SUBJECT: LOOPING FIREBALL DAZZLES OBSERVES IN N. EAST FILE: UFO1150 GLOBE, Boston, MA - Feb. 23, 1990 By Richard Saltus GLOBE STAFF Reports of a fireball that blazed through the skies over the Northeast on Sunday, changing colors and even executing a fiery loop before vanishing, have been filtering into local agencies, a Museum of Science official said yesterday. Observers from Novia Scotia to New Jersey reported the Scotia to New Jersey reported the spectacular fireball, which they said was visible for more than 10 seconds at 7:50 p.m. Sunday in the southeastern sky. One witness on Cape Cod "said it descended at an angle and changed from white to green to orange, which is not unusual," said Walter Webb, assistant director of the museum's Hayden Planetarium. "It went into a cloud and lit it up like a sunset," Webb said the observer reported. "Then the thing went up vertical and came down again in a closed loop, leaving a glowing trail behind it." Fireballs, which are not uncommon, occur when a sizable fragment in space -usually an asteroid - is captured by the Earth's gravity and is burned by the atmosphere. If such a fragment is consumed high in the atmosphere, it is called a meteor or "shooting star." If it is large enough to survive its ;ounge toward Earth and becomes brighter than the planets in the sky, it is called a fireball. The fiery object is called a meteorite when it is large enough to reach the Earth's surface. Though they usually slice through the atmosphere on a straight path, fireballs occasionally skip off layers of air like a stone on a lake, perhaps the cause of the fireball's looping maneuver, Webb said. Webb, who is collecting eyewitness descriptions, said reports came from at least a dozen residents of Nantucket and Martha's Vineyard, plus the control tower at Logan Airport and Coast Guard officials. Webb has sent word of the sighting to the Scientific Event Alert Network at the Smithsonian Institution in Washington. A spokeswoman theresaid the nationwide network receives, on average, between 5 and 20 fireball sightings a month. =END= ********************************************** * THE U.F.O. BBS - http://www.ufobbs.com/ufo * **********************************************