Tuesday, February 19, 2008

Major fireball this morning over Northwestern America

"All of the sudden there was like an explosion with intense, brilliant colors of pink, orange, bright blue and green," writes an eyewitness, "then a bare space on it’s trajectory and then a HUGE explosion of color! Bright, brilliant, colorful, amazing. It was brighter than the full moon which I could see in my mirror behind the car. What a way to start the day!" That was the scene this morning around 5:29 a.m. in the Northwestern U.S., be it in Oregon or Washington state.

In other news a second NOTAM 24 hours after the first has been issued, with the original one still in effect: Apparently the military wants to try its first shot indeed at 3:30 UTC on Feb. 21 but is worried it won't be ready in time and thus wants a reserve time slot. No further official details about the procedure have been released, but there are plenty of independent attempts to model the complex operation (summary, yet another very detailled analysis and the illumination conditions). USA 193, which can be as bright as Betelgeuse, is currently decaying at 1.2 km/day.

1 comment:

Daniel Fischer said...

Several more reports about the fireball - including video clips - are linked to in this German blog entry.