Left by a Fireball ᐉ

Timelapse video: Left by a super bright meteor (a fireball), ionized gas in our atmosphere still glowing hot after the meteoroid object entered the atmosphere. The sequence shows how the “persistent meteor train” scatter in the sky. While meteor trains generally last for seconds or few minutes, this was visible to unaided eyes for over half an hour, and detectable by the camera for about an hour. See still photos of the beginning and end of the video. Read more about this on Phil Plait Bad Astronomy page. The scene is captured in the early morning of 2012 October 19 during the Orionid meteor shower, from a lake in northern Maine, USA.

It was one of the brightest meteors I have seen in my life, stargazing hundreds of nights around the world. Shooting another direction my camera didn’t catch the fireball with its full moon glory but I quickly pointed the camera to the glowing smoke left from the meteor in the constellation Ursa Major (Big Bear) top capture the dynamic of the fading meteor train. The cloud expands and moves away during the several minutes of continuous shots because of high altitude winds. The dark starry lake is West Branch Pond Camps in northern Maine, USA.