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Remarks |
The fireball was descending at a much slower rate than I have ever seen a meteorite (much farther away) come down. It appeared to my eye to be very close because of the diameter and clarity of the fire-trail which was bright white, until it suddenly turned an iridescent blue-green (teal) color and simply vanished from any further spectral analysis. There was no sonic-boom I could detect, nor was there any other kind of atmospheric disturbance detectable either (no blackout of background horizon due to shadow effects, no discernable persistent "vapor-trail" visible or any other visible light scattering effects due to unseen fragmentation upon burnout). I was beside myself in terms of how perceptibly large this fireball appeared overhead (it overtook my traveling vehicle, coming out of the western sky on a very steep entrance angle into the visible airspace directly over and directly ahead of my eastbound vehicle. My field of view directly overhead was initially limited due to the vertical limits of viewing aperture, provided by my Honda Minivan, 2003 Odyssey windshields dimensions and the operator/drivers viewing placement position being behind it and underneath the roof.
I was told by a respondent at www.stargazersonline.org that distances are tricky to establish in a nightime sky, particularly when the fireballs vector is so close to a vertical descent profile. He said that I probably saw it appear overhead at about 40 miles vertical elevation and that I probably saw it burn out much,much farther away than that, when it was slightly above the horizon line. My initial perception of this event was much different than what he said most likely was the actual case. To me, 1) this thing burning up, whatever it was, was not falling as fast as I would think it would appear to do so if it was traveling at mach 7 or even mach 3 . 2) the size of the fireball in terms of its discernable cross-sectional area, was much larger than I would have thought possible had the object been 40 miles up, or by the time it burned out, 80 to 100 miles away from my location (estimated vector analysis given his 40 miles vertical initial sighting assumption. 3) My own instantaneous vector analysis upon observation of this phenomenon is this: I saw this thing first appear over the roof of my minivan when it entered into my windshields upper viewing area, I estimate it was maybe 10 to 15 miles up at that time, (jet aircraft at 6 miles up are just tiny blips on my own daytime built in VFR senses). Based on the same trajectory factors (I told him I thought it burned-out slightly above the distant "black line" where the local topological horizon line intersects "free-space". The horizon line in in this particular location is not 15 miles away, but only a mere 4 to 6 miles away because of local topographical interferences. This part of south Kansas City where I live, and close to the I-435 south town loop traffic corridor, all lies within an ancient river valley basin known as |
