Sunday, January 18, 2009

Giant Meteor Flash

I saw a bright flash of light from outside when we got back to our apartment Saturday night from Luebeck. The train arrived at 7:45 pm and V went to the store because it was going to close in 15 minutes. We walked home and V came back in just after the flash (she didn't see it because she was in the stairwell). This would place it somewhere a little after 8pm. I thought it was lightning so I rushed around the rooms to make sure computers were unplugged. "Grandma" was visiting and sitting with the kids out in the living room and I asked them if they saw the flash; V walked in and I asked her as well. No one had seen it except me. I said it looked like lightning. Of course there was no thunder and no storm that came. I kept quiet about it because I was starting to worry everyone would think I was hallucinating.

This morning when I checked the news sure enough. A meteor fireball was reported over southern Sweden! The fireball occured on January 17th at 19:09 UT. It was a spectacular sight." That places it at just the right time. A little after 8pm here in Germany. "There are a huge number of sightings from Sweden, Denmark and Holland". Here is mention on the BBC. I just now submitted a report with the International Meteor Organization so they can use the sighting data to try to find fragments.

Here is even a YouTube video.

1 comment:

David said...

Wow, that's a great video.