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Remarks |
My dad was one of the first rocket booster engineers hired with NASA at Redstone Arsenal, Huntsville AL. I am keenly interested in space, the solar system, etc. I have always tried to get up in the early morning to watch meteor showers. I have done so with both daughters several times: meteors, an eclipse of the Sun back in the mid-90's. The date I have given cannot be fully trusted, unfortunately. I never paid attention to the date and it was prior to vast internet sites, so I did not ever try to find a site such as this. We went out and laid down on our driveway with a big blanket. The meteor shower was one of the best I have ever seen, so I got up after around 15 minutes, telling my girls (12yrs and 7yrs old at the time) that I wanted to wake their mom to see it - knowing my wife would likely be upset for waking her up. LOL. I took two steps towards the front door when the fireball appeared. It started well to my left side in a very low attitude on the horizon and screamed all the way across the sky to my right side. It lasted around 15 seconds. It had a firey tail with smoke behind the flame...and it sounded like a dull roar. I grew up hearing the Saturn rockets tested; it was nowhere near that loud, but we all heard it. I stood speechless and watched until it just disappeared. I wheeled around and franticly said, "Did you see that?" My girls, who had also been dead silent, squealed "Yes! What was that?" We excitedly talked about what we had seen and I told them how lucky we were to have ALL of us there..."when you tell this story, you can add that two others saw with you." I did check the news the next day thinking, surely this will be reported. It was not. I have never understood how it had not ended with a boom of some kind. I do not think I will ever see anything equal or better than what I saw that night. I would LOVE to hear from you if a closer date can be determined. It would have been December 2001 or Jan-Feb 2002 - it was cold. |
