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["Tanner Lovelace" <clubjuggler AT gmail.com>]

On 1/26/07, Mark Turner <markt AT siteseers.net> wrote:
> Tanner Lovelace wrote:
>
> > Shrink? Perhaps.  English teacher?  Definitely.  Read the entire
> > article and you'll discover they did say what it was.  You can hardly call 
> it
> > an *unidentified* flying object when they *identify* what it was!
> >
> >>From the article:
> >
> > "A fireball," says Daniel Caton, observatory director and astronomy 
> professor
> > at Appalachian State University in Boone."
>
> Perhaps. I'm still trying to reconcile what Kelly saw with this event.
> While a meteor could explain it one sighting, I find it highly
> implausible that two large meteors impacted in such a spectacular
> fashion 22 hours apart.
>
> Even if Kelly is wrong about the date, how do you account for the
> difference in times reported: 6:30 and 8 PM? No meteor I know has ever
> lasted 90 minutes (or chose to explode twice, for that matter).
>
> Strange. Its still a mystery to me.

> From the article:

 Some witnesses who contacted the Observer on Thursday wondered whether it
 could be debris from the recent anti-satellite test by China.

 Probably not -- but maybe, says Michael Kucharek, spokesman for the North
 American Aerospace Defense Command near Colorado Springs, Colo., which
 tracks satellites and space junk -- everything from lost
screwdrivers to astronaut
 gloves. He says he's been getting an unusually high number of calls this week
 about things spotted in the sky.

 China's satellite-zapping exercise has probably increased space
litter by about
 a million pieces, making it nearly as untidy as Interstate 77 in Charlotte.

 "It's anybody's guess," Kucharek says, "what direction this stuff has gone."

That's as good an explanation as any and MUCH better than the alternatives.

Cheers,
Tanner
--
Tanner Lovelace
clubjuggler at gmail dot com
http://wtl.wayfarer.org/
(fieldless) In fess two roundels in pale, a billet fesswise and an
increscent, all sable.