We joined NASA's facebook page and found out about the Lyrids Meteor shower last Saturday night. We didn't know if we would see anything, but the weather was nice so we stayed out with the kids. We live a little ways from the city and it was very dark. We knew the kids would get tired and Aydri did eventually fall asleep outside.
At first, the meteors were so small and short that we weren't sure if we were really seeing them. Kendi was getting frustrated because she always missed them. As it got later and the the sky got darker and our eyes adjusted to the darkness we started seeing bigger and bigger meteors. Finally one was long enough that Kendi was able to catch it. We thought it was huge. Then all of a sudden we saw one blaze clear across the sky with a long exploding tail. I had never seen anything like it before and it felt like it was really close. A few minutes later we saw another that traveled just as far, but without the fiery tail. That made me want to go research the big one that we saw.
What I think we saw may have been a fireball meteorite. The websites that I read made it sound like these things are very rare, but I couldn't find any news reports about the one we saw. I wish I had gotten a picture of it, but I couldn't figure out how to take pictures of the night sky. I know, I'm lame. The pictures online of other fireballs don't do them any justice anyway. Apparently, on the same night, there was a minivan-sized fireball that landed over California. Yikes!
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