BIG Shooting Stars

Posted at 12:16, Fri 6 March 2009 in Benign entries happy happy joy joy

The continuing adventures of Gryphonn and Phoenix.In this episode...

I forgot to mention back on the post where we satyed out at The Caves, but an amazing thing happened...

In the middle of the night, Phoenix and I were taking photos of night bugs and The Southern Cross (Crux for you astronomy geeks). Anyway, I was walking back from Jimmy to P, looking at the ground and suddenly the ground lit up. I thought P had taken a photo of me, but the ground stayed lit. I looked at her and she was looking at her photos. So I looked up (this was about two seconds after the flash I guess). There, streaking above me was the brightest 'shooting star' that I have ever seen. It had a trail behind it that covered a third of the sky and then proceeded to split into three pieces. It completely blew me away! The whole event probably lasted for about five seconds or so.

I did some research afterwards and discovered that events like this are not commonly seen, and that it is possible that some fragments may have made earth fall. It's certainly made me more aware of the night sky. I now spend an hour or so after sunset and sometimes longer, watching satellite flares (best just after sunset looking east so that the sun reflects off their surfaces better), and watching for meteors. We have been lucky enough to see quite a few on nights with little or no moonlight. However, I'd say a lot of them are human space junk entering the atmosphere.

Anyway, just touching base and saying hi.

Lil' Sis. I am sending some forms etc re the plates around the 17th.

Nori. Email me please.

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