Green Meteorite (??) spotted North of Toronto

At approximately 10:45 this evening I was driving south along a countryside road in the town of Bolton (a half hour drive from Toronto). Bolton is in the flight path of Pearson International Airport and at any time a half dozen or so planes can be spotted in the sky. On this particular clear evening I was peering out of my car window trying to count the number of planes in the night sky when something unusal caught my eye..

Just under the moon (at about the same altitude as all the planes were flying) there was a small green flash that transformed into a rather large green ball (or orb) in a matter of seconds and shot straight towards the ground, leaving a green streak behind it. When I first saw the green flash I thought it might of been someone lighting off fireworks but as the shape of the object formed and shot towards the earth, this was clearly not the case. I called my girlfriend and told her about this incident and she asked "could it have been an airplane?", my only response was "Absolutely not! This was definatly some sort of green fireball or Meteorite....except I have never heard of a green meteorite"

I would say that this green meteorite was right over top of either Northern Toronto, the City of Vaughn or Richmond Hill. Also there were either one or two planes flying in the vicinity of this object.

Did anyone else living in this area notice this object?

Has anyone else ever seen a green Meteorite?



(EDIT: I just found this info on wikipedia.
en.wikipedia.org...

I would say that the drawing on the page accurately reflects what I saw this evening)


[edit on 28-10-2007 by Verbal_Hologram]

I've never seen nor heard of one before, but I believe that its competley possible. THe meteorite could be made of copper which burns green

not copper there a no copper meteorites.
some nickel iron meteorites should burn with a green color
this can be seen when you smelt a metal with a high nickel content

the composition of a meteorite depends entirely on where it comes from surely?

Anyway from the wikipedia article the OP posted:

On July 24 (1949) a green fireball was observed falling close to Socorro, New Mexico. Dust samples were collected at the School of Mines there and were found to contain large particles of copper. LaPaz found this highly significant, since copper burns with the same yellow-green color characteristic of the green fireballs. He also noted that if the copper particles came from the green fireballs, then they could not be conventional meteorites, since copper was never found in dust of meteoritic origin. LaPaz suggested that further air and ground samples be taken in areas where the fireballs were seen.

I assume this would put them as being something other than an ordinary meteorite, and from a different source as well. Don't forget that since copper occurs naturally on Earth it is entirely possible, if not certain that it occurs elsewhere in the solar system and as such if a different object knocked some off of another planet or moon, or even from the asteroid belt, we could get green meteors occur here.

Of course, from the description in the wikipedia article it seems unlikely that such meteorites are entirely natural in origin, whether they come from earth or somewhere else.

Also, I'd never heard of a green meteorite before. Sounds a bit like Day of the Triffids to me.

Once in the early 90's I was in the backyard watching the Perseids with my mom (so it must have been around August 12th), and we weren't really having much luck seeing any meteors. We folded up our lawn chairs and were heading back inside when I turned back one last time and saw a huge fireball in the sky. It was quite a distance away as its motion was barely discernable. We watched as it moved slowly from the right to left slightly on a downward slant; the distant it moved was about the width of my hand at arm's length.

While we watched it, it burned different colors -- it actually started off green, then yellow, and then orangey-red. As first we thought it was a meteor but then came to the conclusion that it must have been space junk on re-entry. It eventually dissipated and left a haze like that after a fireworks show (but it was no firework display, it was seen in 3 states according to the news on the radio the next morning). I never heard an official explanation for what it was.

So what you saw could have been space junk, or possibly a meteor -- I found a few videos that show the Peekskill meteorite of 1992 (which I came across while researching the one I saw). This one moves a lot faster than what I witnessed, however in many of the videos it appears to burn green for a brief time before it completely breaks up. Here's the vid:

Peekskill Fireball: csep10.phys.utk.edu...

And here's a page with all known eyewitness videos as well as the Wiki site (which mentions it's greenish color):

Video page aquarid.physics.uwo.ca...
Wiki page en.wikipedia.org...

So, evidently they can appear green in some cases.

Hi, I live in Western Mass and my husband also saw the green object at apx. the same time. He also thought "fireworks" but then said that because it was coming straight down it had to be a fireball of sorts. From our location we thought it was over Vermont, but if you saw it in Canada then it must have been pretty big.

Originally posted by EsseVi
Hi, I live in Western Mass and my husband also saw the green object at apx. the same time. He also thought "fireworks" but then said that because it was coming straight down it had to be a fireball of sorts. From our location we thought it was over Vermont, but if you saw it in Canada then it must have been pretty big.

Wow! I cant believe it was spotted in Mass, that object must have been huge! I thought for sure it must have been over top of one of the near by cities here in southern Ontario.

I listened to AM680 news radio this morning and heard no mention of the green fireball. I also purchased two Toronto based newspapers this morning and again no mention (not surprising considering the paper was probably near completion at the time of the event). Were there any mentions of the object by the media in your area EsseVi?

Thanks for posting those videos Evasius... I viewed all of them and the one that most closely resemblems what I saw was the video from Saltsburg PA (only difference being that the tail was green, it lasted no more then 5 seconds and heading straight down)

Hey Verbal I live in Maple and I spoted the same object at excately 10.38 while I was having a smoke at my porch. From where I live the object looked like was in a point in sky between Wonderland and highway 400. Since is a flybye area for the comercial airlines I first thought was a plane but I too got amazed by the strange greenish hue that emited. Is the second unusual object I see in the last week. Maybe was a meteorite (never heard for a green one though) but definitely wasn't a plane.

[edit on 29-10-2007 by Telos]

Originally posted by augoldminer
not copper there a no copper meteorites.
some nickel iron meteorites should burn with a green color
this can be seen when you smelt a metal with a high nickel content

Er, yes there are! Whatever make's you think that Copper cannot be in a meteorite?

There is a 37-ton copper meteorite in the American Museum of Natural History in New York.

Originally posted by Verbal_Hologram
Were there any mentions of the object by the media in your area EsseVi?

No nothing was mentioned in todays local news. I even checked spaceweather.com to if it was mentioned there. My husband just happened to look out the window at that precise moment when he saw it, by the time I looked it was too late. He said that it came straight down, it was green and kind of blinked or flashed on and off for a second. When I told him that it was also seen in Canada he was amazed.

All I can say is that those of you who saw it are truly lucky! Probably a once in a lifetime experience and I missed it.

Originally posted by Telos
Hey Verbal I live in Maple and I spoted the same object at excately 10.38 while I was having a smoke at my porch. From where I live the object looked like was in a point in sky between Wonderland and highway 400. Since is a flybye area for the comercial airlines I first thought was a plane but I too got amazed by the strange greenish hue that emited. Is the second unusual object I see in the last week. Maybe was a meteorite (never heard for a green one though) but definitely wasn't a plane.

[edit on 29-10-2007 by Telos]

It defiantly was not a plane. I have never heard of a green meteorite, but meteorite is the only logical explanation since some here have posted that copper or high nickel content would cause a green burn.

I also believed the green object to be roughly at the same point in the sky as you did. However, since the object was also spotted in western Mass., then we could both be wrong as to its position...but that would increase the possibility of greater sighting. Hopefully the event is mentioned in tomorrow’s newspapers.

Also I have been reading some other threads and came across this discussion:

www.abovetopsecret.com...

and this article:

www.americanchronicle.com...

I looked up the Holmes (17P) comet on starry night and to my amazement it is almost directly above the location of where the green meteorite was spotted...I can not help but wondering if there is a correlation between the two or if it is purely coincidental??

Hi, I have to put my 2 cents in on this post. back in 2003 I was out having a cigarette on my work break at 11pm. what I saw that night was a neon green ball. I would say 3 basketballs in size. come straight down from the sky. It did not have a tail and it came right down on the road but did not splatter. It disappeared. This was glowing a real bright green light one of them neon green glow in the dark things. no cars were around and I was out in the country. I ran back into the building cause it scared me and told my co-workers who then asked me if I also saw little green men. I reported this to the MI UfO people online also the same night when I got home.

I live very close to Bolton, unfortunately, I wasn't outside to see anything at that time.

Too bad, I could have very easily corroberated this story.

Also, there is the brampton flying club east of Bolton as well, which I have seen circling lights over that made me look twice before I realized that the airport was right around the corner.

Interesting though.

Originally posted by Verbal_Hologram

I looked up the Holmes (17P) comet on starry night and to my amazement it is almost directly above the location of where the green meteorite was spotted...I can not help but wondering if there is a correlation between the two or if it is purely coincidental??

Still no mention in the news, looks like everyone is too busy observing Holmes to notice what may be above it. Verbal, how did you come to that conclusion? If that's the case, this is even stranger than I can imagine.

I am also wondering if the green color could be barium compounds? Any thoughts on that? My husband used to professionally shoot fireworks displays and he said that barium compounds are used to make green and copper compounds to make blues.

I sent an email to the North American Meteor Network and invited them to join our conversation. I hope they respond.

Also, I live near Williams College and they have an extensive observatory, but they don't seem to update their webpage from what I can tell.

Meteors which are bright enough to show color (below a certain threshold our eyes are not very good at determining color), frequently appear to be green when they first enter the upper atmosphere. This is due to the presence of Oxygen, which when excited emits green light. If the meteor penetrates yet further into the atmosphere, it encounters air where the proportion of Nitrogen is higher than that of Oxygen. Nitrogen emits red light when excited, so the meteor goes from appearing green, to yellow, and then eventually red.

Here is an example from this years Orionids: www.flickr.com...

Hello,

I'm a member of the North American Meteor Network (www.namnmeteors.org... ). It's good to see so many people spotting this fireball (it's only called a meteorite once it hits the ground). Meteors and fireballs happen all the time. A fireball is the same as a meteor except that it is brighter.
Except for a short time in the early Spring there is a meteor shower going on every night of the year. Then with meteors not representing a shower called Sporadics added in, there is quite a good chance to see numerous meteors any night of the year.

Meteors sometime do show color thought as was mentioned due to vision and darkness and to the fact that meteors are only momentary sights - they default to a white color.

One thing that was not mentioned was the speed of the meteor across the sky. Typically meteors move across the sky in approx 2 seconds or less. If this green meteor took longer it may have been a piece of space junk that reentered.

Something else that was mentioned is its possible correlation with Comet Holmes. Unfortunately there is none. At it's closest Comet Holmes is still out beyond the orbit of Mars and at it's furthest it's inside of Jupiters orbit-
ssd.jpl.nasa.gov... . So it's an asteroid belt comet and I doubt that a piece of it made those millions of miles it to the skies over Toronto in such a short time.

The North American Meteor Network collects data for fireballs, and I hope that everyone that saw this one navigates over to our site -
www.namnmeteors.org and click the link to fill out a repoort to add to our database. Thanks in advance.

Kevin

[edit on 30-10-2007 by NAMNMeteors]

reply to post by Verbal_Hologram


About 17 years ago, I saw what I am fairly sure was a green meteor in New Jersey, USA. My geometry was poor, but there was definitely a very bright green streak.

Quite recently I saw an orange fireball as it broke up and flamed out, and had excellent geometry for that one. Meteors can be quite a variety of colors.

Kevin, Thank you so much for joining us.

It appeared to fall straight down at about 90 degrees in relation to the ground, is this unusual? It did not appear to go across the sky. It lasted only a second, less than 2. It was green, then it darkened and became green again before it disappeared so probably not space junk.

Originally posted by EsseVi
Kevin, Thank you so much for joining us.

It appeared to fall straight down at about 90 degrees in relation to the ground, is this unusual? It did not appear to go across the sky. It lasted only a second, less than 2. It was green, then it darkened and became green again before it disappeared so probably not space junk.

This is exactly how I would describe the event as well. I have filled out a report for your website Kevin.

I heard no mention of the incident in media here today either Esse. I came to the conclusion that Holmes was almost directly above the fireball by looking up the comets location on the Starry Nights software program. I figured a correlation between the two might have been a long shot, but still I felt obligated to bring up the idea. Thanks Kevin for your input and response!

Also CHUD, this fireball did not change colors it remained green for the short period of time it was visible.

Enrikez, your corroberation would have been very helpful! Perhaps next time! Also, the location of the Brampton Flying club is in the opposite direction to which I saw the fireball.

Originally posted by Verbal_Hologram
Also CHUD, this fireball did not change colors it remained green for the short period of time it was visible.

Verbal_Hologram,
That is not unusual. The example I gave in my previous post is for a typical bright meteor. Other factors such as angle of entry and composition will also play a part in determining what color the meteor will appear and when. No two meteors will be exactly the same in appearance, even those from the same source, although they may share many of the same characteristics.

One reason why the one you saw remained green might be since it did not penetrate deep enough into the atmosphere to reach the the more Nitrogen rich part before all the material had alabated away. The angle of entry and size of the original meteoroid would play a large part in this. Meteors with very low entry angles (often called "earthgrazers") can skim the outer parts of our atmosphere, and in some cases escape Earth's gravity and fly back out into space. Many of these can appear green for a substantial part of their path, and to a correctly positioned observer, might appear to "shoot down".

That's just one possible scenario, but as I said before, no two meteors are exactly alike, and meteors can display very varied behaviors when it comes to color. As someone else noted earlier, almost any color is possible with a meteor, and in some cases (especially with brighter fireballs) you can see them all! (although I must admit I've never heard of anyone seeing a deep purple meteor!)

Some meteors just stay the same color throughout their flight. This is typical behavior for Geminid meteors for example, which are almost always either slightly yellow in color or have no color at all. Why this is so, is still a mystery as far as I know, although I think there may be a clue in that the source is thought to be an asteroid rather than a comet (the vast majority of known meteor showers are believed to be of cometary origin), which suggests that the composition of the meteoroid plays a large part in how the meteor appears during it's flight through our atmosphere.

Kevin,
Good to have you aboard. Experienced observers are few and far between on these forums, but there are one or two here (that I have run into anyways!). It's hard work trying to answer all the questions concerning meteors and related topics that are posted here, so any assistance is welcome.