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Remarks |
I have observed perhaps five-to-fifteen meteor showers in my life. The weather and cold and affects on my sleep tend to be annoying, then the bad luck I've always had with the weather and bright skies has been another deterrent. I am a physicist with a few experimental hours on a 26-inch scope (33 yrs ago). I am also a trained weather forecaster/USAF weather officer familiar with clouds and optical phenomena of the skies. I don't think my sighting was anything of the meteorological type, nor was it a satellite (*unless the trail was just a glare).
I try to be rigorously skeptical like a good scientist would be. I tried to verify if others saw what I saw. I was at a red traffic light (stop signal) almost seconds after my sighting. I unabashedly rolled down my passenger side window and got the attention of an adjacent bus' driver. I asked the politely responding man if he had just witnessed some kind of fireball on the horizon ahead. He said no. I suspect he is normal and won't go poking around any dash cam video to check for evidence, but I was not going to ask him. He was already polite enough to talk to the crazy man talking to other drivers on a Friday night! Probably thought I had been drinking until he realized I was a sky nerd. Anyhow, I have looked up online for reports of aircraft accidents in the area or meteor sightings, but neither have been reported so far, six hours later on this Friday night. This is a bit surprising. I was rather certain I saw something that would show up in the local news. Though, perhaps the local news is not updated for such things until tomorrow. Hmm, maybe I should have tried Facebook. Then again, no. That is overkill on the skepticism and verification pursuit. I quit FB a year ago and I don't need to get sucked back in. If you think I can fall into a rabbit hole on this sight, just imagine the "Meta".
My thought was this was a meteor bright enough to stir up a small news story, perhaps with security camera or dashcam videos posted online. I was so concerned it might be an aircraft, I immediately opened my car's sunroof and checked that the sky was clear. Fortunately, it was, otherwise that would have meant this could not have been a meteor observation and thus was more likely a fatal aircraft accident. I also had no sense this was an optical phenomena due to some kind of glare on either my car windshield, my contact lenses, my corneas, or within my eyes (or even my optic lobe! :-D).
Honestly, I am puzzled. This was bright enough to get me excited and as well a few edgy nervous folks who call 911 if they see a meteor. On the other hand, most folks are not looking skyward at 8:25 PM on a freezing-cold Friday night. I live in NJ, not Alaska. Add in COVID and the lower temps we've had, it's likely only a driver or a person walking their dog would have seen this. |
