Ever seen a Fireball?

[RJSquirrel]

There cant be too many people just walk outside at 5 am to drink his/her cup of coffee in the early morning quiet, look up see the sky open with a pop, then a flaming fireball sizzling by. Exploding into many small pieces and then disappear. All in about 3 to 5 seconds.
My 1st thought was Huh? and kept waiting for something to hit me too ....
It was a Fireball. A meteorite. Got me to thinking it must have been very close for me to hear it. Then Im wondering wait how can you hear something traveling at 86,000 mph and up in the sky? Did some looking and indeed you can hear them sizzle like bacon as one site puts it. While you cant hear them actually its an electrophonic effect of the vibrations of the moving air around the meteorite that our minds sense as sound. Very interesting indeed. To think that if I had walked out a few seconds later I wouldnt have seen it. So far only one other has reported the fireball at the AMS site that morning in the area. Fireballs are not uncommon as you would think. Is whats uncommon is actually seeing them. Ive seen shooting stars so far away they are just blips of light but never an exploding sizzler..Wow

Im buying a lotto ticket saturday night!!!!

[WhiteRabbit]

Wow! Very cool!

[No-Pro-mwa]

Hay now that is cool, I'm like you and have seen them in the sky but not nearly as close as you.

[Island Girl]

Wow!! That is really cool! I've seen lots of shooting stars (where we are during summer, it's far enough away from "city lights" that we can see the milky way, and see all of the shooting stars) but I haven't seen this! That's awesome! And, I hope you bought that lottery ticket today!

Hehe, let us kno if you win... I wanna kno what orchids you get! (to live vicariously and all... )

[RJSquirrel]

heh Ive always been a watcher of the skies. We had one them old fishin shacks many years ago. Part of our past time at night was counting shooting stars out there over the gulf of mexico. Light now has flooded most of our fields of vision at night.Close to the city you dont see much of nothing but the brightest closest celestial bodies.
Im in the sticks now and went back to watching the bodies of stars.You dont have much time to take it in when its happening. Takes time to soak in ya know . Always like to look at the stars and wonder. I think humans has been doing that for a very long time.

The dog likes to watch the sky too. What do dogs see when they look at the sky?

Same thing we do only translated into Dog

[No-Pro-mwa]

I may not be able to grow orchids outside but it is fairly flat out here so you can go out at night and it looks like stars, stars all around you. We do have beautiful skies at night when the stars are out.

[Leafmite]

A meteorite! How very cool! I hope you made a wish (shooting star). When it isn't cloudy (rare here), we like to watch the various meteor 'showers' at night. Right now, I think I read, we are passing through a place where there are more meteors (?).
I like to watch the sunrises, sunsets and various cloud formations, too. I fail miserably at capturing sunsets with my camera and so have learned to enjoy the moment.

[Paul]

That would be VERY cool to see.

[RJSquirrel]

it leaves a lot of questions.. How close actually was it? Your eyes are messed up anyway in the dark of night then to have some blinding light come your way. Like a Deer on the road in headlights. Your sense of distance is not accurate to say the least. I went to the American Meteorologic Society site to report it and they required a pretty accurate description of the whole event. Took me a while to remember exactly if it was white or yellow white or flaming orange incandescent red. it did have sound. thats where I learned what the pop and the sizzle was. It was white/yellow. Broke into fragments and all of those burned up also. Look like a roman candle went off. WAS Cool!!!....

ohh I won 3 dollars on my lotto ticket...

[No-Pro-mwa]

Well that is what it is. But it was COOL at any rate. You have been blessed.