Flash Of Light – More
Received this note a few minutes ago from Bill Cooke of Marshall Space Flight Center’s Space Environments Team in Huntsville…
“Unfortunately, the Huntsville and North Georgia cameras were clouded out around 8:45. STRATCOM site reports no re-entries, and no reports from any experienced meteor or satellite observer (yet).
A fireball is possible from the descriptions, but there are no major showers going on right now, so my guess is that it would be a sporadic.
I will ask for infra-sound data tomorrow to check for an energetic atmospheric event.
Let me know if you have anything further.
FYI – our meteor cameras talk to a master server each morning and a web page is generated giving data on the bright meteors they saw that night. This page is available to the public at
https://fireballs.ndc.nasa.gov
Just click on a date and it will show the meteor data for that day, if any. Take a look at Jan 3 to get a good idea of what we see with two cameras on a clear night. If you click on a day and see nothing, we were probably clouded out. Mother nature has not been very cooperative so far this year :(
The Live View is updated every 30 minutes and shows the sky as seen by each camera.
I am deploying a 3rd camera on January 28, and have 12 more ready to be deployed east of the Mississippi over the next year. They will be added to the page as they are deployed, so hopefully we will have better answers to the “What was that light in the sky” questions :)
Best Regards,
Bill”
So… looks like we will have to wait until we get a firm explanation of tonight’s “flash across the sky” seen all over the southern U.S…
Category: Hodgepodge
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James Spann is one of the most recognized and trusted television meteorologists in the industry. He holds the AMS CCM designation and television seals from the AMS and NWA. He is a past winner of the Broadcast Meteorologist of the Year from both professional organizations.Subscribe
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