind the oak trees in his front yard.

"It was big green flash and the end of it was wrapped up in flames,"
Belleau said.

Sheriffs' offices in the Acadiana area said they had not received calls
about an impact Thursday night or Friday morning.

St. Landry Parish Chief Deputy Laura Balthazar said the only thing she'd
heard about the green flash was a report on television news.

NASA spokeswoman Erica Hupp in Washington, D.C., said Friday that a
contingent of that agency's staff makes it their business to know if
anything big enough to actually touch the ground is heading toward Earth.

Meteors are pieces or chunks of stony or metallic matter that hit the
Earth's atmosphere, often leaving a bright trail from the friction with
the atmosphere.

According to NASA's information page on meteors, most are extremely
small and burn up dozens of miles above the Earth's surface. If they do
hit the ground, they are called meteorites.

Hupp said NASA didn't have any indication of something big enough to hit
the ground going through Earth's atmosphere in the Louisiana area
Thursday night.

"We would know it," she said. "They do watch that stuff, because we do
watch our satellites."

She said NASA keeps tabs on meteorites because scientists are interested
in studying anything from outer space that survives the trip to Earth.

Hupp said that because meteors burn so brightly, observers on the ground
may be hundreds of miles from where the meteor they see is passing
through the atmosphere.

A NASA information page notes that meteors have to be of a certain size,
neither too big nor too small, to actually make landfall and leave
anything recognizable behind.

If they're too small, they burn up, and if they're too big, they explode
and the pieces burn up.
Received on Mon 13 Mar 2006 12:31:44 AM PST