Written by
Citizen staff
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Wednesday, 26 November 2008 |
A meteor seen over B.C.’s Lower Mainland Tuesday was clearly visible from Prince George, 800 kilometres to the north, says a Prince George amateur astronomer.
"I was standing in the Hart area just north of the city at 4:35 p.m. looking towards Venus and Jupiter, both of which were bright and low in the evening sky," Mike Nash said Wednesday. "The meteor travelled from east to west, starting just below and to the left of Jupiter and ending in a dazzling fireball well below and to the left of Venus.
"It disappeared immediately after the fireball stage, and from my location it did not appear to impact the ground," Nash said. "However, the sky was still very light and I was apparently hundreds of kilometres north of the event and it disappeared not too far above the horizon, so glowing fragments may well have reached the ground or ocean that would not have been visible in Prince George after the incandescent stage."
Members of the Prince George Astronomical Society who saw the meteor said it reached an altitude of 70 degrees and went down in a southwest direction, said Maurice Sluka, vice-president of the Royal Astronomical Society of Canada-Prince George Centre.
The south-southwest direction is consistent with news reports of the meteor over the Georgia Strait and Gulf Islands, Nash said.
"The east-to-west track and the nature of the object and the fireball are consistent with it being a piece of asteroid debris rather than a satellite breaking up on reentry," he said.
Usually satellites are launched in such a way that they will travel west to east in order to take advantage of the earth's rotation, Nash said. "This was travelling from east to west, so it was more likely a natural object," he observed.
It's interesting the meteor came on the heels of the big meteor that brightened the skies over Alberta and Saskatchewan last week. "This one must have been fairly big to be visible this far north," he said.
"It's fairly rare to see a fireball like that," Nash said. "Meteors are common, but fireballs are not. It means this was something fairly big."
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Last Updated ( Wednesday, 26 November 2008 )
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