A meteor is typically a lump of
rock or
metal falling from
space into the upper
atmosphere.
If it makes it all the way to the ground it becomes known as a
meteorite. Thousands of them crash into
our skies each year, but most are not seen by people on the ground as they fall over uninhabited parts
of the planet or are too small to show up. They also tend to break up rather quickly, so you are
lucky to spot them. A person's best chance comes during a
predictable meteor shower, such as the
Leonids.
There was one night that I was fortunate enough to see a much larger and longer lived meteor from a French beach,
overlooking the Atlantic Ocean. The sight was so special to me that I took in a lot of detail and am now
able to describe to you those few seconds of it's flight.
The meteor appeared to my left, in my deep peripheral vision. At first it was just a yellow light that
travelled almost horizontally. It grew to an incredibly bright white in a second and
I turned to look at it, assuming it was a fighter jet flying low over the coast. As I focused on the
object it began to dim slightly and changed to a greener colour. Pieces of it broke off and
created a trail of smaller meteors in its wake. These sparkled and turned orange as they dimmed.
The main chunk started to dip towards the sea after maybe three seconds of my observation and the whole
shower darkened to a red as it disappeared into the haze of the horizon. It lasted a total of around six
seconds, but the memory will last forever.
Looking back on this sighting I have thought about how fast and how far away the meteor must have been. It's
not unreasonable to assume that it was travelling at around 50km per second on entry, so even allowing for
slowing it must have travelled around 250km by the time it completely broke up. I estimate the length of the
trail of visible debris was around 100km and that the whole thing occurred several hundred km away from me.