Two Large Parallel Luminescent Bar Shapes Visible For Nearly Ten Minutes In West-Central South Carolina
Photographed from Aiken, South Carolina (a few miles east of Augusta, Georgia) on November 15, 2008. Object(s) were visible from at least 5:45 PM to about 5:55 PM EST.
This report is derived from an article that ran in the November 23, 2008 (Sunday) edition of the Augusta (GA) Chronicle. It appeared in the newspaper’s ‘CAROLINA CHRONICLE’ section, delivered to an Aiken, SC address.
The article is headlined ‘Look, up in the sky’, with a subhead ‘Aiken teen shoots photo of meteor’. The article is centered on the section’s front page and consists of a single column of about 8 inches of text to the left of a photo measuring 4 7/8” by 8 ¼”.
The lower 1 inch or so of the photograph showed a dark, uneven treeline. In the tan sky, about an inch from the top edge, are two bright orange-white parallel vertical lines, not starkly linear but more ‘cursive’. They are both surrounded on their mutual exteriors by a reddish glow. In the photograph they are both 3/8” long. They are angled from the photographer’s location, slightly to the left for the lower and slightly to the right for the upper.
In this area trees can grow very tall. Even a cursory glance at this photo indicates a large object(s) in the early evening sky. I have attached a full-sized cropping of the object(s) with this report.
The sighting occurred a few miles from the Savannah River Site, which produced 90% of the radioactive components used in the US’s nuclear weapons arsenal.
The Aiken-Augusta area is a very, very conservative area. Not in a neo-con way, but in a snake-handling way. That is, if it can’t be mentioned in the Baptist churches, it is taboo. So, this unexplainable daylight aerial event has been labeled “a bolide” by the admittedly Hard-Right-Wing Augusta Chronicle. I have read this newspaper since the 1960’s. It has improved considerably since 2001. Even though it often runs ‘Yesterday’s News’ (yes, literately, articles from the previous day, especially national and international news stories), this event did not rate even one drop of ink from the Aiken (SC) Standard daily newspaper. This event was reported by a witness in Aiken, SC.
What follows are excerpts from the Augusta Chronicle article of 2008-11-23, directly in quotations and summarizations not in quotes. The article is used under the Fair Use Doctrine, 100 words or less:
“AIKEN – About a week ago, an
Aiken teen witnessed a spectacular
event – an unidentified object blazing
toward Earth.
Thinking he might be seeing the space
shuttle Endeavor’s fuel tank burning up
in the atmosphere, a 17-year-old name
withheld snapped a few pictures as he
stood in the yard of his home.
“It was visible for a good while –
10 minutes or so – and finally disappeared
off into the distance,” the high school senior
said in an e-mail. “I was able to take
pictures and sent them to a friend . . .””
The friend, highly educated and knowledge-
able of astronomy, “told {the teen} that the object
in the pictures was most likely a bright meteor;
typically called a bolide. Bolides occur anytime a
large meteor hits Earth’s atmosphere.
“Most bolides last only a few seconds” he
said. “Some do last for up to five or six
minutes, but 10 minutes is very rare.””
He also said “It was exciting you were able
to see this. It is even more exciting that you were
able to capture it with a camera.”
“The bolide sighting was not the first in
the Aiken area.
{The astronomer} “said that about 2 or 3 years
ago, almost to the day, there was a sighting.”
“I remember it because it was a few days
before a meteor shower”, referring to the annual
Leonid meteor shower of mid-November.
The astronomer said meteor showers generally
are due to very fine-sized comet dust, and usually
don’t produce the brightest bolides. He speculated
that a few large comet fragments may be in the orbit
of Comet Tempel-Tuttle.
End of article.
The photo is somewhat similar to 2 photos submitted to Mufon about a week ago from Great Britain. It was Case #15454. Those photos were labeled by the submitter ‘Points of Light’ and ‘Bolides’.
Personally, for this object, or objects, to be as large as they obviously were, and remain airborne for 10 minutes, does not indicate space rocks. If they were part of a meteor, they would have to have hit the atmosphere at exactly the correct angle to 1) partially burn in the atmosphere, as it or they were clearly luminous, and 2) not fall to the surface within a 10 minute time span.
I don’t know what it or they were, but I doubt they were space rocks.
Something described as a bolide flew to the northwest over Charlotte, NC on the evening of January 24, 2007.
"A blue-green light with a white tail" was visible in an area of 100 miles around Charlotte from before 8:00 PM until after 8:30 PM that night. There were many eyewitnesses and many calls were made to various 911 dispatch desks. The object was described as a "slow-moving bluish glow", "a large, bright green ball", and "a bright blue-green ball with a white tail". A photo showed a white-ish area inside of a blueish-green glob at least as big as a thumb at arm's length. One family in the Charlotte suburbs described it as "a greenish-like light low in the sky. We thought a small plane or helicopter was going to crash."
Several witnesses thought it was a plane in trouble. Others noted that it was moving too slow to be a plane.
One eyewitness had time to go back inside his house, find his camera, and return to shoot photos of it from his backyard.
An astronomer from western North Carolina believed it was an unusually bright meteor that burned up some 30 miles high in the atmosphere somewhere over Charlotte. Well, if it was 30 miles high, it was a very, very large object.
The Charlotte Observer news organization reported that "Many witnesses say the light appeared to fizzle at the end and break into pieces, making it a special kind of fireball called a bolide. In the universe of meteors, they're A-List entertainers, known for their splashy finales."
From the trail of reported sightings, this object flew from the southeast over Charlotte and travelled northwest into rural areas. I guess we'll have to take the Observer's word that "many witnesses" saw the object "break into pieces" well after dark on a January night.
To me, this sighting is Unexplained. You have seen the fireball that fell in Austin, Texas, a couple of Sundays ago, on February 15, 2009? That flaming and smoking piece of rock was 'a bolide'. And it came down like a rock. It appears in the film for just a few seconds. What about the meteor fall recorded on the Alberta, Canada police camera a few months ago? It certainly lite up the sky. But it fell even quicker than the Austin fireball.
The object over Charlotte was visible for more than 30 minutes over an area of at least 200 miles across. It was reported to have been low and slow. To the best of my knowledge, no sounds were reported from the object. I doubt it was 'a bolide.'
About deception of a different kind: http://GrindUpTheGOP.blogspot.com it's a ha ha
We don't know one-millionth of 1% about anything. Thomas Edison
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