Hi, I received a phone call from a person in Millaa Millaa, Northern Queensland, Australia in relation to a fireball she saw on July 1 at 6.10pm local time just before sunset (8.10 UTC). From her description I suspected it to be a satellite decay due to its slow motion and initially when I checked out the SeeSat archive I came across posts about a Proton rocket (#26391) decay seen near Perth. But the times don't match. I have since received an email from home saying that another 15 people also saw the object and that the local radio station wants to interview her about it. I would love to be able to give her some information if indeed it turns out to be a satellite decay. Below is a copy of her email describing the sighting: Hi Michael! I would be extremely interested in knowing please, what I witnessed in the sky, yesterday 1 July, 2000 at 6.10 pm. It was really spectacular ! Here are the details. Date - 1 July, 2000 Time - 6.10 pm ( approx.) What observed/witnessed - I would interpret it like this - a meteor with an orange / pink trail with a fireball head on it, the fireball head was burning up. Direction - North travelling East, was definately moving (I used an electric fence post as a marker to confirm this), was moving slowly. Time observed for - approx. 1 min Other comments - It was before sunset, a spectacular sunset was present. Unfortunately, did not see it disappear - it was so spectacular that I ran over to the dairy to tell Dad and Mitch to come out to see it, but by the time I got back it was gone. However had watched it for approx. 1 minute beforehand. MY VERDICT - Could this have been a Daytime Arietid which was actually a fireball? Definately no vapour trails like jets, no flashing lights. The front of it was definately burning up. The only other possibily that I can think of is a satellite burning up - but what would that look like Michael? Would it have a trail like the one that I saw? I remember seeing footage on TV - showing a daytime meteor and when I first saw it, I couldn't believe my eyes and it came to me straight away that what I was seeing looked exactly like the footage of the daytime meteor that I had seen on TV. I would greatly appreciate being able to find out what I saw please Michael - it was really spectacular!!! Thanks so very much for your help Michael - I really appreciate it. I have been so excited still after seeing this and I would so much like to find out what it is that I saw. Best regards, Brigitte Humphries Michael MacDonald Star Class - Astronomy Education GPO Box 271 Canberra ACT 2601 (02) 6253 0970 http://www.starclass.com.au mailto:michael@starclass.com.au ICQ #34367905 ----------------------------------------------------------------- Unsubscribe from SeeSat-L by sending a message with 'unsubscribe' in the SUBJECT to SeeSat-L-request@lists.satellite.eu.org http://www2.satellite.eu.org/seesat/seesatindex.html
This archive was generated by hypermail 2b29 : Tue Jul 04 2000 - 22:58:37 PDT