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Tonight in the western Pacific sky shortly after sunset there was a light spot just over the horizon. We happened to have a 12″ telescope handy, so we took a peek. It was a giant ball of something falling northward with very visible giant flames licking off its tail. When we first saw it, it was high enough in the sky to be certain we were seeing flames and not distortion. We believe it to be a “scout meteor”; a space object that flies along with asteroids like 2004 XP14 which had a near miss with Earth this evening.

It had been visible for a couple of minutes before we took a real interest in it and we were able to see it for 15-20 minutes before it shrunk too small to see just above the horizon. It could have passed over the horizon or burned away. It was shrinking as it drifted down and to the right at about a 45 degree angle.

There were several people there so everyone wanted a turn looking through the telescope, but in between excited lookers, I snapped three acceptable photos through the telescope. Unfortunately, I didn’t have time to get perfect focus, but you can clearly see the general shape of the object from these pics.

The photo above with Puget Sound in the foreground shows the object in full context. You need to look at the full resolution (8MP) version to see it above and just to the left of the square object on the jetty. I have also added three pictures with an arrow showing the angle from which we witnessed this object. I won’t venture a guess as to how far away it was, but I can say that the focal length was much closer than planetary; the horizon was close to being in focus.

Unfortunately the photos don’t quite represent the flickering flame beauty that this object was in person. However, since you can’t tell for certain that it is a space object from the pictures, I shall tell you what it is not and why:

What it’s not:

Planet
• While Mercury, Saturn, and Mars were all above horizon in the western sky last night, they were all just above the horizon and behind the mountains at 9:22pm when these photos were taken.
• Also, the sun had just set minutes before. It would have been impossible to see Mars and Mercury with the naked eye on a bright horizon and I imagine Saturn would be very very difficult through the haze.
• Finally, the telescope was in a place where most of the sky is obstructed. Instead of stargazing optics, it had a very low power eyepiece in place for viewing fireworks and boats. I’ve seen Saturn and Jupiter through this telescope with the high-power eyepieces and they are nowhere near as big as this object was with a low power setup.

International Space Station
• It was scheduled to make an appearance on the night of July 2nd in the western sky, but not until 10:29PM and only for three minutes.
• The ISS’s appearance was three degrees above W and heading south. This object was between NW and NWN and heading north.

Airplane
• There were obviously no reports of airplanes going down in flames over the Olympic Peninsula on July 2nd.

Update:

I have queried several news outlets and checked a number of blogs and news sites with no luck on finding other accounts of this incident. If you were in the Pacific Northwest and you witnessed or captured images of this, please do share.

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This entry was posted on Monday, July 3rd, 2006 at 1:31 am and is filed under Photography. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.