Hello,
My name is Martha and about 5:40 p.m. today, December 21, I went outside and something caught my eye in the sky. I quickly looked up and there was a small ball of fire in the northern sky which raced across for about 2 seconds and then disintegrated. I have seen shooting stars and this was nothing like it. It was actually on fire. I live in Ophelia, about 6 miles from Reedville, where the Potomac and the Chesapeake Bay meet. Could you tell me, if you know, what that could have possibly been? Thank you.
Martha A.
Ophelia, Va
Hi Martha! What you saw is most likely what is called an “earthgrazer”. It’s basically a meteor that just skims the earth’s atmosphere and causes a long, brilliant trail across the sky. Sometimes the smoke trail will last a few seconds after the meteor has passed. The earthgrazer meteors (shooting stars) occur early in the evening when our direction as we travel through space is sideways.
Think of it this way: A meteor is caused by intense frictional heating of the atmosphere as debris enters at a high rate of speed and burns up. The earth is flying through space, and our atmosphere is encountering debris all the time. Pretend for a moment that the earth is a car and the sky overhead is a windshield. When the sun sets, we are looking out the side window of the car, with the front windshield to the east. As the night wears on, the earth rotates in such a way that the front windshield is overhead around dawn. Now pretend the debris that enters the atmosphere are bugs hitting the imaginary windshield. If we are looking out the side window at sunset, as you were when you saw the earthgrazer, the bug would have just barely skimmed the glass and made a long streak down the window. If you had seen the same bug strike the windshield around sunrise the next morning, the streak would have been brighter but much shorter, as you would have been looking out the front window of our imaginary car. Hope this analogy helps, and I’m glad you got to see an earthgrazer!
Zach
