Streaking Red Cylindrical Object

Nope, I do not have pics nor did I see an object. My son did. We were outside in the yard gathering up some fall leaves this evening around approximately 5:30 pm EST when he said "Did you see that?!". I looked up from raking the leaves and said "What?". He said he just saw an object streak vertically from the sky towards the ground. I immediately looked up at where he was looking but of course, whatever he saw was gone.

We live in Howard County, Maryland and from our vantage point, whatever he saw must have been somewhere in the sky in the Northeastern location from our view. It was a cloudless evening, good temperature with good visibility.

I asked him to describe what he saw. He said it was a cylindrical type of object, reddish in color, no tail and it appeared out of nowhere and basically streaked vertically from where he saw it towards ground level in a matter of a few seconds, it seemed.

Anyone in the Howard County, Baltimore area, if you noticed anything, please report what you saw.

Maybe this would be a question for the space explaration forum rather then the UFO forum as anything streaking accross the sky is almost certainly a meteor / shooting star.

reply to post by Jaellma

Sounds like your son saw a Geminid. They are peaking right now.
You can read about it here:
spaceweather.com...

reply to post by synchronomy
Those geminids all appear greenish, whitish in color but he was adamant what he saw had NO tail, was shorter and definitely deep red in color, so who knows.

Thanks for the info though.

reply to post by Jaellma


Have you been to the area your son saw it, I don't want to say land, but the last place it was seen.

Unless it was over the horizon.

reply to post by Jaellma


I'm more interested how---- we're one week away from winter and you're still raking up autumn leaves?
Don't you have snow? Aren't the leaves frozen to the ground?
I live in south Florida so I forget what it's like to be out of 75 degree winter weather.

Could this at all have been a meteor? We're dead smack in the middle of the Geminid meteor showers.

reply to post by Human_Alien

I can't speak for maryland but here it has been More like march than December. The ground has seen little frost with what we've had quickly turning back to mud if not by the afternoon then in the next day or so, very little ice in any of the lakes, and only a dusting of snow here and there. So my guess is it would be easy to still be raking

The description matches that of a meteor, however, it would not have been a Geminid.

Geminid meteors always travel away from the Geminid radiant which is located in the constellation Gemini.

At 5.30 PM Gemini would have been on the horizon as seen from Howard County, Maryland, so any Geminids seen would have been apparently traveling upwards and away from the horizon - certainly not downwards.

I wish people would not blame whatever meteors are seen on whatever the current major meteor shower is occurring at the time - there are usually multiple meteor showers occurring at any given time, as well as random meteors that are not related to any showers, so it's not quite that simple.

This diagram showing the orbits of meteors captured by NASA's fireball cameras over the last few days shows Geminid meteors colour coded as yellow orbits. As you can see, there are at least as many "other" meteors as there are Geminids:


Source: Spaceweather.com