April 25, 1966 Fireball and others

[WCGucfa]

Hey Guys,

We're having so much fun remembering comets we've seen, how about memories of our favorite meteors
and conditions under which we witnessed them. i.e Where we were when we saw them etc.
The main question is: Did you see the April 25, 1966 great fireball?

If not, tell us your favorites meteor sighting story! enquiring minds want to know!

Bill G.

[Paul D]

Stellafane 2008 I believe, I was sitting in a chair next to Bob M after a night of observing. We were both following tracks of satellites counting how many we saw in one night. All of a sudden a very bright Perseid lit up the sky. But that's not what made this interesting. A moment or so afterwards we both looked at each other and said simultaneously "DID YOU HEAR THAT?" We both looked shocked not thinking it was possible to hear a meteor but after some research we both found out it is possible on some very rare occasions to hear them.

[WCGucfa]

Excellent, Paul!!

I've never heard one! I had some suspects, but couldn't confirm (no other witnesses).

Bill G.

[Bruce D]

I wouldn't have been able to place the year, but I clearly remember hearing that meteor at Stellafane too. Conventional wisdom seems to be that a meteor can produce enough radio frequency energy to cause vegetation to vibrate in resonance producing a buzzing or hissing sound. That would also explain why we hear the sound simultaneously without a minute or two delay for the sound to reach us from a meteor 30 miles away

[WCGucfa]

Some of the exciting/interesting features of the 66' fireball was that it took 30+ seconds to cross the
western sky just after sunset. The sky was still bright! It left a double train (trail) on a horizontal path
from south to north. The train took 15 to 20 minutes to minutes to dissipate.
My friend Dave Dixon and I had planned an early observing session and were spotting airplanes with tripod
mounted binoculars while we waited for the sky to darken so we could use our scopes. It moved so slowly that
it was no problem at all to pick it up in the binoculars before it even got halfway across the sky!
Sky and Telescope called it the most photographed meteor ever at the time, due to its early evening appearance.
Dang, my camera of the mid-sixties consisted of a plastic Kodak Instamatic! I'm sure we all had one.

The fireball was estimated at negative 9 magnitude!

Bill G.

[Jay1973]

I wish I could remember the year ....I was probably around 12 or 13 living in Brockton . I remember I was watching television with my parents . I Was laying on the floor and for some reason looked out the window and saw a pretty incredible fireball streak across the sky from over my house .....it was large and from how I remember it , it seemed very low ....I told my parents what I saw and they thought I was crazy . Next morning while getting ready for school , my parents were listening to the news on the radio while preparing to go to work and that's when I was proven right as we heard a report that the prior evening a large fireball was reported by hundreds of people from Rhode Island to Canada.....this must have been in the mid 1980s sometime . does anyone remember this ?