1980-07-01 - Gravenhurst, ON - Circle

Round fire ball just over the top of the treeline

My family and I were recently discussing the amazing occurrence we were lucky enough to witness back in the summer of approx. 1980 or 1981.

Me, dad and my sister were stargazing one Saturday night on a clear evening. We witnessed about 10 satellites, 10 shooting stars and something even more amazing…

After about a half hr up on the rock, I noticed a huge ball of fire about 100 metres to the left of us, which was about 100 metres over the top of the tree line.

I started to scream and we were all in awe at what we were witnessing. It was a round fire ball about 40 feet wide with a tail of fire following it. It was travelling about 20 kms an hour and crossed Muldrew Lake within about a minute or so.

As it reached the opposite side of the lake it disappeared behind the tree line and headed towards Loon/Turtle Lakes.

We yelled at mom to come up and see it, but she had no idea what we were yelling about as she was watching tv downstairs...

I was so intrigued to know what this was as it was obviously under control and I thought it might be a satellite of some sort that caught on fire as it entered the atmosphere, and then somehow headed in its bizarre trajectory. Mom and dad listened to the radio that night and had heard that it might be a Russian rocket, so we left it at that..

I also recall vividly a week later that mom had called our friend who was on the next lake over to see if she had seen it as well. Sure enough she had. She was in the park in Gravenhurst with a bunch of people for a concert and she was the one to yell out, "What is that?" She described the exact same thing we saw…a round ball of fire with a fire tail flowing from it.

I would love to know if this was a satellite or not. How can I find out what it was?