well the asteroid Itokawa did it's Near Earth pass last night at approximately 5 Lunar Distances. Itokawa is a sizeable asteroid and it was really close by, so that could be the huge object.

Sounds like it could be a satellite re-entry. Meteors are way to fast to last 20-30 seconds.

Check Nasa page an see if a satellite came back last night..

Originally posted by Mynaeris
well the asteroid Itokawa did it's Near Earth pass last night at approximately 5 Lunar Distances. Itokawa is a sizeable asteroid and it was really close by, so that could be the huge object.

Actually, no.

That's like blaming a car accident in New York City on someone driving down the road in Lexington, Kentucky.

Itokawa is smallish. It's a LONG way away (even though they classify it as a "Near Earth Asteroid." It is, as you said, about 5 times as far away as the moon is (that's at its CLOSEST approach.) These NEO's don't just suddenly switch directions and orbits and attack the Earth like a bunch of kamakazi mosquitoes.

Colors suggest strongly that it was re-entry of satellite or rocket booster.

Originally posted by anjeeeee
If I had to describe it, i'd say it looked like a huge red/orange flaming ball, with a really long red/orange trail behind it. It seemed to have been going down at an almost 45 degree angle, moving really slow. The whole thing lasted about 20 seconds, then I lost sight of it.

That reminds me of the time recently when most of us Texans could see the Space Shuttle re-entry... no not that one. It was very fireballish, orange, red, and yellow; and lasted a good while right before sunset. A lot of people called all the radio stations reporting a UFO (which it was to them). They acted like they didn't know what was going on to the callers, very humourous.
That's to be expected, as it filled more of the sky than any other object I've ever seen, disregarding Sun and Moon. It was very majestic. Someone else here has seen a re-entry as well and will verify that's exactly what it looks like.

I drive around everynight and see shooting stars/meteors all the time out here; and some of the slowest ones I've seen last no more than, if even, two seconds. Twenty seconds, that's not a shooting star.

BTW: Numbers are only usefull in relation to something. 45 degree angle to what?, the horizon, towards you, away. Any thing could fall from the sky and be at a 45 degree angle to something or another. Also, where (approximately) are you at.

I saw a shuttle rentry one morning. I live in south Texas. I was car pooling with my wife at the time. So that would be between 94 - 96 time frame. The orange tail was very long. All I could say was "What the hell is that"?
It was stunning. It was all over the radio and news that morning.

When I was 15 I had a paper route in Tucson. It was about 5:30 AM when my brother, myself, and my friend (all paper boys) where taking the trash from our paper stacks to his garbage cans in the alley. We turned the corner towards his back yard and the whole sky lit up. We all looked up and saw a large blue and red object coming down from space. Then we heard a large "Poof" and it was gone except for a long fading white trail.
Later that night the newspaper reported that that Meteor was the closest to hit the city, ever. I'll never forget those two events.

It's a draco reptilian observation station with millions of reptoid warriors onboard! Ahh!! The humanity!!!











Ahem... Sarcasm...

Originally posted by icelid

BTW: Numbers are only usefull in relation to something. 45 degree angle to what?, the horizon, towards you, away. Any thing could fall from the sky and be at a 45 degree angle to something or another. Also, where (approximately) are you at.

I like in Etobicoke, it's about 25 minutes away from downtown Toronto (heading west).

I was standing in my friends backyard, looking South, as I saw it. 45 degrees is just a guess, it was probably more like 35...anyways it was coming from top right, to the bottom left...this info should give people a better idea of the siting, coupled together with what i already said describing the actual thing.

Sorry for the super long wait for a response...well, it's not like you were waiting for it, this thread probably just faded into the distance with time..

I thought some meteors / meterorites could 'graze' the atmosphere for quite a few seconds before skipping back off again.

I've seen a few awesome meteors. I saw one explode like an aerial bomb high in the sky and light everything up for a few seconds until the fragments burnt out.

didn't someone post somewhere that Nostradums predicted a comet would hit Athens on August 19th?

I live in NYC and saw nothing - I'm always missing out on the good stuff.

I think he predicted something like "The sky will burn at (900 degress?not sure) at latitude (not sure) and longitude (not sure)" and there was more to this quatrain but i cant remember off the top of my head.

I doubt very much that a comet would hit Athens today but if he did predict something like a comet hitting Athens it would probably a missile of some sort eg rocket.

I live in England so i miss everything i wanted to see the perseid meteor showers but i couldnt because of the clouds!

Before anyone goes and says this has anything to do with the notrguessius/athens thing, Look at the date this post started. This was witnessed back in late June and has nothing to do with anything going on now.

This does remind me of when I was younger, about 15 years ago. I have also seen something that appeared to be a meteor but was way too large and too slow for what I have known a meteor to be. I was around the age of 10 at the time this happened so I had no way to really find out what it was or could have been since myself and a friend were the only ones to see it out of the group that we were with.

I know that people want to pass it off as a comet, meteor, or satellite re-entry but I can not believe that any of those could have been what I saw. It was too close and too large to be any of those. I can clearly remember it being a comparable visual size to a full moon.

I saw a meteoroid go by about a foot or two over my house when I was about nine. This was twilight time in the summertime. My father and a next door neighbor were outside talking, we looked up because it was all of a sudden lighter and heard a swish sound, then there was a meteoroid about the size of a basketball flying right over my house. It had a bluish-white tail, fairly long, and you could see little crators in the object. It was not going too fast to see this. I believe that they slow down the closer that they are. Anyway, it landed about 5 miles away in a little boy's yard that I went to elementary school with. He gave the meteorite to the Ft. Worth Museum of Science and History. I'll never forget that. It was the neatest thing that I've ever seen.

Tiza