Fireball caught on tape over Texas, Meteor and did it hit the ground??? Options

[Guest_Bobby_*]

A meteor caught on Tape over Texas on Sunday February 15, 2009
Military says not related to Satellite collision last week.
Any reports if this object made it to the ground???

I wonder how many times this happens over a year???

Here are the Links:

Houston Chronicle:

http://www.chron.com/disp/story.mpl/front/6264797.html

CNN:

http://www.cnn.com/2009/US/02/15/texas.sky.debris/

[Fran Ontanaya]

I read somewhere one fireball-sized meteor falls every month on average.

With so many cams everywhere these days they are recorded more often, which is really cool. I think people will start to realize now that the Earth is like a car driving behind a truck loaded with gravel --you really value having a windshield between the exterior medium and you.

[helvick]

I don't think I mentioned this here but while I was on holiday in Egypt in early January and while sitting watching a (somewhat corny but nonetheless entertaining) "sound and light show" at the Temple of Karnak in Luxor there was a similar bolide that traversed a good 60 degrees of the western sky in what seemed like 10 seconds at the time but was probably closer to 2-3 seconds. It was almost identical to this fireball, didn't seem to me to be as fast as a typical meteor and noticeably flamed out right at the end. In terms of brightness it was dramatically brighter than Venus which was in more or less the same broad region of the sky at the time (near the crescent moon) so I could make a direct comparison while it happened (early evening about 7:45PM , so unusual for a meteor in my experience). I thought it was some pyrotechnic part of the show initially but the trajectory was too flat and at a suspicious angle for that and talking to others who had seen it from other parts of the town later that night it was certain that it was a meteor. I'd just taken a 30 second long exposure shot of the light show and temple and my camera was set up for a 15 second delay before its next shot so I missed what might have been a once in a lifetime shot of a really impressive meteor but in hindsight I'm just glad I saw something that impressive in the location that I did.

Comparing it to the video of this fireball - I'd say it was a bit smaller but not dramatically so and it had a much clearer tail that persisted for about 5 degrees behind it. I've seen one other large bolide before - at around midnight in August (I think) over southern Ireland sometime in the early 80's, which I seem to remember was bright enough to throw clear shadows which was extremely impressive although at the time I was too young to realize just how rare an event it was. It was definitely a major event as the local sea rescue team were alerted by a number of people who thought it was a distress flare - we found out the next day that it had been seen by many people within a range of about 60 miles of us and it finally dawned on us what it had been.

Anecdotes don't make good data or evidence but given that I've now seen two and I don't spend a lot of time staring at the sky I don't find it all hard to believe that this is a common enough event.