Meteor
Taken by Brad Hoehne on September 27, 2013 @
Hocking Hills, Ohio
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Details:
I was lucky to see the bolide of September 27, 2013 directly.
I saw it from the Hocking Hills Lodge in Hocking Hills State park about 40 miles southeast of Columbus, Ohio.
It was, without a doubt, the brightest bolide I have ever seen and likely will ever see!
It was (as we learned immediately afterwards) 11:34
I was standing and looking up roughly in the direction of Cepheus when I noticed the trees seemed illuminated as if by the uncomfortably bright spotlight of a police helicopter which had suddenly turned on. I thought of Roy Neary looking out of his truck at the alien ship in CEOT3K. I instantly turned my head to see what was happening. Doing so, I was able to state directly at the head of the meteor from roughly the "W" of Cassiopeia to roughly the head of Draco. This is roughly (again) 60-70 degrees up in the north sky.
Carl mentioned, and I concur, that it "seemed" as bright as the sun to our dark adapted eyes. To me it appeared as "arc welding brilliance" seen without a face mask. The "head" of the meteor was so bright that I almost couldn't stand to look at it directly- but I did anyway. The light scattered in the atmosphere as it fell was predominantly green, but the head seemed a brilliant blue-white, and, I remember the sky appearing a weird deep green/blue twilight-ish look. Very alien and sci-fi.
I don't think it was actually brighter than the sun, as I don't recall feeling any warmth, but it was much, much brighter than the full moon (the stars seemed to disappear instantly) and painful to look at in the same was that a bright bathroom light is rudely painful when you turn it on at 3:00 a.m. to take a pee. I estimate a magnitude of between -20 and -22 (the sun being -27 and the full moon being -12 or -13).
The bolide was swift, perhaps a tad less swift than a typical Perseid, and went from east to west. It didn't appear to to me to "break up" or explode at the end, just fade quickly away to nothing as if it completely burned up. However, it was very difficult to stare at the "head" directly so it's tough to know for sure- I say this as the end of the apparition seemed fainter. It did "flicker" a bit as it fell.
After it was gone, it left a bright green trail which faded rapidly and another "black body" colored "heat trail" which faded away somewhat more slowly, in a way reminiscent of flames dying away from a line of gasoline poured on asphalt or a contrail dissolving at high speed. The sections of the trail where the head had "flickered" left brighter "black body" trails which lingered a bit longer.
After that, a snaky ion trail lingered for at least two minutes and warped rapidly into a meandering river of grey (which photographed as orange) I managed to get a single, blurry, picture of it once I got my wits together.
I lost my dark adaptation and had a bright linear afterimage streak across my vision for several minutes after that.
The five of us Mark Peter, Mark Richardson, Carl Coker, Joe Renzetti and I, animatedly discussed what we saw. Carl and I described "feeling shaken". To me, it was not unlike the buzz you get from witnessing a total solar eclipse first hand. During our exited talking, we heard a distant sonic boom, loud enough to be distinct over our conversations, but not as loud as, say, a sonic boom from a military jet at 20,000 feet. Perhaps 40-50 decibels. I heard it as two quick, low, booms- BOOM-ba - others heard three (I was talking when the booms sounded) - BOOM-bah-buh. By imprecise cell-phone clock measurement, it took roughly 3 minutes for the sound to reach us. Carl did a quick mental calculation and came up with an approximate distance of 36 miles.
Joe said "everything else could have gone wrong tonight, and that would have definitely made the trip worth it."
These image was taken with a Nikon 5100 around 2 minutes after the apparition. I was somewhat blinded by the event, and had no ability to quickly adjust the controls, take a test image to check focus, or ajdust the ISO of the camera so I just set the camera on my car, pointed it in the general direction of the lingering ion trail and hoped for the best.
The image came out dark, but some stretching in Photoshop brought out details as you see here.
Photographer's website:
No URL provided.
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