Sonic Boom this morning! Hear it?
A loud noise awoke me this morning around 5:30 am ...Sounded like a back fire. It got me up to search the house to see if anything fell or broke. I could not see anything out of the ordinary so back to bed I went. Turns out it was probably the meteor on the West coast streaking by at break neck speeds. No light show, however, as the sun was coming up on the East coast.
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FROM CBC:
Meteor likely cause of West coast light show
Last Updated Thu, 03 Jun 2004 17:55:55
VANCOUVER - A blinding, white glow illuminated the early morning sky Thursday from Idaho to central British Columbia.
According to the U.S. Navel Observatory in Washington, D.C., it was a meteor – a chunk of space rock about the size of a small piece of luggage or computer monitor.
Authorities ruled out aircraft problems or military test flights as the source of the sharp boom and skybursts that were reported across the Puget Sound area of Washington state.
Some pieces of the flaming rock may have reached Earth, but they probably all burned up in the atmosphere, said a spokesperson for the observatory.
Margaret Cochrane, who works at a Tim Horton's in Burnaby, said she was outside on a smoke break just after 2:30 a.m. when the sky changed colour.
"It looked like this flare or whatever it was went off over the Fraser River," said Cochrane. "It was almost like a fireworks thing. It was just the most bizarre thing I've ever seen in my life."
Co-worker Karen Jaggard was standing beside her and said she was stunned by the flash. "Then it just went dark and I don't know, it was really weird. Our hairs were standing up and everything else."
The searing, silent light lasted only one or two seconds.
It was one of the more than 200 tonnes of material from outer space that fall to the planet each day, said Eric Dunn of the Royal Astronomical Society of Canada. It's one reason why houses get so dusty.
"There is a certain amount of little bits of particles of solid stuff from elsewhere in the solar system constantly filtering down through the atmosphere," said Dunn.
So far, no one has found any pieces of the meteorite.
Written by CBC News Online staff
______________________________
FROM CBC:
Meteor likely cause of West coast light show
Last Updated Thu, 03 Jun 2004 17:55:55
VANCOUVER - A blinding, white glow illuminated the early morning sky Thursday from Idaho to central British Columbia.
According to the U.S. Navel Observatory in Washington, D.C., it was a meteor – a chunk of space rock about the size of a small piece of luggage or computer monitor.
Authorities ruled out aircraft problems or military test flights as the source of the sharp boom and skybursts that were reported across the Puget Sound area of Washington state.
Some pieces of the flaming rock may have reached Earth, but they probably all burned up in the atmosphere, said a spokesperson for the observatory.
Margaret Cochrane, who works at a Tim Horton's in Burnaby, said she was outside on a smoke break just after 2:30 a.m. when the sky changed colour.
"It looked like this flare or whatever it was went off over the Fraser River," said Cochrane. "It was almost like a fireworks thing. It was just the most bizarre thing I've ever seen in my life."
Co-worker Karen Jaggard was standing beside her and said she was stunned by the flash. "Then it just went dark and I don't know, it was really weird. Our hairs were standing up and everything else."
The searing, silent light lasted only one or two seconds.
It was one of the more than 200 tonnes of material from outer space that fall to the planet each day, said Eric Dunn of the Royal Astronomical Society of Canada. It's one reason why houses get so dusty.
"There is a certain amount of little bits of particles of solid stuff from elsewhere in the solar system constantly filtering down through the atmosphere," said Dunn.
So far, no one has found any pieces of the meteorite.
Written by CBC News Online staff
posted by John MacDonald at
Thursday, June 03, 2004
2 Comments:
5:?? 6 booms in Port Hueneme, Ca. About one half hour later 4 booms at 5:55pm PST. Clear skies and no visible contrails. Seemed like a hot outbound and a breaking return except we supposedly don't have anything that fast. At the original mach 6, that was a round trip to China easily. Any thoughts?
Interesting comment... Thanks for posting your thoughts here. Nice to know that others were witness to this event.
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