|
Remarks |
Here is my account from Monday, March 8, 2021.
Last night, Sunday, March 7, 2021, around 11:30 p.m. EST (unfortunately I did not record the precise time, but I think that it was around 11:30) I happened to observe, while looking east toward the horizon from the 14th floor of a high-rise condo in Bethesda, a bright ball of light in the (perhaps distant) sky. The ball of light was substantially larger than your typical shooting star, maybe the same diameter as a standard pencil eraser viewed from a foot away. The ball of light appeared to be rapidly "descending," at a roughly 45-degree angle and in a roughly linear fashion, from top left to bottom right. I'm not sure whether I saw its entire course, but when I caught sight of the "ball," it was not very far above the horizon. It originated, as far as I could tell, at about the same "height" (although surely in the distant sky) as the various radio towers around Tenleytown and Friendship Heights. The bright ball of light was out of sight (below the horizon) within about 1 second of when I first caught sight of it.
This ball of light was remarkable in part because of its size and brightness and in part because it was not directly overhead in the sky where one might expect to observe a shooting star or satellite. Instead, this ball of light was relatively low on the horizon. Its speed was much too fast to have been a satellite or (I think) the International Space Station.
|
