Bright meteor streaks over Colorado, Utah at dawn
By Coloradoan news staff and wire services
A bright meteor streaked across Colorado and Utah early today, prompting a rash of calls to authorities and researchers, but no debris was immediately reported.
Brian McNoldy, a research associate at Colorado State University’s atmospheric science department, saw the fireball while heading to work this morning.
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“All of a sudden there was a big boom and flash across the sky. It was very bright … and left a bright trail. It vanished over the foothills so I didn’t see if it ended or where.”
“It came in from the east, over the plains, and was seen to disappear over the mountains to the west,” said Chris Peterson, a meteor researcher with the Denver Museum of Nature and Science.
Dispatchers in Utah County, south of Salt Lake City, also received reports of the object.
Jim Rickard of Denver saw the meteor while he was driving to work. He said it was green-colored and seemed to move slowly.
“It would compare to landing lights on an aircraft,” he said. “Noticeably bright but not brilliant.”
The meteor was spotted about 6:45 a.m. MST and was bright enough to be categorized as a fireball, Peterson said. He said it was not captured on a network of meteor-watching cameras in Colorado because they had been turned off as the day dawned.
Meteors are common but this one was unusual because it was so bright it could be seen as the sky was getting light, Peterson said.
“This one may have been much brighter (than most), more like the brightness of the moon,” he said. “Events like that happen every year or so.”
Peterson, who operates a Web site on meteors, said he received several witness reports but did not see the meteor himself. He lives in the mountain town of Guffey, about 75 miles southwest of Denver.
He said any debris from the meteor would be hard to find.
“You’d just be looking at a handful of rocks,” he said. “The rocks would have probably fallen somewhere where there’s a lot of other rocks.”
Peterson said the meteor could have come from the asteroid belt, a ring of rocky debris between Mars and Jupiter, or could have been debris from a passing comet.
The North American Aerospace Defense Command in Colorado Springs reported “a heightened state of meteor activity” from the Geminids meteor shower but did not mention the object witnesses saw today.
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Originally published December 8, 2006
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