Really close and big meteor in Maine on Friday

I live in Maine. On friday night, I was driving up to Rangeley, Maine in the mountains. As I was driving I saw what I first thought was a shooting star, untill I realizeds that I could actually see it and follow it with my eyes for a few seconds.

I could actually see a ball of mass and I could see bluish-green flames burning in front of it and a long blue trail behind it.

I'm an avid star watcher, so I have seen shooting stars before in which you only see a streak of light for a split second, but this, I mean I could see it's mass, I could see it burning and actually follow it with my eyes for a few seconds before it dissapeared.

I half expected this thing to hit the ground. That's how close it looked.

Has anyone else seen anything like this with that much detail? It looked like it was heading north towards Canada. Rangley Maine is only about an hours drive to Canada.

I would really appreciate some feedback if you have seen anything like this.

Is this normal?

JackCash

[edit on 25-9-2007 by JackCash]

Sounds like either a bolide or a piece of space junk. Very cool, once saw a bolide and they are quite impressive.

As jpm1602 says, you probably just saw a bright meteor or some space junk, which is often green. A few nights spent looking at the stars would usually net you one or two of these - substantial meteors are surprisingly frequent.

reply to post by JackCash


I saw something like that once! It was right at Christmas-time, around 2002 or maybe 2003...I was in East Texas (ugh!) and it was night...what we saw was way bigger than any light descending in a meteor shower (I have seen many and so I know)...

Something actually FLAMING is very significant! Because only something of size would have enough material to support an actual blaze as opposed to just lighting up briefly like sparks or fireflies, as meteorite showers do!

It was like a rock, broken into pieces, with one largest piece leading in the front and several (maybe up to a half-dozen) following behind, along the same line of descent. They were all spectacularly blazing until they were out of our sight. The land is flat there, but we were in a town and so could not see the horizon. We were SURE that it would have hit the ground and that we'd hear something about it in the next day or two. And we did not.

I have come to understand that it more than likely did not impact the ground sufficiently enough to cause a stir or even any significant notice; and the area in which it likely fell was largely uninhabited except for oil rigs, etc. That is, if it even hit the actual ground with any size at all. Who knows? It's hard to say, no doubt.

As far as it being natural vs. space junk - I'm thinking that space junk would have a different trajectory since it would be, more likely than not, falling OUT of orbit - whereas a natural rock or what-have-you would probably be DRAWN into orbit before being drawn down to the Earth via gravity. My point being that I would THINK (but don't consider me an expert by any means) that unnatural stuff would come down more directly and straight and natural stuff would come in at a significantly inclined angle.

What I saw that night came in at almost a 60 degree angle! And it was blazing red to orange to yellow - no blues or cooler colors at all. Of course, the color of the blaze is most probably related to what chemicals are burning upon entry into the atmosphere. The volatiles in comets often blaze blue to bluish green - that is, at least the do as they come into our Earth-bound view on their trips around our Sun.

I saw something like this a few years back here in Alaska. I was driving home from work one day, and it literally was right over the freeway. It was blue/green really bright and awesome! Never seen anything like it since.