Fireball Over Texas 15FEB09

Fiery debris seen in Texas skies not from satellite collision, officials say11:20 PM CST on Sunday, February 15, 2009 By RUDOLPH BUSH / The Dallas Morning News

Fiery debris burned through the Texas sky Sunday morning, alarming some and enchanting others but resulting in no apparent injury or damage. Video from Dallas to Austin and beyond, sightings were reported of a red and orange fireball with a small black center speeding toward Earth before burning out in a trail of lingering white smoke. Roland Herwig, spokesman for the Federal Aviation Administration’s southwest division, said the fireball was probably superheated debris from a broken satellite falling to Earth.The FAA could not directly link the debris to the reported collision last week of Russian and U.S. communications satellites, however. “It’s yet to be proved it’s those satellites,” Herwig said. However, a spokeswoman for U.S. Strategic Command said the fireball spotted in the Texas skies Sunday was unrelated to the satellite collision. Air Force Major Regina Winchester said that Joint Space Operations Center at California’s Vandenberg Air Force Base has been monitoring the debris from the collision, and that could not have caused the dramatic sight. She also said the fireball was not related to the estimated 18,000 man-made objects that the center also monitors. “There was no predicted re-entry,” Winchester said about the objects in Earth’s orbit.She said it could possibly have been a natural phenomenon such as a meteorite. It’s unclear exactly how many pieces of debris tumbled toward Texas or whether any more are on the way.The potential danger from debris did prompt the FAA to warn pilots nationwide to be aware of the hazard and to immediately report any sightings. State emergency management officials and local law enforcement agencies also were on alert across much of Texas. Based on reports of a fireball near Waco, local law enforcement officers searched for debris but found nothing, a Texas Department of Public Safety spokeswoman said. Though no one could pinpoint where the debris fell or if it even remained intact through the burnout, the fireball left an impression on those who saw it. They say it burned anywhere from a few seconds to nearly a minute. And in some areas, particularly in East Texas, there were reports of a sonic boom. While it may not be clear for some time what fell from the sky, it seemed to be a singular event.Most sightings in Texas were reported about 11 a.m. Some people thought it was a meteor. Others thought perhaps it was a plane crashing. Doug Schmidt of Richardson was driving south on Central Expressway near the Bush Turnpike when he saw a flash of light in the sky. “It was like a ball of flame with a tail. It looked like a meteor,” he said. “There was flame and then a flash and smoke trailing it. I said ‘Wow, look at that.’ ”Farther south, in Ovilla, Chris Weaver said he stepped outside and just by chance looked south. That’s when he saw a flash of orange moving fast in the sky before burning into a streak of white smoke. “If you were looking up at the southern sky, you couldn’t miss it,” he said. There have been scattered reports across the country of debris falling to Earth since the Russian and U.S. satellites collided Tuesday about 500 miles above Earth. The collision occurred over Siberia and sheared thousands of shards of debris through Earth’s orbit.Pieces of that debris will continue to float through orbit for thousands of years or more, while other pieces will at times fall to Earth, probably likely burning up as they pass through the atmosphere, experts say.

Staff writer Jeff Mosier and The Associated Press contributed to this report.

SOURCE: http://www.quickdfw.com/sharedcontent/dws/news/localnews/stories/021609dnmetdebris.1c083e1f.html

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Update 16FEB09:

Limestone County sheriff's office reported contact from someone who claimed to have a picture of the fireball and a smoke trail and a Plano,Texas, police cruiser may have capture images from a dashboard camera.

http://www.spaceflightnow.com/news/n0902/15debris/

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Date: Monday, February 16, 2009, 6:44 PM

What must be sonic booms were reported in Hill and Navarro counties, south of Dallas, Texas. Two towns named in one TV story (a Fox station in the Dallas, Texas, area) where sonic booms were heard were Hubbard and Penelope.

One private report I've seen mentions what I guess was a smoke trail that lasted about ten minutes. That report said the fireball was visible for about eight seconds and that it was going south to north when seen to the east of Austin. Another report from people who apparently were in a car says they saw going NNE while they were traveling northeast.

This was a significant fireball, and I hope another video was made from somewhere. I saw a mention that a police-car dashboard camera may have captured it. This was at 11:00 AM local time -- broad daylight. By the way, online reports now cite the FAA and STRATCOM as saying it was a nature event completely unrelated to the collision of the satellites. I would tend to thank that this might have been detected by a DSP satellite, but if so we might never hear about it.

Source: Ed Cannon - Austin, Texas, USA

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Other Report:

Astronomer Bill Cooke of NASA's Meteoroid Environment Office is stating that this event was asteroid of about 1 meter, 20 Km/s.

Source: Space weather.

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UPDATE 17FEB09

Two local TV weather blogs have radar images from 11:03 AM (local, 17:03 UTC) Sunday that show two echoes, one in southern Hill County near Hubbard and another, larger one in the northern corner of McLennan County (Waco), just north of the small town of West and south of the small town of Abbott in Hill County.

They both agree that in one pair of images from Fort Worth radar the right-hand or eastern echo is higher in the atmosphere than the larger one to its left. They say that the one of the left was at about 4,000 feet and the one one the right at about 7,000 feet above the ground. I assume these are echoes of a smoke or debris trail, but maybe they could be plasma (?).

I don't know why there are two separate echoes. I believe that weather radars rotate once per minute. In the KVUE-24 blog, there are two pairs of images, each from a different radar center, and the altitudes of the echoes are given different altitudes for the Granger radar than for the radar from Fort Worth.

However, in this one it appears that the blogger or his source has mis-stated (reversed) the altitudes of the echoes in the second pair of images (from Granger radar).

Here are links:"Sunday Fireball Seen on Radar" (KXAN-36, NBC affiliate, Jim Spencer)http://blogs.kxan.com/weather/2009/02/16/sunday-fireball-seen-on-radar/

"Meteor Captured on Radar" (KVUE-24, ABCaffiliate, Mark Murray)http://www.beloblog.com/KVUE_Blogs/weatherblog/

Now, here is a second-hand report from an eyewitness in Hearne, Robertson County, Texas, who reports that the fireball went near the zenith, lasted about 10 seconds, and lit up the ground in broad daylight: http://www.satobs.org/seesat/Feb-2009/0354.html

From Hearne to West in McLennan County yields a more or less SSE to NNW track, and the two radar echoes seem to have it descending as it went in that direction. I've read one report in which the eyewitness says she saw five streaks. Another story on one of those websites says that so many 911 calls were received in Williamson County (immediately north of Austin) that they sent out a helicopter to search for a fallen aircraft. It would be very nice, if this was detected by DSP satellite, if they would report it as has been done in the past (several years ago).

Ed Cannon - Austin, Texas, USA