[meteorite-list] Fireball Seen Over Oregon, California and Nevada

From: Ron Baalke <baalke_at_meteoritecentral.com>
Date: Fri, 28 Dec 2007 16:50:36 -0800 (PST)
Message-ID: <200712290050.QAA17646_at_zagami.jpl.nasa.gov>

http://www.ktvz.com/Global/story.asp?S=7540645

Fireball has hunters on the trail of meteor's tail
By Barney Lerten and Victoria Adelus
KTVZ.COM
Decmeber 24, 2007
Updated: December 27, 2007

A blazing fireball plummeting toward Earth was seen over a wide area of
Central Oregon, Northern California and Nevada as night fell on
Christmas Eve.

Several spotters say they saw it break apart into three fiery streaks of
light, but a meteorite hunter says there's little if any chance a
blazing "rock from space" might have reached the ground and could be found.

While the special timing of the event brings to mind a certain, special
"star to the east" - or even Santa's rocket-powered sleigh thundering
across the sky - Dick Pugh, a long-time expert on meteors and
meteorites, says he'd like to hear from those who saw - or hopefully
heard - the heavenly sight.

If meteorite-hunter Pugh of Portland State University hears from enough
people and gathers enough data to figure an approximate location -
mighty big ifs - then he could beat the mighty odds and find what would
be the first known meteorite to be discovered east of the Oregon Cascades.

But after hearing from spotters from Sisters, Redmond and Burns to
Klamath Falls and San Jose, Calif., Pugh said Wednesday the odds were
even slimmer of locating anything that could have fallen to Earth.

Several people - perhaps many more - around Deschutes and Crook counties
said they saw the fireball streaking toward the ground shortly after 5
p.m. on Monday evening.

So did several people near Reno, Nev., meaning it's possible those who
thought it was blazing toward Earth close by instead saw something many
miles away.

A Deschutes County 911 dispatcher reported getting "probably five to
six" calls regarding sightings of the fireball

"One of our (sheriff's) deputies saw it out in Cloverdale," near
Sisters, the dispatcher said, but nobody pinpointed the location, as the
sightings came from "all over" the county.

Perhaps the most detailed sighting report came from Keith Clinton, who
lives on Gosney Road east of Bend.

"Around 5 p.m. this evening, a large bright green fireball descended out
of the cloudless sky east of Bend," Clinton wrote to NewsChannel 21.

"Clearly visible from Gosney Road, it was traveling at a steep angle
from west to east. At about 10 degrees above the horizon, it turned
yellow as it exploded, breaking into several pieces," Clinton added.

"Given the trajectory, my estimation is that the pieces probably fell
somewhere between Bend and Burns, although other sightings will be
needed to triangulate and make a closer determination."

Clinton told NewsChannel 21 Wednesday, "I knew immediately what it was,
but of course, I figured if I told anybody they'd think I was a crackpot
talking about Santa Claus coming out of the sky."

Clinton says he was sitting in his living room when he saw the fireball
plummet toward the ground.

"All of a sudden, through the window, I saw this green fireball come
streaking out of the sky,"said Clinton.

Spencer Krueger told NewsChannel 21's Christian Boris by e-mail that his
wife saw a "fist-sized flaming orange ball with a tail" appearing to
fall near the road she was on, northwest of Redmond.

Virginia Green of Redmond said she and her husband Dan saw the orange
fireball with a tail falling toward Earth around 5:20 p.m. as they
headed to the Powell Butte Christian Church for a Christmas Eve
gathering. They, too, said it exploded into at least a couple of pieces.

Meanwhile, Crook County sheriff's scanner traffic indicated someone on
the O'Neil Highway about five miles west of Prineville thought he saw a
meteorite crash to the ground. The report was of a flash in the sky and
that object grew brighter again as it fell below the rimrock on the horizon.

Just to be safe, authorities checked with the Redmond Airport to see if
any small planes had gone off radar screens or gone missing, but nothing
of the sort was reported.

Another report from a Prineville apartment-dweller of "three
bright-colored lights" traveling east to southwest in the sky apparently
was unrelated, a dispatcher said.

But perhaps the streaking fireball only appeared to be that close.

Around the same time, observers in an area near Spanish Springs, north
of Reno, Nev., reported seeing a bright red, blue and yellow light
falling from the sky.

A caller who thought it might have been an aircraft "said the air speed
was not normal for an aircraft and the brightness was not natural,"
Washoe County sheriff's Sgt. Harry Dixon told the Reno Gazette-Journal.

Sheriff's deputies and search and rescue team members searched the area.
Some off-duty search and rescue people in the area saw the falling
object and believed it was a meteor, Dixon said.

Another sighting: Driver on Hwy. 97 near Oregon-Calif. line

Dick Pugh of the Cascadia Meteorite Laboratory at Portland State
University (http://meteorites.pdx.edu) had
received only one direct report of a sighting by Tuesday night, but said
he was anxious to hear from others at (503) 287-6733.

That report came from someone driving on Highway 97, a half-mile north
of the California border, looking to the east-northeast. The motorist
said they saw the fireball about 85 miles up, for three to five seconds.

"My report is that it breaks into three pieces, and each of the three
pieces developed a tail," Pugh told KTVZ.COM Tuesday night.

The fact the spotter also was moving at the time makes figuring the
exact trajectory even trickier, he said.

"The only thing I don't know is if we're in the middle of a meteor
shower," Pugh said. "But meteor showers rarely produce anything that
bright. He has it as bright as the moon."

The biggest clue would be if there was "anybody who heard any sonic
booms or rumbles," Pugh said. "Most fireballs totally burn up, they
don't make it down. ... I need a whole bunch of people, and I want to
talk to somebody in Burns, Winnemucca, Prineville and Christmas Valley."
Pugh said he talked with a spotter he knows in Christmas Valley, who
unfortunately was having dinner at the time.

"The chances of this putting anything down (on the ground) is one
thing," Pugh said. "If it's big enough, it's bright enough, it's a
possibility."

The difficulty in the vast, remote stretches of land east of the
Cascades is "the possibility of getting people on all four sides of this
puppy," he said, which means a location to hunt for meteorites could be
triangulated.

"Oregon only has four meteorites, none of them from east of the
mountains," he said. "That's because there's nobody out there,"
relatively speaking.

Pugh said it's not unusual for people to think such objects are much
closer to them than they really are: "It's night, your eyes are dilated,
and all of a sudden, you get something as bright as the sun. It imprints
on your retina, and you're not used to seeing something flying at 15
miles per second."

But whatever he learns from any callers or a future visit to the area,
Pugh is confident about one thing: People were seeing a meteor plunge to
its fiery end.

"I'm positive this is a rock from space - it's not a rocket booster, or
a UFO. Maybe it's Santa Claus - that's the only other option I'll
account for."

Bend astronomer also wants to hear of sightings

And voicing a common refrain among meteor experts (such as Bend
astronomer O. Richard Norton, author of "Rocks From Space"), Pugh said
such dramatic, if fleeting sightings do confirm one thing: "Chicken
Little was right" - the sky really is falling, so to speak.

Norton said Wednesday, "We want to get out into the field to see if we
can locate it. If we do, we would have found a meteorite from the
asteroid belt, 4.5 billion years old."

Norton has written several books on astronomy and says he's only seen
this kind of thing once in his 30 years in the field.

"This is the best shot we've had in many many years to study close up a
meteorite, certainly here in the Bend area," he said.

Norton says what fell from the sky was probably a stoney meteorite and
it was most likely traveling at 25 miles per second.

According to Norton, "85 percent of meteorites that make it to the earth
are stone, very common but among the oldest of the meteorites."

Now, Norton says he hopes to speak with those who witnessed the event.

"It means us contacting as many people as we can to locate it," Norton
said, so he can begin the hunt to find the pieces from space left behind.

If you saw anything blazing across the sky on Christmas Eve, you can
contact Norton at (541) 389-5652.
Received on Fri 28 Dec 2007 07:50:36 PM PST