Meteor hunters are swarming the Flagstaff and Sedona areas in hopes of finding remnants of a fireball seen in the area Saturday night, accroding to the Daily Sun. The Coconino County sheriffs office and the Coconino National Forest were bombarded with people hoping that some part of the meteorite made it to the ground, although there is no evidence that occurred.
Jeff, who blogs at the Sun Blog, describes at least two separate fireballs and speculates on their origin.
[right, this picture is of the Alpha-Monocerotid meteor outburst in 1995, NOT the fireball seen over Flagstaff. Credit, NASA Ames Research Center/S. Molau und P. Jenniskens]
If the fireball did hit the Earth, the biggest remains would be most likely the size of large grapefruit. As far as I know, no impact tremors were felt so it may have burned up in the atmosphere. Cool pic in the post by the way!
ReplyDelete- Meteor Mark
Could be connected...
ReplyDeleteMy son and I observed a large vertically descending fireball at 1104 pm Saturday night falling in
the Tonto Nat'l Forest area just to the NW of Cave Creek.
It was startling in that we could see the swirling flamelike effect as it came down. From our vantage point in Desert Hills the fireball fell behind Elephant Mt. Immediately at impact a large surface glow or residual explosion illuminated the sky, so it was apparent the fireball indeed did impact and should have left a debris sight on the ground. We could not hear any sound of the impact. Very exciting sight.
We did phone MCSO and they had add'l sighting from a motorist on the Payson Hwy to Fountain Hills.
using my topo map and a straight line, the impact location would have been between Elephant Mt and the Payson area. i have not found anyone else locally that observed this event.
S.M. Desert Hills.
Anonymous... Do you mean NE from Cave Creek? Tonto National Forest is North East from Cave Creek area.
ReplyDeleteAnyone else in the Phoenix, or Sedonda area see this? How about from Holbrook?