Expert: Tom Whiting - 4/16/2006

Question
What did we see?
My description:
On April 14 at 9:00 pm CDT a dry, clear, warm evening in Northern Mexico at about 21° North Latitude and 101° West Longitude in the western sky, just past twilight, we observed at approximately 10 ° above the horizon >an arrowhead shaped, bright white light and tail, moving parallel to the horizon,  crossing the sky north to south at about the speed of an aircraft. We watched it for 40 to 60 seconds before it diminished and disappeared. It was brighter than any of the visible stars and brighter than an aircraft just to the south of it. The point or nose was ball shaped and denser and much brighter with the back area (tail) wider and flared. The tail was thinner - not as bright. The whole thing was approximately twice the size of the full moon and not quite as bright.

Husbands's description:
>a bright white light, brighter than any of the stars, but not a great deal so, at the head of what appeared to be a giant, pale arrowhead, a "V" on its side, its apex pointed south. The "arrowhead" was probably a couple of degrees in length. During the succeeding forty seconds or so, this phenomenon moved to the south at about the speed of an aircraft, easy to gauge because there was one moving in a similar direction not far behind it. As it moved to the south, the light at its head diminished, then disappeared. Some ten seconds or so later, the entire phenomenon disappeared.  

Answer
Hi Nichole,
Obviously a meteor...but perhaps more than a meteor....
for 40 seconds you may have seen a decaying artificial
satellite in a polar (north-south) orbit, as most real meteors don't last quite that long.  However, if it was a piece of space
junk (meteor)....that would have been classifed more a
"fireball" or bolide...if it was bright enough to "make the
newspapers" or the evening news.
In any case, it was something....satellite or meteor...that
was entering the Earth's atmosphere at a very slow,
shallow angle to last that long....in fact, it may have even
just ended it's flight by skipping off the top of the atmosphere as opposed to disintegrating completely....there is no way to tell.

{obviously not a comet because they drift leisurely  (1/2 degree per 24 hours, generally)
across our sky taking weeks to go from one end to the other...
recall Hale-Bopp was visible for several months}.
Fireballs are generally softball sized, and can last for up
to a minute, although 5-10 seconds is more typical.
(The typical meteor is just a grain of sand sized.)

And it was obviously at very high altitude...as you did not
report any "sonic boom" accompanying the event shortly
thereafter......so my educated guess is just a large,  slow moving meteor, or a decaying artificial satellite.
Hope all this helps,
Clear Skies,
Tom Whiting
Erie PA
Pres... Erie Co. Mobile Observers Group


FOLLOW UP:
Hi Nicole,
Thanks for the nice comments....it probably wasn't reported
because not very many people saw it, heading north to
south. You said it was near the end of your twilight, so any observer west of you, the sky would have been still too bright to make a good contrast, therefore the meteor would have appeared much dimmer,  the farther west the observer.

And observers to your east, the object being only 10 degrees high in the west, all the observers a few miles east of you,  the object would have been at, near, or even below their western horizon!  (Because of the curvature of the Earth).

So there is this very narrow band of land (of the object's visibility) running north-south from your location, perhaps only 30-50 miles wide, but hundreds of miles long, where observers, who would just happen to be looking westward, would be the only ones to witness that particular meteor at that particular time....

Also, that position puts you at or near Central Mexico,
near Leon, or San Miguel de Allende.....to be honest, most
Mexicans, unfortunately, with their economic situation as it is, are not much into the abstract  (and sometimes expensive) hobby of astronomy, thus they are not, as a general rule,
very much interested in the goings on in the night sky.....
too busy just trying to survive, I'd think, as a whole.

So as a result, consider yourselves very lucky to had been  able to see it at all.  It will probably be a long time before
you see another that will equal or surpass the one you saw...
as those kinds are a very rare sight.
Clear Skies,
Tom Whiting
Erie, PA USA