[meteorite-list] Red Fireball in Florida Likely A Meteor

From: Ron Baalke <baalke_at_meteoritecentral.com>
Date: Wed, 3 Jan 2007 09:24:49 -0800 (PST)
Message-ID: <200701031724.JAA29726_at_zagami.jpl.nasa.gov>

http://www.floridatoday.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20070103/NEWS01/701030371

Red 'fireball' likely space junk
BY JEFF SCHWEERS
FLORIDA TODAY
January 3, 2007

Minutes before she sat down to watch television Monday night, Marcie
Kinney was beckoned by her husband and son to step outside of their
Grant-Valkaria home.

A red fireball streaked across the sky from west to east just above the
tree line.

"Look up! Look up!" they shouted. It only took seconds for Kinney to run
into the yard, but the fireball was already dropping out of sight over
the horizon.

"It was coming straight down, leaving black wisps of smoke," she said.

Mark Howard, director of the Brevard Community College Planetarium, said
it's likely that Kinney saw a meteor, possibly one from the little-known
Quadrandit meteor showers, which peak on Thursday.

Terry Oswalt, a professor of physics and space sciences at Florida Tech,
agreed that what Kinney and her family saw was likely a pea-sized meteor
or a piece of space debris.

The Earth is constantly bombarded with thousands of chunks of cosmic
debris the size of sand granules, Oswalt said. About once a night,
something as big as a pea called a bolide and large enough for a casual
observer to see with the naked eye shoots through the sky.

"That may have been what she saw," he said.

Oswalt was taking his garbage out around the same time in his Suntree
neighborhood but didn't see anything.
Received on Wed 03 Jan 2007 12:24:49 PM PST