I found reference to this on the Yahoo group "Bolide Chasers". At least four cameras photographed an "extremely unusual meteor" at about 5:16 Oct 2 UTC (11:16 PM Oct 1 Mountain Daylight Time). Two videos are available on the following web site. Some data suggest it may have lasted at least 45 seconds. Speed was about 13.5 km/sec (too fast for a re-entry?). Its direction was SW to NE with a very shallow angle of entry. It was fragmenting. Apparent sonic booms were heard by eyewitnesses. The page says its final height was about 28 miles (45 km). The length of the observed ground track was about 470 miles (752 km), over Arizona, New Mexico, and Colorado: http://www.cloudbait.com/science/fireball20061001.html The page above also includes a ground-track map with captions about fragmentation, length of fragment group, etc. It seems to have come fairly close to buzzing Cheyenne Mountain. Aerospace Corp has a re-entry prediction for about 26 hours later of a Long March 2D (2006-035B, 29386) whose ground tracks, if extrapolated, look like they could be possibly compatible (as opposed to those of the Molniya decay they predicted for Sept. 30). http://www.reentrynews.com/2006035b.html If it was not the Long March itself, I wonder if it might have been a piece of debris from the same launch vehicle. Ed Cannon - Austin, Texas, USA ____________________________________________________________________________________ Sponsored Link Mortgage rates near 39yr lows. $420k for $1,399/mo. Calculate new payment! www.LowerMyBills.com/lre ------------------------------------------------------------------------- Subscribe/Unsubscribe info, Frequently Asked Questions, SeeSat-L archive: http://www.satobs.org/seesat/seesatindex.html
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