Position:
North 38 deg 31.458 minutes
West 122 degrees 32.990 minutes
Altitude 2014 feet

Visible as:
Small red fireball, no visible trail
From 09:57:05Z to 09:57:39

I may have taken my eyes off the sky a moment and started late.

Had a 6X45 camera with 60 mm lens set up pointing pretty much where Polaris would have appeared had the Moon not been so bright, though I’d have done better to use a wider angle lens and smaller film — 24mm on a 35mm camera would have caught the whole thing. And while on the shoulda woudla coulda… I accidentally left the camera at F8. On top of only finding g ASA100 film in the store, I think it’ll take some pushing.

Ad Astra — per Aspirin!

At your speed estimate it would have taken just under 34 seconds to travel from Polaris to the northern horizon of the park near your house. Or about 25 seconds to fly through Orion. It was moving much faster than that.

It was faster than a satellite but not as fast as a meteor.

BTW. While I find it somewhat too harsh, I do agree with the second sentence of your last paragraph.

I started scanning with earnest at 1:56 (PST) and at about 1:56:40 it popped into view about 15° west of north. It was as bright as Venus, only yellow, and was moving (I would guess) about 1°/sec. It wasn’t over “in 10 seconds.” My estimate is that it took about 30 seconds from first appearance until it disappeared over the ENE horizon.

It was not a subtle event. Anyone who had their eyes open and looking even vaguely in the right direction should have seen it. The moon was both full and very high. It was so bright that the sky actually had a blue cast once you became dark adapted. If you missed it, you probably timed it wrong. From the BA’s location, it was almost 20° above the horizon.

- Jack

One…like you said, I “should” have been paying attention to the time…it appeared much sooner than I expected.

Two…I was wearing my ball cap (with built-in ear coverings because it was cold) and was looking at the horizon. I didn’t expect it to be so high overhead. (If I had consulted software, I would have been better prepared.)

Three…it was REALLY MOVING FAST!!!

I was “lucky” because I happened to glance up and catch it, after it had already passed “overhead”. I did pre-focus my binoculars (so I wasn’t totally unprepared), so I was able to quickly look at it through them, and got an excellent view for a handfull of seconds.

Going back to number 3…it’s really hard to describe and compare just how FAST it was moving. It was certainly faster than any plane but not “quite” as fast as a meteor/meteoroid. (I know, I know…the object itself is called a meteoroid in space and when it’s in the atmosphere, and the “glow” is called a meteor. ) My “best guess” is that it was moving with the speed of a slow moving bolide.

One of my earlier blog entries was all about Stardust. You can get there from the previous post links, it’s titled Stardust oddly enough. Or here’s the URL http://portableplanetarium.blogspot.com/2006/01/stardust.html. There’s links to cool media and NASA’s official mission site. You can also get all the info on volunteering to scan aerogel for particles right from that same chair that you sit on, in that same room, hour upon hour, and also info on how to submit media (videos and still shots) that you may have captured of the reentry.

jbs

Anyone see this Andromeda Strain reference yet? Hilarious! Unfortunately, I’ve already heard of one ninny believing it.

http://web.utk.edu/~rbutler8/zombies.html

Congratulations to NASA and JPL for this achievement.