Sunday, 15 May 2011 10:07
The dark night sky of Cranbrook was lit up like daylight early Saturday morning at 2:17am (Mountain Daylight Time) when a huge meteor rocketed overhead. Appearing as a dim dot at first, likely 100km high to the North, it rapidly grew into a big white ball as big as the moon, with a tail behind it.
Fireball First Appearance<http://www.
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Fireballs First Appearance from High
It flared into brilliance, lighting up the whole sky and layers of white clouds to the Southwestern horizon. Within four seconds the flare sank as it moved a bit South of West, sinking down into the clouds, towards the setting Moon and Creston and Spokane way. It headed in a direction of about 230 degrees. Then a dull rumble of thunder sonic boom followed after it since it was going at supersonic speeds.
Fireball with Tail<http://www.bcmeteors.net/
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Fireball Develops Tail, Passes Over Cranbrook
Reports are coming in from across Southwestern Alberta, Southeastern BC, Idaho, and Washington. People have seen it along a broad strip from Calgary, Bowden, Red Deer, Cranbrook, Spokane, Coeur d"Alene, Nelson, Kamloops, Penticton and Kelowna, Most describe an intense greenish white ball of light, hitting somewhere around Kelowna. Ed Majden found these reports at http://lunarmeteoritehunters.
At Cranbrook, the College of the Rockies Meteor camera imaged it for 9 seconds as it went overhead. The camera has a wide-angle fisheye lens, so be aware the video frames above show the entire sky, with the horizon as a ring around the edge. North is at the 3 o'clock position, East at 12 o'clock. The streetlights of Cranbrook are along the bottom right, you can see two tall trees at 10 o'clock lit up from the College parking lot. The Sentinel camera is black and white (for best starlight sensitivity) so these orange colours are false. We can't verify the green tint people reported. (I can verify the thunder, since I heard that too, after the flash. I thought it was a distant thunder storm...)
Dave Balam from the Dominion Astrophysical Observatory says "I've searched the DAO images from last night and we were completely overcast. Too bad....that's a classic bollide and could have dropped a few stones."
Dr Ken Tapping from the Herzberg Institute of Astrophysics in Penticton says: "I think I got it too, although my time is a little different. 2011May14 at 08:19:00 UT. In EastNorthEast, heading SouthEast, just above the ENE edge of my camera field, and rapidly leaving it. Broadening and brightening rapidly, but I did not get the really bright stuff. That is one heck of a video."
http://www.bcmeteors.net/
Copyright © 2011 The British Columbia Meteor Network. All Rights Reserved.
thanks to Rick Nowell at College Of The Rockies, Cranbrook BC, Canada
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