posted 07-24-2001 09:49 AM            

http://tycho.dm.unipi.it/~foschini/gallery/bolide.html

quote:

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http://dailynews.yahoo.com/h/ap/20010724/us/meteor_showers_5.html

People throughout the Northeast flooded emergency centers with phone calls Monday evening after seeing bright lights in the sky and hearing loud noises.

Some authorities said the likely cause was a meteor shower, but a U.S. Naval Observatory spokesman said it was probably a different type of natural phenomenon known as a fireball or "bolide."

``It is similar to the shooting stars you see sporadically at night in its appearance, but as far as the physical nature of this object is concerned it's quite different from the periodic meteor showers we get,'' said the spokesman, Geoff Chester. ``This is a random piece of rock that happened to have the misfortune of being in the same part of space occupied by the Earth at the same time. In this particular case, the Earth won.''

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posted 07-24-2001 01:32 PM            

quote:

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As you probably will hear a fireball (meteor) was seen in Maryland just after 6 pm tonight. According to Fox5 News in Washington, DC (the only station to confirm the landing), it landed in Salladasburg, PA and left a 20' scorch mark. Salladasburg, PA is in North Central, PA. They said it was the size of a car. I missed seeing it but heard about it. Sue Palka, Meteorologist at Fox5, will be going up to PA this weekend to view the site. Law Enforcement officials are roping off the area until experts can get to the site. They said it went very deep into the earth.

Just thought you'd like to know for your breaking news. amsmeteors.org have not reported it yet. According to NBC in Washington DC, AMS had not confirmed the landing so they weren't confirming it yet. How Fox5 News found out I don't know. Officials at the site are preparing for a press conference some time tonight about the landing.

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Anyone interested in this should check out http://www.cyberspaceorbit.com/ scroll down to recent investigations. Many links, some from people that witnessed the event.

One interesting conversation about possible space war, then this in a public forum:

Subject: Re: possible sonic boom from meteor
From: katz1@xxptd.net
Date: Mon, 23 Jul 2001 22:48:21 GMT
Newsgroups: sci.astro
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We just got a phone call that a plane crashed near Stony Fork, PA
(near Wellsboro)- about 15 miles from us. Also reports that sirens
are going off. Pray to God this is not true.

posted 07-24-2001 02:38 PM            

. I have seen a few small meteorites in the sky, but nothing major. Here's the weird part. Around 10PM (after it was really dark) I went outside and watched the sky for about 20 min or so. I turned off all outside lights, and got a good long view. The thing that we noticed the most wasn't the amount of meteors. But for some unknown reason, we did have a TON of air traffic. There is a small airstrip close here, however only very small planes use it. Also, it closes at midnight, so most planes are on the ground by now. However when we counted, we could see about 6 aircrafts within a very small area. We could hear a ton of planes that we couldn't see due to the trees. Now, if there was truly that bad of a meteor storm going on, why would so many planes be out in the area that was getting hit the hardest? Furthermore, there are NEVER this many planes going overhead this time of night.
http://www.cyberspaceorbit.com/pareportx.htm

It's interesting that no one seems to have seen this one coming! http://www.jpl.nasa.gov/calendar/

posted 07-26-2001 01:33 PM            

Rense.com
---------------------------------------------

Friends Videotape Yet Another
Mystery Light in Sky
By Jeff Edelstein
ŠThe Trentonian 2001
7-25-1

Another day, another weird light in the sky that disappears without warning.
On Sunday, the day before Monday's meteor sighting, P.J. Rosso, 11, and his friend, Alex Stemm, 12, were lounging on the trampoline in Rosso's grandparents yard on Curley Lane in Lambertville.

At about 8:30 p.m., Rosso and Stemm noticed a very bright, slow moving light in the sky. It was the only thing visible in the twilight.

"We thought it might be Venus," Rosso said.

He went inside and got his camcorder, and started filming what he was seeing.

As twilight gave way to darkness, the light was even more pronounced in the sky, much brighter than anything else.

And then -- nothing.

"Dude, it disappeared!" Rosso could be heard yelling on the videotape.

And disappear it did.

At exactly 9:13 p.m. on the video, the light exploded like a Roman candle.

Less than a second later, the light was gone.

"Since it blew up, we're pretty sure it wasn't Venus," Stemm noted.

They both ran inside to show Rosso's grandparents, James and Mary.

"It's hard to tell," James Rosso said. "It looked like debris was coming off it, but all at once it disappeared."

Mrs. Rosso was even more stymied.

"I got excited," she said. "It looked like something important, but I don't know what."

Lambertville police had no reports of strange lights in the sky, and a professor in Princeton University's Department of Astrophysical Sciences couldn't explain what it was.

"It doesn't sound astrophysical," he said. "It could be a plane, taking a turn behind a cloud."

The young Rosso decided not to hazard a guess as to what he videotaped, but Stemm went on the record.

"I guess it was an UFO," he said.

Both said the image of a bright light disappearing from the sky was similar to that observed in Carteret last Sunday, when nearly 100 people, including police officers and one priest, witnessed a series of bright lights blipping out of view.

No official explanation had been given in the Carteret case as of yesterday.
http://www.zwire.com/site/news.cfm?newsid=2129696&BRD=1697&PAG=461&dept_id=44551 &rfi=6