A Strange sight
By arun; Published 06 May 2008
We were at Ramanchery on May 3rd,Saturday... There were some ten of us including me,Dr Suresh and a few TAN ASTRO members... It was a good night for observation with very clear skies.... At around 11 o clock in the South Western sky we saw a very strange occurence... It was like a meteor shower but none of us had ever seen something like that before... There were a number of Fireballs or Meteors or Debris or whatever you call it coming from the sky... They had a greenish-yellowish-orangish tinge and were obviously in the process of a burn out.... There were atleast ten of these objects visible to the naked eye and they were all in one group with a very small spacing in between them... Their tails were very long... I would say roughly, 15 times the size of an average meteor or shooting star`s tail..... They were at a height of 20,000 feet and their angle of projection was very less... That is they kept moving at a good height but were always parallel to the ground... And of course they kept moving and stayed in our sights for nearly 20 secs and then went down... It was a stunning spectacle... None of us had witnessed something like that before... People started predicting that those fireballs were debris from some space shuttle or satellite... Sometime later we found out that people in Marina beach at Chennai, some 100 Km away from us had also seen it.... I dont think it was reported in any of the newspapers... If any of you know what this is or have seen something similar before please reply back....