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Remarks |
This is the report I wrote the next day: I was in my backyard with my dog last night (Feb 1). It was a couple hours after dark but I didn\'t take note of the time. My house in Fort Worth (I30 and 35W which is almost in Arlington) faces west and is very cubical. So the entire western sky is blocked off from my back porch. (It\'s actually kind of nice because it blocks off the a lot of the light pollution.) The house is two story and provides a very effective visual shield of the western sky. The backyard faces due east. I sitting was on my back porch, which is not covered. The first thing I noticed was the yard light up. It was somewhat feignt, but it was very obvious. It caught my attention immediately because it was unusual for the yard to light up like that. The shadows were moving indicating that the light source was moving. My first thought was that maybe it was car lights reflecting off a wall, but I\'m not sure what wall that would have been. Then it came over the top of the house and over my head. I would say it was very roughly 30 degrees to the south away from directly over head. But all of my \"measurements\" here are just estimates based on what I can remember. It was moving almost from due west to due east. It was a burning object way up there. The only conclusion I can come to is that it was a meteor. I\'ve sat out a couple times and watched the occasionial meteorite during a shower or just a long night out in the middle of no where. This wasn\'t even comparable to that. I believe the object was \"easily\" 100 times brighter than any meteor I\'ve ever personally seen, but I\'m a VERY inexperienced amatur astronomer. I think I can say it was brighter than the moon. Well, thinking about it, it was DEFINATELY brighter than the moon (which was in half phase last night) because it lit up the yard that was already lit up by the moon. So, that proves it was quite a bit brighter than the moon. And it looked more like a burning jet liner, in brightness, than Jupiter. Jupiter was probably 50 times darker, if I was just going to try to make a wild guess. (I\'ve spent quite a few nights looking at Jupiter.) I mention Jupiter because I\'m very familiar with it and I\'ve never seen a meteor nearly as bright as Jupiter. This was like 50 times brighter than Jupiter. I didn\'t take measurements, but I think the tail was very roughly 30 degrees (3 fists)in length across the sky. I think the tail was roughly 4 times less bright than the object, which still made the tail amazingly bright. I think the object was roughly the color of the sun, but I remember the tail having a slight orange hue to it. The tail made me think of a light saber from Star Wars. It was almost like a \"flare\" going across the sky. My first thought was \"That\'s NOT good. If that thing hits the earth we\'re in some serious trouble.\" I actually stood up and walked half way across the yard visually \"following it\" to see if it landed. I\'m sure it took 4 or 5 seconds or so to walk |
