Astro-Porn of the Day: Most amazing meteor fireball EVER.

[mckitterick]

WOW! Just an hour or so ago, on my way home after class and picking up the last of the big donation to the Center, I saw a bright fireball transform over a period of a second or two into a streaming green streak across the sky. AMAZING! It went from bright white to vivid green, as if a lurid painter had broken open a lightbulb and painted phosphorescent pigment across the sky, which glowed for a few seconds afterward. It looked sort of like this, only more dramatic:



What a treat after a massively long day!

Somewhere east of Lawrence, Kansas, a pile of space-debris lay smoking in the dry soil.

Chris

Comments

[pointoforigin.livejournal.com]

So cool! Lawrence is also where I saw my Best Meteor Ever. I was standing on the deck at our old house there, with a Russian named Eugene. (Remember that weird thing where Bob Dole somehow got a random bunch of Russians to come and visit Lawrence on some kind of trumped-up abortive trade mission, right before the fall of the Soviet Empire? Well, if you don't, it doesn't matter, but trust me, we had a Russian guest we'd just picked up from the airport and we'd never seen him before.) We were making small talk and all of a sudden, this HUGE meteor scorched across the sky. It got brighter instead of fading, and it looked awfully low down. It wasn't just a spark--it was a big blob that actually glowed red. I started hollering "Oh my God! Oh my God, did you see that!" Poor Eugene thought I had gone nuts and nervously patted my arm. "Eet's okay, eet's okay," he said. I think maybe he thought I thought we were being bombed or something. It was an interesting start to his visit.

[mckitterick.livejournal.com]

Hahahaha - that's awesome! Funny that's what he first thought. The Soviets made some awesome telescopes. Their specialty was the Maksutov.