Did you see the mysterious SoCal fireball?
Did you see it? We didn’t. The photo above is from the NASA archives. Bloggers never get window seats….
[Photo: A Taurid fireball photographed Oct. 28, 2005, by Hiroyuki Iida of Toyama, Japan, courtesy nasa.gov]
A fireball streaking through the sky around 10:40 this morning was reported in San Bernardino, Riverside, Lake Arrowhead, Big Bear, Barstow and as far west as the Hollywood Hills.
Tell us about it. Who did you tell and what was their response?
The American Meteor Society keeps a log of fireballs that have been spotted. Here’s the 2008 list.
Upload your fireball photos to YourScene
— Jen Leo, Los Angeles Times Travel Deal blogger
31 Comments on “Did you see the mysterious SoCal fireball?”
Leave a Comment
If you are under 13 years of age you may read this blog, but you may not participate. Here's the full legal spiel.
Comments are moderated, and will not appear on this blog until the author has approved them.
All fields are required
Advertisement
SUBSCRIBE TO THIS BLOG
Click the logo below to subscribe to news from this blog:
Or add this feed to your favorite RSS reader:
more
Or add this feed to your favorite RSS reader:
more
Advertisement
July 1st, 2008 at 2:51 pm
I saw it. I will copy and paste the post I made to an online astronomy community/blog on Livejournal:
“Wow. About 45 minutes ago I saw the biggest, brightest fireball I have ever seen. And this is daytime! It was at 10:43am pst according to my clock. I was driving north on a canyon road and it appeared just a couple of inches above a mountain range. It was going almost straight down and a little easterly. From Southern California, it appeared to be NNE. I am certain it will make the news. It was amazingly bright and large. But, I havent seen anything in the news yet or heard anything on local radio.
It dissapeared quickly, but the image seemed to be seared into my vision for a few moments later. I would’nt be surprised if this thing was as big as a house, or that it made an impact. It is hard to guess the distance. it could have been 500 miles or more. I am eager to here some news. My heart is still racing. If anyone hears anything, please post more information here. Thank You.”
To add a little more detail, I was driving northbound on San Francisquito road in Santa Clarita.
There are two comments to the post so far. One of them was a link to the LA times article.
July 1st, 2008 at 2:55 pm
I was driving on the 405 North towards the 101 freeway in the San Fernando Valley. Suddenly, in front of me, I saw a streak of light crash down to the earth. It looked like it landed somewhere near the 101 and the 405. It was colored like a prism and came down in a flash. I couldn’t look around to see other people’s reactions because I had to focus on the road. I called my Dad to tell him what I saw, and he thought I was on some Maui Wowie. But I knew I saw something, so I decided to call 911, and they connected me with the police. I told them what I saw, and they took my number just in case they needed to call me back. What a crazy sight to see! I’m glad other people saw it as well!
July 1st, 2008 at 3:11 pm
I was driving n bound on Newport Coast Drive this morning and saw a streaking fireball descend. I was at a point where my horizon line was the ridgeline of the Santa Ana Mountains, probably above or slightly east of Tustin, a distance of 10-15 miles. The fireball was a streak of bright orange and white, like a meteor with tail. It disappeared from view behind the ridge before being extinguished. I have no idea at what distance it might have been. Perhaps it is possible to triangulate this using this point of reference along with others’.
July 1st, 2008 at 3:14 pm
I was in my office in Beverly Hills and saw a massive, bright orange ball of light streak East, over the Hollywood hills and out of sight. I reported it to LAist.com to see if anyone else saw it but heard nothing until this article saved the day. Thanks for clearing things up, I’m not crazy and people need to start listening when I speak.
July 1st, 2008 at 4:03 pm
While I was out kayaking in Dana Point harbor today at 10:40 PDT, I saw a fireball traverse a small part of the sky. It was bright orange-to-white, was almost due north of me, and the trail appeared to have a finite width, probably 3-5% of a moon diameter. It had significant curvature - it was an arc, about 1/4 of a circle of a diameter probably 4 times that of the moon, starting at the zenith, curving clockwise. It disappeared behind the 200 ft cliffs that rise above the harbor.
July 1st, 2008 at 4:10 pm
I saw the fireball. It was about 10:40 a.m., I was in Apple Valley driving north when I saw what at first seemed like a flash of some kind of brilliant fireworks, but immediately I knew it was something altogether different. It was extremely bright, and just suddenly appeared in the bright blue sky. To me it appeared like a bright golden fireball, which then traveled very fast down toward the horizon, angling from left to right to the horizon. I thought it crashed out in the desert somewhere towards where Barstow is. It was more brilliant than a bolt of lightening, very very bright, and really amazing. I was blown away.
July 1st, 2008 at 5:07 pm
I was in downtown Los Angeles on the 31st floor of my office and just happened to look out the window to see a bright white streak disappear behind the the San Gabriel Mountains. It was over in an instant. It was huge, at least as wide as the moon, but it had a tail. I remember thinking that this was going to be bad - it was heading for Pasadena - and then was relieved that it went on the other side of the San Gabriel range. But that meant it was further away and bigger. I’m glad no one was hurt.
July 1st, 2008 at 8:39 pm
I did not seen the fireball mentioned in the article, but I have seen two others while driving north on the 101 within the past 3 weeks. They were not large and burned off rather fast.
July 1st, 2008 at 9:09 pm
I live on the golf course in Lake Arrowhead. I didn’t see this..but a friend who was playing the course did. She tells me that it was greenish-yellow with what looked like a tail of mirrors. We heard no sound. BUT…this is interesting…this thing apparently broke up into parts and has a radio emergency transmitter and all evening helicopters have been circling. I called the S.B. sheriff and they tell me that they have no aircraft in the air nor have they heard anything re: the fireball at all!The signal from the transmitter was/is very strong…yet the county hasn’t even heard of this?
July 1st, 2008 at 10:13 pm
My wife and I were headed north on a road parallel to I-15 in Victorville just south of Palmdale Road. It was a bright streak with a similar appearance to fireworks as Louis Fazzi describes. It had a brief white “tail”. It traveled from the north sky descending to NNE. It seemed to burn up but seemed to be somewhere between where we were and Bell Mountain.
July 1st, 2008 at 10:41 pm
Strangely, I saw a different fireball, Monday night, around 10 PM. I live on the westside and saw what I thought was a plane or a missile streak through the sky traveling westward - very bright for 1-2 seconds before disappearing. I expected to hear a crash or a boom but there was no sound.
July 2nd, 2008 at 1:05 am
I witnessed this event.
I was driving northbound on Beach Blvd Buena Park a block before imperial and object was traveling Northeast
I just looked @ map and that section of beach blvd runs northeast.and fireball was never to the right of Beach
object traveled slightly more east than that section of Beach blvd. but never crossed beach blvd.
object was just to the left forward of me when I noticed it and it broke up into fireball directly forward of me just before center of Beach blvd. Object was never to the right of Beach Blvd.
Beach runs dead North except for a 2-3 mile section that runs northeast where I witnessed object. so one could draw a strait line from said area on Beach Blvd up into hills and search along that axis and to the left [west].
put this in google Maps I can not guarantee links work. 33.908908,-117.977403 thats where I witnessed object. … so extend a line up into mountains.
and you’ll be just west of mount baldy peak. 34.239054,-117.683487
Id speculate between there and cedar springs 34.35364,-117.902527 or even falling springs 34.298636,-117.836609
i dont think it was a meteor. it was intense yellow green maybe at start then yellow/white hot … and disappeared.
object was extremely fast with a deceleration and very slight curve down from a strait path at very end before breakup and vanished seemed like 20 sec but probably 5+ sec. I never saw it hit the ground.
No one around me seemed to notice and no one today knew what I was talking about.
July 2nd, 2008 at 4:44 am
I saw it from Coachella. I happened to be looking out the window while at work and there it was. It appeared to be very bright. I don’t recall ever seeing a meteor during daytime.It looked like it may have hit land rather than burn off.
July 2nd, 2008 at 4:47 am
Hum,
i just calculated it was the re-entry of a SL12 rocket booster from a recent Russian rocket launch.
July 2nd, 2008 at 6:23 am
I work in San Diego (poway) off the I15. ( 10:40 Am ) The meteor looked huge from were i was. Very cool thing to see in the middle of the day.
July 2nd, 2008 at 8:17 am
We saw the meteor at 10:40 am while driving west on US 50 just outside of Great Basin National Park in NE Nevada. It fell to the west of us traveling from NE to SW. Very bright trail, then exploding into a bright fireball. A most impressive sight!
July 2nd, 2008 at 8:45 am
We saw this fireball from Moorpark, Ca. But it was traveling from West to East falling in the Northwest from where we are. We saw it disapear behind the mountains north of Simi Valley. It was bluish yellow with fragments behind it. We were all a little shocked asking each other “what was that” That is no where near San Bernadino.
July 2nd, 2008 at 9:34 am
I saw what must have a been a tiny bit of the meteor (shower? or bit) a single streak of fire, small about the size & look of a skyrocket firework, on a downward diagonal path outside my office window in West Los Angeles (Sepulveda & Santa Monica Blvds), looking northeast. It had a colorful glowing head & regular white fire tail. It was right outside the window 20 stories up & then disipated while I was looking at it.
July 2nd, 2008 at 11:51 am
My wife and I were walking home from the bike shop on Johnson Drive in Ventura Ca. We had just turned East to get off the road and onto a bike path. It was around 10:40 am. The approximate trajectory seemed to be North to South. It was bright and trailing debris.
I saw it but my wife missed it. She suggested that it might have been early fireworks. That sounded reasonable until I thought about the trajectory and speed of the object. It was traveling too fast to be a common firework’s return to earth. And the angle of decent was too shallow to be a firework rocket; it was moving fast and North to South, not mostly down like a firework rocket’s return.
I would have guessed it would strike ground somewhere in the Santa Monica Mountains/Malibu area, but it could also have hit the Pacific Ocean or somewhere a long distance off my estimate.
July 2nd, 2008 at 12:38 pm
I was driving Northbound on Hwy 63 (Mooney Blvd) in Visalia, CA.(45 miles South of Fresno,CA) I was pretty sure a plane crashed N/E of town, or a fireworks show had gone terribly wrong. I contacted the sheriff’s department, they had no info and no other sightings. By evening, I thought it might have been just my imagination.
July 2nd, 2008 at 1:39 pm
I was driving east on Crenshaw approaching the 405 freeway. I saw an orange yellow line that was about 70 degrees down from horizontal going from north to south from my perspective. It was visible for only a second. I suspected a meteor and am glad others saw it as well.
July 2nd, 2008 at 9:36 pm
I was driving North on Sand Canyon Rd near Tehachapi around quarter to eleven yesterday morning when I saw what appeared to be the brightest meteor I’d ever seen. It was green and white, straight ahead and traveling to the east as it descended. I had the impression that it landed fairly close by, so I turned around and stopped to look for signs of smoldering but found nothing.
I’m surprised to see that most of the other reports are 100+ miles to the south, unless what I saw was a fragment of the same meteor (or whatever it was).
July 3rd, 2008 at 3:44 am
I saw this meteor from Hanford Calif. (Central Valley) It must have been a big one!
July 3rd, 2008 at 9:11 am
My son and I were traveling west in Clovis, CA when we saw a fireball with a white tail, the time was 10:38am.
July 3rd, 2008 at 10:47 am
hi,i saw a huge green one sweep over michigan early in the morn.Dont remember the time though.I was telling people today it was the biggest and longest ive ever seen
July 3rd, 2008 at 1:17 pm
My son saw the object in the sky. However, we were no in California. We were at lake Powell. It was very large and green in color. He was very excited.
July 3rd, 2008 at 7:25 pm
I saw this from Huntington Lake, Ca. mid-morning 10:+/- a.m. I didn’t have a watch on. It was traveling north to south extremely fast (angle of 25 Degrees or so). Only saw it for a few seconds, unmistakenly, very large. The center of the ball was silver-white, with orange-red extending out. Sparkler effect with a yellow-orange trail.
Definitely exciting to see.
July 5th, 2008 at 10:30 am
Yesterday before 11:00 AM, I was stopped, waiting to make a left turn from Colima (going East) to Avalo Drive in Hacienda Heights.
I looked north toward the San Gabriel Mountains, noting their bluish skyline. Suddenly a fireball rapidly came out of the west and went east. It left a silver streak behind it and made a descending arc above the mountains. It burned out above the mts somewhere west of Mt. Baldy.
I couldn’t determine whether it burned out this side of the San Gabriel ridge line or north of the San Gabriels. It must have looked much larger to those individuals closer to it, but it wasn’t until evening that I learned what it was.
I carefully noted the arrangement of objects in my line of vision as if the fireball was on a flat plane. I supposed a plane had gone down and authorities might want to use triangulation to find it.
According what others on this blog saw, I think it was far, far to the north of me. It was such a distinct object, I knew others must surely have seen it, too.
July 6th, 2008 at 11:02 am
I’m an airline pilot an saw it while flying from Salt Lake to Phoenix. We were about 60 nautical miles north of Bryce Canyon and it was well west of us. Very brief and changed color from green to pink. I’ve never seen a daytime meteor while flying before this one.
July 10th, 2008 at 8:51 pm
Ok, This is wierd, My friend liz just told me to go online and see the LA Times, i was shocked to see other people saw what i saw, but im in chicago and i me and two friends were having a 5 min break when all of a sudden a fireball was coming toward us, we thought is was a plane since we work right behing ohare but then it stop move to the right and dissapeared… I know it sounds crazy that why i called by boss , Liz to see it she was baffled.
July 11th, 2008 at 5:26 pm
did any one see a strange fire ball looking thing in the sky last night aprox. around 1130pm_12:30 am..i was smoking a ciggarette where i live in diamond bar,CA it appered for a few minutes then disappeared.. WHAT WAS IT !?