A bright and fiery fireball streaked across the Fairbanks sky at 7:32 a.m. Tuesday, drawing reports from residents who witnessed the event from their cars and homes.
ANCHORAGE, Alaska - A bright and fiery fireball streaked across the Fairbanks sky Tuesday morning, drawing reports from residents who witnessed the event from their cars and homes.Brian Collyard was driving to work when the flash of light caught his attention on the left side of his vehicle.
“There was literally — what I would say — hundreds to 1,000 different light trails that came off this thing,” Collyard described. “It was absolutely phenomenal.Collyard said the flash illuminated the hillside north of Fairbanks, lighting up trees and an open snow-covered field. He described the aftermath as a descending display of individual light trails that lasted for an extended period.Roy Alabran, a Fairbanks resident who uses five or six outdoor security cameras to monitor the sky for the northern lights, did not see the fireball in real time.“I just saw the vapor trail after effect,” Alabran said. “I was thinking it looks kind of strange. It looks a little bit like it could be a jet, but it’s a little bit different.” Alabran said his camera’s timestamp confirmed the event occurred 26 seconds after 7:32 a.m. and that it lasted approximately 10 seconds. He submitted the video and information to a national “I’m excited to share something like that,” Alabran said. “I hope they get some excitement out of it — get outdoors and look for themselves.”Aaron Slonecker, director of the Planetarium and Discovery Center at the Anchorage Museum, said the event qualifies as a fireball. “ meteor is a piece of rock that’s moving through the Earth’s atmosphere,” Slonecker said. “And we call it a fireball when it gets really bright and kind of fiery like that.” Slonecker said rocks traveling through the atmosphere at speeds ranging from 25,000 to 160,000 mph generate friction with the air that causes them to heat up, disintegrate, and produce bright light. He said larger meteors produce larger fireballs, and noted there is a possibility — though not a certainty — that a fragment large enough to survive atmospheric entry could have reached the surface as a meteorite. Slonecker said the sighting was rare in part because of its size and brightness, and because it occurred in the morning when the sky is lighter and smaller meteors are harder to see. He confirmed there is no active meteor shower at this time. The next scheduled shower, the Lyrids, is expected in April. “I’ve seen shooting stars, meteor showers before,” Slonecker said. “I’ve never seen something that big and bright. “Things like this, when they do happen, kind of remind people to look up at the sky,” he added. “There’s a lot of stuff going on.”near Alaska around 3:45 p.m. Alaska time Tuesday, with a window of plus or minus 24 hours, sparking speculation that the Tuesday morning fireball was that satellite. Alaska’s News Source reached out to NASA and had not received a response by time of publication. Some Fairbanks residents said they plan to search for any remnants from the event.‘Like a jet blasted you in the face’: 85 mph Arctic storm winds trap 150 people at Alaska basketball tournamentPlane en route to Bethel loses door during flight
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