It's funny that this might be a common factor for being outside late, but for the years I did smoke, I smoked only outside. I also worked a late shift and bedtime for me was between 3 and 5 am for several years. I saw flashes of light like this out west, and sometimes to the NNE, but had attributed them to either lightning (only happened on clear nights, but it was the best explanation) or perhaps even to nighttime military testing of some sort. Honestly I never gave it much though, although sometimes these flashes seemed bright enough to originate from the sky closer than "the distant horizon", and once or twice even startled me. I can recall twice that I was in company when a flash would occur, and I had not be the first to comment on the occurrence. On the subject of gamma ray detectors, I thought that the "shower" the incidents cause (that the detectors are looking for) could sometimes be detected in the visible range. Is this not the case? Kris Jones

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sbaron@fox13.com 1/19/2003 11:31:57 AM >>> Hi everyone! As Patrick said, I've been lurking here for a long while, but I just had to send this email to the list...

It came from a viewer on Saturday morning, and I'm just curious to see what everyone here makes of it! I'll withhold comment for now... Thanks, Steve Baron Meteorologist FOX 13 News Utah ----message begins here--- Dear Fox Weather Team: I apologize first off, if the subject of my email is not a subject that would be of interest, and if my emailing you is inappropriate. I have to believe that there must have been someone else (other than myself and those who I awoke the first time I witnessed these astronomical occurrences) that might have seen if not both occurrences then at least the most recent. I have written to you in hopes that others may have done so also, and in hopes that someone else may have emailed or contacted you regarding the occurences as described below: This morning at approximately 2 am, I think that I may have seen a "firework show" resultant from cosmic or gamma rays, but I really don't now what the cause was. I am not too familiar with meteorology or astronomy; I hadn't even heard of gamma or cosmic rays before I started doing some online investigating today after witnessing what I did this morning. This is the second time in my lifetime that I have seen such a magnificent, yet unsettling, phenomenon. The first time I experienced these grand light bursts in the sky was in late summer of 2002. My first experience was at approximately 11pm in late summer 2002 (I regret, that I did not record the date and more details.) I am a tobacco smoker and do not smoke in my home. As a result one night I was on the front porch with a great view of the Eastern horizon. Out of nowhere came three, almost simultaneous light bursts, blue in color but almost white. They were huge in appearance (quiet possibly larger than my brain could interpret what my eyes had seen.) Then before I could recover from the shock of this experience, another occurred. The first three appeared to be occurring below the horizon; and appeared to be perfectly round in shape; however I could only see the top three-fourths of the circular occurrences due to the tree line in the park across the street from my home. Then a few minutes later (after I had awoken my family and a few neighbors; partially out of panic and partially because I did not want to be the only one to witness these occurrences, but also to make sure that I wasn't seeing things.) As my family and I were walking out the front door everyone was complaining that I needed more sleep and another occurrence happened. It was astonishing! This one was also below the horizon but fully above the tree line and appeared to be perfectly round and third dimensional. We sat outside for another hour and witnessed a total of six occurrences aside from the four that I witnessed myself. It was amazing. None of us could believe what we had seen. Then this morning, I was looking to the North horizon, towards downtown Salt Lake City, Utah and all of a sudden...blam!...blam!...! I see two light explosions of the same nature that I had seen the previous year. However, these ones were different. They were green almost white in color. And they were not circular, but elliptecal and they lit up the entire Northern horizon from about Big Cottonwood Canyon to the hills just east of the SLC International Airport. They happened within less than a second of each other. It was so bright that it lit up the downtown area quite well (well enough to see detailed buildings) as well as the foothills North of town. It again was amazing yet at the same time, I felt uneasy and scared about these occurrences. I was the only one to see them in my household, and there were only two that I saw that morning. It was this mornings (yesterdays as that it is now 12:02 am on 1/18/03) occurrences that excited and scared me to want to do an online search to see if I could find record of occurrences of this nature anywhere. In my search, I came across an article about an observatory in Argentina studying cosmic rays. From there I continued my search and came across a website, the Pierre Auger Project website, http://www.auger.org/contacts.html . Both times that these occurrences happened the weather was perfectly clear in Salt Lake (and most of Northern Utah), not a cloud in sight. My first thoughts were that I must be catching a view of a really abstract meteor shower, but I have seen meteor showers before and that explanation didn't sit right with me. My second thought was the phenomenon (and forgive me for not knowing the technical term) of balls of lightning; really big ones. But these occurrences that I witnessed (although almost instantly) started out as small dots in the sky and grew with a perfect and outward proportion. Imagine the animations or special effects in movies that illustrate a supernova or nuclear blast; it was kind of like that. I suppose it also could have been some type of real fireworks show, but I hadn't heard of and cannot imagine that there was any legal firework shows going on those nights. Or maybe it is caused by a comet, supernova, solar flares maybeI really dont know. Do you think that I might have witnessed cosmic rays, gamma ray bursts, or some apparition caused by cosmic rays? Has anything like what I've described to you ever been caught on film that you or maybe one of your colleagues may know of? If these occurrences are not or are not a result of cosmic rays, do you have any idea what I might have seen or where I could find out more about them? Thank you for taking the time to read my email, and certainly a forethought of thanks for any assistance that you can offer in regard to the subject of my email. Sincerely, C##### H####### ---message ends here--- _____________________________________________________________ KSTU/FOX 13 http://www.fox13.com _____________________________________________________________ Select your own custom email address for FREE! Get you@yourchoice.com w/No Ads, 6MB, POP & more! http://www.everyone.net/selectmail?campaign=tag _______________________________________________ Utah-Astronomy mailing list Utah-Astronomy@mailman.xmission.com http://mailman.xmission.com/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/utah-astronomy