Residents from across the Chilkat Valley and as far as Whitehorse reported witnessing a strange light in the early morning sky last Friday, Oct. 28.
The odd occurrence, which happened fast enough that if you blinked you might have missed it, was reported by several Haines residents at approximately 6:45 a.m.
Judy Jacobson first reported the event in the “Haines Chatters” Facebook group. “It seemed like it was lightning by the coloration. There was no sound, just a huge flash.”
Jacobson also wrote that “a friend in Port Protection on Prince of Wales Island also saw a light in the sky which knocked out all of their power.”
Jeff Garmin, a meteorologist with the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) in Anchorage, said “while no reports were made in the Anchorage area, it’s common that objects get briefly illuminated as they burn out in the upper atmosphere during this period of meteoric activity. However, what happened over Haines, we just don’t know.”
Residents in the U.S. Southwest the evening prior witnessed a bright meteor, also known as a “fireball” event, streak across the night sky. The moment was captured on video by residents throughout New Mexico, California, Nevada and Utah and provided to the American Meteor Society (AMS).
The first report of a fireball came Monday only 48 miles above the area of White Hills in northwestern Arizona, moving northwest at 30,500 miles per hour. The extraterrestrial activity is likely due to the Orionid meteor shower, according to AMS, which occurs when Earth passes through debris left behind by Halley’s Comet in late October.
“The object managed to survive traveling over 42 miles through the upper atmosphere before breaking up just 28 miles above Boulder City in southern Nevada. The meteor had two major fragmentation events, as the videos show two very bright flares near the end of its trajectory,” AMS said in a statement. “The fireball was brighter than the full moon, which means it was caused by an asteroidal fragment weighing at least 70 pounds and greater than a foot in diameter.”
The Taurids are an annual meteor shower and every year at about this time our planet passes through a cloud of debris associated with the comet Encke. It just so happens that roughly every seven years the earth travels through a particularly dense cloud of cosmic debris which produces an eerie shimmer of incandescence just in time for Halloween. The last time the earth traveled through the celestial hotspot was in 2015.
On any normal year sky watchers might be lucky to catch just one or two fireballs during the week’s long display, but with the two events occurring during the same time over the next few weeks means they might be able to glimpse several in a single hour, according to the American Meteor Society. The fireballs will cast an array of multi-colored luminescence for anyone looking skyward. For stargazers interested in catching a glimpse of the tandem meteor showers there’s still time. The light show can be seen until Nov. 22.