2005-03-30 - San Francisco, CA - Teardrop

A very bright shooting star-like event over San Francisco.

Just last nite coming back from the airport (driving north on I 280 approaching SF ) my friend and I witnessed a possible meteor spectacle. I say 'apparent' because it wasn't anything to compare with a normal shooting star. It was about 30 to 40 times as large and bright as a typical shooting star.

I'd estimate it would have been the size of a dime at arms length approximately. Put another way, appx. 1/3 to 1/2 the size of a full moon. Appx. teardrop shaped. It was glowing/burning extremely bright white similar to a shooting star but didn't seem to flash out, but more specifically kept going and going until it went out of view below the horizon.

But it appeared as if it was a near object. So, if it was at the upper area of the atmosphere, stratosphere, or whatever, it might have been a rather huge object. It was not however, bright enough to have brightened the nite sky as lightning would have for instance, but unlike a normal shooting star it would have gotten anyone's attention who was even generally looking in that direction at that time. (10:28 PM wednesday nite) There was no fracturing or breaking apart of the object. It appeared to maintian its approximate shape for the 4 seconds or so duration of its visibility. It did however, seem to have the characteristic incendiary burning brightness similar to a meteor's in that the intensity of its brightness did tend to be focused in its center and emanating outwardly towards its edges. No smoke trail or smear effect tail was noticed.

My friend, who had never seen anything this profound was quite amazed by its size and brightness as was I as well. I called it in to the local news radio station and 3 TV stations, none of them suggesting they'd heard any similar reports at the time. These calls that I made to the media were appx. a half hour after having witnessed the sighting.