2011-08-12 - Stonelick Park, OH - Fireball

There are definite lantern-like air-floating fireworks out there this year.

I witnessed 2 glowing red lanterns that were released into the air by other people while I was looking for meteors alone on Friday night at Stonelick Park here in Ohio. They seemed to be light red paper with some sort of wire framework which gave the object shape and held an open fire propulsion source at the bottom (sort of like on that episode of Macgyver). 2 of the objects were released a minute or so apart and followed almost the exact same path in line with the wind. They kind of caught me by surprise and I neglected to watch the entire trajectory of the lanterns and didn't see what happened once they burnt out or how high they were at their apex. I didn't want to miss meteors by watching the fireworks! I witnessed a line of 4 or 5 objects/fireballs of what I assume to be the same sort of firework while I was at a local park in Cincinnati(no firework display in the park itself that evening) on July 4th though they were more distant. Those were lights/fireballs that just kind of burnt out after a few minutes after a slow ascension in the air on roughly the same path. While I haven't read all the reports, I think a lot of people could be seeing these things on part of their trajectory and just don't realize they're new fireworks. I made a report on July 3rd last year, and while I still think that report could be something else, it also could have been something similar to these lanterns seen at an odd angle. I think the whole point of the firework is just to launch something glowing into the air and see how far it goes before it burns out. At a distance, it's kind of like a slow orange-yellow roman candle (but just one) with no smoke trail that just glides through the a! ir.