More Fireball Activity Puzzles Astronomers

October 9th, 2002

COLORADO SPRINGS (AP) - A fireball shot through the Colorado sky Monday evening for the second consecutive night. Skywatchers disagreed over the significance.

Chris Peterson of the Cloudbait Observatory in Guffey said he saw the meteor himself and reported by 10:45 p.m. Monday night that he had received 60 reports of sightings, mostly from Front Range cities.

The Cloudbait Observatory Web site reports that the Rocky Mountain region ‘‘has experienced a very unusual burst of fireball activity.’’ The observatory received a total of 560 reports from Sunday night’s fireball from seven states.

‘‘This rash of fireballs is very unusual. There is no reason to think this is anything other than an odd coincidence, however,’’ Peterson said. “None of the fireballs appear to have anything in common with each other.”

Robert Stencel, a professor of astronomy at the University of Denver, said two similar events on consecutive nights was not necessarily unusual, especially for this time of year.

‘‘We are into about a six-week period where two highly prominent meteor showers are occurring,’’ Stencel said. Two annual meteor showers, the Giacobinids and the Leonids, increase the probability of meteors striking Earth’s atmosphere, he said.

Preliminary analysis of witness reports suggests the Sunday fireball was a meteor that may have exploded 10 to 20 miles above eastern Utah or western Colorado, said Peterson, a member of the Denver Museum of Nature & Science meteorite investigation team.

Peterson, who operates the Cloudbait Observatory west of Colorado Springs, designed a sky-scanning rooftop camera to catch such displays, but Sunday’s fireball appeared at 7:22 p.m., before the camera is programmed to start recording.

The ‘‘all-sky camera’’ is the first of at least 10 planned for schools across Colorado in a joint project with the Museum of Nature & Science. All will be in place by the end of this month, Peterson said.

On the Net:
Cloudbait Observatory: www.cloudbait.com

http://www.chieftain.com/display/wednesday/national/articles/nat9.htm