Huge Green Fireball Filmed Over Tucson Arizona On 12/06

originally posted by: Slichter
a reply to: MamaJ

The Geminid meteor shower is supposed to peak tonight.
I was supposed to fly to Fredericton this weekend but I didn't make it.
Too much sugar and videos, I'll probably just stay home and listen to some James Taylor tunes tonight.
Those two smaller lights in the video looked interesting, are they moving together or is it two sides of something?

Can’t go wrong with James Taylor! I read the green color is an indicator the meteor was made of nickel. Still though pretty cool. I’ve watched many meteor showers in the past and never once have I seen one that’s green.
Now it would also make sense if there is an atmospheric disturbance or it being highly charged.. maybe just maybe it would cause the color to appear green? Like as in an aurora..? Idk just thinking out loud here.

cool vid, it's hard to judge exactly the distance but it looks like if it were less than a minute or so earlier, and that plane flying to the upper left would have been in for trouble at the worst, quite a scary show at best!

originally posted by: gort51
If that first segment is real time, it is Way too slow to be a meteor.

The Green indicates Copper.

I would guess its a piece of man made space junk reentering the atmosphere.

So you calculated size speed and distance travelled so let everyone see how you did that.

a reply to: wmd_2008

Apparently there are something like 20,000 pieces of human junk orbiting the Earth, ranging in sizes from small to bigger than a car.
They fall regularly into Earth's atmosphere.
The featured video is slowed down after the first clip.
Hard to say what the speed is, but it appears slower than most observed meteors.
Green flame may indicate nickel, it also indicates Copper.

Why does that seem incredibly slow?

Not many bolides come in at that rate...

originally posted by: gort51
If that first segment is real time, it is Way too slow to be a meteor.

The Green indicates Copper.

I would guess its a piece of man made space junk reentering the atmosphere.

That's not true that it was too slow to be a meteor. Fireball/bolides can look to be moving relatively slowly. The atmosphere slows some small-to mid-size meteors down quite quickly. As they start burning, they might be traveling thousands of mph, but eventually it will slow to several hundred mph. A small piece that survives the burn through the atmosphere eventually might be moving at only terminal velocity, maybe around 200 mph before striking the ground.

Here is a compilation of several videos of the Peekskill Meteorite of 1992. The fireball was seen from Kentucky, West Virginia, Pennsylvania, and Maryland before a piece of it landed on the back of a parked car in Peekskill, New York.

There are so many videos (many for the time) of this event because it happened on a Friday Night in the fall when there were a lot of high school football games going on, and a lot of parents were videotaping those games.



Pic of car and meteorite:
apod.nasa.gov...