49 lines
2.3 KiB
Plaintext
49 lines
2.3 KiB
Plaintext
SUBJECT: LOOPING FIREBALL DAZZLES OBSERVES IN N. EAST FILE: UFO1150
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GLOBE, Boston, MA - Feb. 23, 1990
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By Richard Saltus
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GLOBE STAFF
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Reports of a fireball that blazed through the skies over the Northeast on
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Sunday, changing colors and even executing a fiery loop before vanishing, have
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been filtering into local agencies, a Museum of Science official said yesterday.
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Observers from Novia Scotia to New Jersey reported the Scotia to New Jersey
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reported the spectacular fireball, which they said was visible for more than 10
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seconds at 7:50 p.m. Sunday in the southeastern sky. One witness on Cape
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Cod "said it descended at an angle and changed from white to green to orange,
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which is not unusual," said Walter Webb, assistant director of the museum's
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Hayden Planetarium.
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"It went into a cloud and lit it up like a sunset," Webb said the observer
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reported. "Then the thing went up vertical and came down again in a closed
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loop, leaving a glowing trail behind it." Fireballs, which are not
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uncommon, occur when a sizable fragment in space -usually an asteroid - is
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captured by the Earth's gravity and is burned by the atmosphere. If such a
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fragment is consumed high in the atmosphere, it is called a meteor or "shooting
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star." If it is large enough to survive its ;ounge toward Earth and becomes
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brighter than the planets in the sky, it is called a fireball. The fiery object
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is called a meteorite when it is large enough to reach the Earth's surface.
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Though they usually slice through the atmosphere on a straight path,
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fireballs occasionally skip off layers of air like a stone on a lake, perhaps
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the cause of the fireball's looping maneuver, Webb said.
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Webb, who is collecting eyewitness descriptions, said reports came from at
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least a dozen residents of Nantucket and Martha's Vineyard, plus the control
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tower at Logan Airport and Coast Guard officials.
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Webb has sent word of the sighting to the Scientific Event Alert Network at
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the Smithsonian Institution in Washington. A spokeswoman theresaid the
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nationwide network receives, on average, between 5 and 20 fireball sightings a
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month.
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=END=
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* THE U.F.O. BBS - http://www.ufobbs.com/ufo *
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