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When I was about 10 years old 1983 (+/- 2 years) I was 'camping' in my backyard with a friend. While we were running around in the dark we saw an asteroid boun
by UI_at_80x24 4y ago
When I was about 10 years old 1983 (+/- 2 years) I was 'camping' in my backyard with a friend. While we were running around in the dark we saw an asteroid bounce off the atmosphere and either enter below my visual horizon or pass by the earth.
It was about the size golfball/chicken egg held at arms length. I was facing East-South-East (approximately).
It was a bright red, and I could see impact craters on the surface of it. There were no 'flames/fireballs' from orbital entry friction.
The entire incident lasted less then 10 seconds (but this is very much a guess, and impacted by the time-frames involved).
- rpledge 4y agoThere's no way you saw any impact craters on an asteroid naked eye. You have a false memory
- lamacase 4y agoA golf ball is around 4cm, and an arm's length is around 70cm. To be the same apparent size, it would have to maintain that same ratio. The atmosphere is like 50-100km thick (highest weather balloon flight was >50km) so you would have to be seeing it at a further distance than that. So your asteroid would have to be at least several kilometers across. That approaching dino-killer size. You're definitely misremembering some part of this.
- wrycoder 4y agoIt's not impossible. How closely were we tracking 3 km objects in 1983?
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- zardo 4y agoThe US and USSR were looking very closely for much smaller objects leaving and entering the atmosphere.
- wrycoder 4y agoTrue, but are they finding them - especially the ones on the sun side of our orbit? Remember, this one was found by an amateur. Now, NASA is claiming authority for it.
- psychphysic 4y agoRare instance where this story would be more believable if you'd said it was a alien space ship.