1979-01-15 - Los Angeles, CA - Fireball

Fireball passing through outer atmosphere about sunset.

At about sunset I was doing something in my house when my next door neighbor began shouting "Bob! Bob! Get out here right now, you have to see this!" I lagged in answering about five seconds and he repeated with great urgency. I ran out just in time to see half the event remaining. It was a very bright object passing through the outer atmosphere, at very high speed, going perhaps southeast to west. Whatever it was had two sets of streamers coming off it, one was a series of superheated lines of atmosphere or perhaps particles, which streamers looked very much in configuration like the lines coming off a plastic badminton birdie. The second was a SHOCK WAVE perhaps fifty miles in FRONT of the object, of super compressed air which also was forming streamers, but of a much larger diameter, like pushing a large flat serving bowl. The intensity of the object did not diminish, and it passed right on through the atmosphere and out again, into space. I checked the news and a few other sources but I never heard of anyone else seeing this object, which was either an off course spacecraft (which someone must have caught hell for), or simply a large meteor. This was probably 1978 or 1979 winter, probably January.