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Remarks |
Over many decades I've spent a lot of time looking up at the sky during meteor showers. I've also seen a lot of meteors that we're not associated with meteor showers. Some of these were very bright and long-lived and left a trail. During the Leonid meteor storm in 2001 I saw a fireball that was way off to the east , which I could tell was far away. On that when I was standing on the roof ofon that when I was standing on the roof of a house in Philadelphia. And that time I definitely heard a buzzing noise at the exact time I saw Fireball. The buzzing got louder as the fireball got brighter and faded when the fireball faded. At the time I could not understand it at all because I knew that what I was seeing was far away probably hundreds of miles away out over the Atlantic Ocean and if there was any sound from it it would have been much later that the sound waves got to my ears. I know that the difference between the speed of light and the speed of sound in the atmosphere amounts to about 5 seconds per mile.
This one was far brighter than that and went across a much larger arc of the sky, although that may have been due to the fact that it was straight over my head.
This one was completely silent. I never heard a thing. although I ran inside right afterwards, to write down what I had seen. It did not occur to me that if there was a shock wave or sonic boom that it would not come for perhaps as long as a minute later or more, depending on how far away the object was when it entered the atmosphere or past over my head.
So there may have been a sonic boom or shock wave but I didn't stick around to listen for it.
I see it there other reports from the West Coast of Florida right around that same time. I'm sure this object was visible to a lot of people across a wide area. But I know for sure that that object went straight over my head nearly exactly vertical. I first saw it shining through the trees, large palm trees. I was walking around with a very bright flashlight checking on sprinklers and it was so bright it immediately caught my attention even though I was looking down at the time. For a second I thought it must be the headlights from a plane, but I was seeing it's shining through very dense palm trees , and so it must have been extremely bright. The brightest object I've ever seen in the sky except for the Sun. As I watched and realized what it was and it went straight over my head with fragments flying off of it I realized what an amazing sight I was seeing. It just kept going and going. I'm not sure how long it was in my field of view but it was quite a long time for a meteor. Many seconds. I only wish I'd been standing in a more open spot at the time although it was pure luck I saw it at all. It was in the sky long enough that if I had had my phone with me I could have pulled it out of my pocket and turned it on and got in a picture. |
