Great video, Tom! Given your spherical lens, it would be great to get
some of the historical footage running in the Joe Dean's Dome at SF_X
and the new dome out at IAIA.
-Stephen
------------
http://www.santafenewmexican.com/Local%20News/Fireball-seen-over-Santa-Fe-likely-a-meteor-
A bright, "significant" fireball seen passing near Santa Fe and Pecos
on Tuesday night was likely a meteor, according to an Eldorado
astronomer who captured the event on a special video camera.
"I was out in my observatory," said Thomas Ashcraft. "I heard what I
thought was thunder and assumed it was thunder."
But there were no clouds in the sky. Then Ashcraft received a call
from a fellow meteor watcher in El Paso who had caught the fireball on
video. Ashcraft hurried inside and rewound the video on the special
Sky Sentinel camera on loan to him from Sandia National Laboratories.
"I saw I had it pretty well," he said.
The fireball passed over New Mexico at 9:01:27 p.m. It was visible for
23 seconds.
"That's rare. That's a very long time to see one," Ashcraft said.
"This was a slow-burning fireball."
John Perez was driving on Rodeo Road near Santa Fe Place mall when he
saw the flash of red. "I saw a red light in the sky going toward
Pecos," said Perez, an amateur backyard star watcher. "It looked like
it was going straight down."
He thought it might be remnants of a meteor shower he saw a couple of
weeks ago.
On Ashcraft's video, the fireball can be seen passing by the moon.
The bright flash of light traveling across the sky, and what some
described as a "loud explosion" soon after, were witnessed by several
people in Santa Fe, Pecos, Ocate and elsewhere in the state. Ashcraft
said the fireball's trajectory was from somewhere south of Albuquerque
and appeared to end between Taos and Ocate.
Facebook users posted comments about seeing the bright light and
hearing an explosion. Someone in Ocate left an anonymous message at
The New Mexican saying a UFO had been spotted near the village in
Eastern New Mexico.
Ashcraft is among dozens of volunteer fireball watchers who are
participating in the Sky Sentinel program through Sandia. Most are in
North America, but a handful are participating in Mexico, Ireland and
Russia, according to Dale Clayton Jackson, the program coordinator.
Jackson said the volunteers provide vital data about objects entering
the Earth's atmosphere. "We need a wider geographic area and more
observations to get more meaningful statistics on how many objects
enter the atmosphere, how many strike the earth and how many threaten
satellites," Jackson said.
NASA uses the information to figure out how to protect astronauts from
debris and meteors striking spacecraft.
Jackson said last night's meteor was a significant fireball. Sandia's
Sentinel camera also captured the event.
Ashcraft said a meteor's brightness is indicative of size and is
measured against the moon's light. The full moon is Minus 13. "This
was a Minus 11 or Minus 12 fireball," Ashcraft said.
If the meteor landed somewhere before burning up, it becomes a
meteorite. "But it is hard to say yet if it made landfall," Ashcraft
said.
He said fireballs of this size and brightness are rare. "A large event
like this only happens once or twice or three times a year over the
same location," said Ashcraft, who operates the video camera nightly
and reports data back to Sandia.
Certainly sightings of UFOs are more frequent in the Land of
Enchantment. According to the National UFO Reporting Center, New
Mexico residents have reported 642 instances of strange, unidentified
aerial lights and shapes dating back to at least the mid-1990s. The
latest report out of Santa Fe was on May 26, when someone reported
seeing two gold "starlike" objects moving in a staggered formation
over the Jemez Mountains just before noon, according to the Center's
website.
The most recent fireball reported to the center was spotted March 3
over Rio Rancho and lasted 10 minutes, according to the poster.
Ashcraft urges anyone who captured an image of the fireball on film or
video to send him a copy. If he can get more images from other
locations, he can triangulate the location of the falling meteor. He
can be contacted at [email protected].
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