Nov 21/22 Meteors

Carl Hergenrother

Bob Lunsford’s notes say it all: “High clouds continue to interfere with video observations. On occasion stars as faint as 3rd magnitude could be seen when the clouds thinned. Otherwise the cloud cover blocked 2/3 to 3/4 of the meteor activity.”

Tucson also had its share of cirrus especially for the 1st half of the night.

Obs  Date (UT)   TotTime TOT SPO NTA STA LEO AMO
TUS  2008-11-22  11h 56m  22  18  0   1   3   0
SDG  2008-11-22  10h 24m  27  20  2   1   2   2

TUS – Camera in Tucson operated by Carl Hergenrother
SDG – Camera in San Diego operated by Bob Lunsford
TotTime – Total amount of time each camera looked for meteors
TOT – Total number of meteors detected
SPO – Sporadics (meteors not affiliated with any particular meteor shower)
NTA – Northern Taurids
STA – Southern Taurids
LEO – Leonids
AMO – Alpha Monocerotids

Published by Carl Hergenrother

I am a professional astronomer specializing in the study of comets, asteroids and meteors. This blog will focus on my professional and amateur work in this field.

17 Comments

  1. We saw what looked like a fireball shooting through the southern sky at dusk on Nov 21, Friday. We’ve searched the web but don’t find any mention of meteors, items entering atmosphere, etc. Does anyone here know anything about it? Thank you!

  2. friday night, 11/21, my buddy and i stepped out on the back porch, i live in Rogers Arkansas by the way, and we were chillin and saw this glowing martian green streak fall threw the sky extremey fast. this was in the western sky from me. idk if you can help me with some explaination. i saw the one that was viewed in canada and it looked so similar to that, except for the explosion at the end. idk if this one did or not, it jsut vanished behind a hill so i couldnt see it. anyways im facinated with it. please let me know if you know anything. thanks peace

  3. I am in Phoenix, Arizona. I also think it looked like a photo of the one in Canada, like you said. It had some cool colors. It started in the east and shot west, in our southern sky. We are also fascinated and searching the web for some explanation.

  4. I live in North Texas near Dallas and also saw a bright glowing streak going from east to west in the northern sky. This was on Friday November 21st around 8pm central time. Very bright shooting star kinda green with sparkles. Seemed to be moving slower than an average shooting star and much larger.Not as big as the Canada one- but impressive.I have not seen anything on this other than this post.

  6. I live south of Fort Worth, Texas and my husband and I both saw the fireball on November 21 at about 8 p.m. We were driving north and saw it to the north of us traveling from east to west. We have never seen anything like this before and could not believe there were not reports on the news about it. This is the only place I have been able to find out anything. Thanks for this resource. If my husband had not seen it too, I would think I was seeing things!

  7. I also saw the green fireball in central Kansas around 8PM Nov 21st. It was so big, bright and long-lasting that it caught my eye out a south-facing window while I was sitting on my couch in a lighted room. It was bright green with a white margin and fell at a very steep angle, arcing slightly from the SE. It was large and slow moving enough that I actually went outside afterwards to make sure it wasn’t a plane crash.

  8. I may be the odd one out, but I live in southern NH and I saw two bright blue… somethings on friday night around 8 or 9.

    obviously not the same thing as everyone else here is talking about, but I’m also trying to figure out what it was or if anyone else reported seeing it. oh well.

  9. michelle, you are not the odd one out. My wife and I were traveling from Albany NY to Hancock MA on route 43 and I saw a “shooting star” to the Southeast traveling North to South. What amazed me was the thickness and color. Instead of the normal long thin white line, this was very, very thick and blue/green. The most amazing sky event I’ve seen. And….can’t find anything on the web about it. And I thought it was so large it would make big news?!?

  10. I saw this event from College Station, TX at around the same time as everyone else, it was amazing! I was traveling north and it was in front of me moving from East to West. Since someone in Kansas saw it from a south facing window, then it obviously came down somehwere between Kansas and College Station, TX (I am about 180 milessouth of Dallas). I wish we could get some scientific insight.

  11. I was head north on 35W in the south FW area. I actually saw two. I saw one that was more greenish and was some what dim, then about 10 minutes later i saw another that was much much brighter and was more blueish.

    Am i the only one who saw two about 10 minutes or so apart?

  12. i was going North on I-35 in Denton and I saw it. I was also on the phone with a friend of mine who was south of Fort Worth on I-35W heading North and she saw it at the same time as me.

  13. yeah i saw this same thing headed north to Oklahoma from Dallas on friday 11/21 at around 8. I have seen shooting stars before but this was different, it was a lot slower and much brighter. It was definitely falling in altitude and lasted 3 or 4 seconds.

  14. yup, i saw this baby too. I was traveling from Temple to Fort Worth… Green, traveling east to west, around 8pm.

  15. Same here–my husband and I saw it while we were driving between Dallas and Norman for the OU-Tech game. It was slow and low and bright and beautiful…

  16. Yes, on the 29th. at about 4:50 PM Pacific time in the San Francisco Bay Area I saw what looked like a meteor. It was traveling from south to north and light green in color. It appeared quickly, traveling fast and then disappeared. A naturalist from the California Academy of Science said this was unusual and rarely seen during daylight. No other report of this was received there by Mon. Perhaps someone who experienced this might like to report this to
    http://www.naturalist@calacademy.org

  17. This early morning of December 31, 2008, I saw a similar greenish hued meteorite disintegrating in the Earth’s atmosphere…it almost looked like a firework but the trajectory was obviously wrong. It was amazing all the same.

Comments are closed.