amazing meteor.

Earlier tonight, I made some regular astronomy observations but first, I must tell you about this crazy thing that I saw! Between 11 and 11:15pm, I was driving west on Lake Michigan Drive heading back to my apartment for the night. All of the sudden, I saw this huge fiery orange thing burst into view and go shooting across the sky at an azimuth of about 285 degrees, about 45 degrees above the horizon. It moved at a moderate speed for several seconds before disappearing from sight. It was alarming, I literally yelled "Oh my gosh!" while alone in my car and my jaw completely dropped. I've been researching since I got home to figure out what exactly I saw, but to no avail. I've seen little shooting stars before, and this was nothing like anything I have ever seen. It totally freaked me out! I'm still completely puzzled and have no idea what I saw. It was massive compared to meteor showers and other things I've witnessed and seen videos of... this mystery thing appeared the same size as the moon if I had to guess. I'm stumped. I don't know what it was. Did anyone else see this? Does anyone else have an idea what it might have been?

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UPDATE: With the help of the news and my classmates, I determined that the fiery ball I saw shooting through the sky was in fact a meteor. Wow!!! I've never seen any meteor like it before, so I'm thrilled that I just happened to be driving and get to catch this magnificent event. Definitely a very cool thing to witness.

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Tonight, at around 9:30pm, I got a text from one of my lovely astronomy classmates (Emily Balcer) telling me to look west! So, I went out on my balcony, looked west, and saw a planet! I believe it was Mercury. It was at an azimuth of about 275 degrees, and about 25 degrees up in the sky. It appeared to be glowing orange.

While out there, I did some stargazing. I saw Orion at about 225 degrees azimuth, and it was around 40 degrees above the horizon. I could see the two bright colored stars in Orion, something I've never really noticed before. Red Betelgeuse and blue Rigel both stood out to me after our lesson on stars last week in class. While I wasn't able to take a picture myself, I'm including one anyway to show this constellation.



I could also see Canis Major, which stuck out to me because of the bright star Sirius. Canis Major had an azimuth of around 210 degrees and was only about 20 degrees in altitude. Again, I couldn't take a picture but here's one anyway...