A year ago tonight, my wife and I witnessed a dazzling fireball here in Torrey. I posted a report here, and noted that a few in the SLC area had seen it heading this way. I've expanded on it a bit for a stargazing column I've been writing for our little local paper. I'll post it below, just for fun. I'd love to hear more from others who saw it. Insider Stargazing Tips Brilliant Utah fireball – October 2, 2014, revisited I’ve spent a lot of hours outside, on a lot of nights, over many years, looking at the sky at all hours of the night. Over those years I’ve seen hundreds, if not thousands of meteors. Some were bright and some were dim, but they’re always a joy to see. After I began collecting meteorites and learning more about them, the meteor sightings became even more enjoyable. There’s something fascinating about holding a piece of space in your hand. But as I read stories about fireball sightings, or sometimes watched online videos, I always felt a little envious. I needed to see one myself. Finally, on October 2 of last year, my time came. It was truly amazing! I shared it with friends at the time, but I wasn’t yet writing this column. So though my words cannot do it justice, I’ll attempt to recount the experience now - on its anniversary - so that you might envision the spectacular event. I had gotten up at 4:00 and was lying there, about to fall back to sleep, when my wife Karen started shouting “LOOK!” When I opened my eyes, the entire sky out our ample, northeast-facing windows was dazzling white! The pinon and juniper trees were lit up like it was noon. A moment later, a large, white, slow-moving fireball came into view at the top of our windows. I estimated it to be at least half the diameter of the moon and it had a long trail behind it. Karen described the tail as having an “electric blue-green tint”. It may have just looked white to me because my pupils hadn’t adjusted yet. Then it morphed into an orange fireball, with undulating flames trailing out perhaps 3 degrees (six full moon widths) behind it! A few small chunks fell from it, but for the most part, it remained intact until it cooled into dark flight, which means the atmospheric friction had slowed it down enough that it no longer glowed. The whole show lasted about 5 or 10 magical seconds, which will remain burned into my memory forever. I usually compare bright meteors to Venus, but this one was more like the sun! It was traveling from N/NW to E/SE and descending at about a 5 to 10 degree angle. It appeared to be right over the northern end of Capitol Reef N.P., but was probably much further away... possibly over toward Moab or even western Colorado. In fact, when I filed my report, I saw that a few people way over in central Colorado had seen it, too. A couple early morning astronomers in Salt Lake City reported seeing it heading our way. And I did hear from a couple other local residents who also witnessed the spectacle, but would love to know if anyone in Hanksville did. Or Bluff, Blanding, and so on. One thing that really amazes me is this: the farther away it actually was, the more massive it must have been to appear so large from here! Most ‘shooting stars’ we see are only the size of a grain of sand, or perhaps a pea, and they burn up long before they could ever reach the ground. Not this one! It took quite a while for us to calm down enough to get back to sleep. Early in the morning, I wrote up the story and posted it to meteorite and astronomy forums. I hoped that some of my meteorite hunting friends would spring into action and start tracking it down. But another fireball in northern Arizona – visible in mid-day – was reported that afternoon, and all the attention turned to it. So somewhere out there, in the southeast corner of Utah by my reckoning, lies one or more rocks from space, still waiting to be found.

My husband and I were observing from a tucked away spot at Capitol Reef NP (we were going to go to Panorama Point, but boy was it crowded! good to see lots of eclipse watchers, though). I also noticed the moon was particularly dark. Even with basically no light pollution, I had to use averted vision to see much detail on the face of the moon during much of totality, and even then I could barely make out the maria. We pondered this quite a bit along with the placement on the moon's limb of both the last and first light. The 'extreme' darkening makes it seem like the middle of Earth's shadow must have passed over the moon, but the fact that the last light was at lower right and first at lower right indicates it was more the bottom of Earth's shadow. Maybe it's just that the other lunar eclipses I've seen weren't as total as this one, but I agree it really darkened the moon a lot! Anyone know why? k ​

And a big thank you to our hosts, Harmons. In addition to dedicating a huge portion of their parking lot to the event they kept the food and drink coming throughout the evening. I don't know that we've ever been treated better at a Harmons. And a plus that the skies there, while obviously not SPOC-like, were much darker than I expected. Maybe if we need to move from Wheeler some day, the Draper Harmons might be a good in-town "dark" location. patrick On 28 Sep 2015, at 11:52, Joan Carman <jcarman6@q.com> wrote:

I was at the lunar eclipse watch at Harmon's in Draper with SLAS and 500-1000 of SLAS's closest friends. Truly a highlight was to watch the moon rise over the mountains in partial eclipse. "A first quarter moon in the east." Totally agree with Chuck, it was much darker than expected. Mentioned that to many people within earshot of my scope. Looking through a C-8 during early totality, no features on the lunar surface were visible. About 15 minutes into totality, features started to appear, but were darker than expected. Wonder how much atmosphere we were looking through made a difference. About 15 minutes into totality some features did appear. Hooked up my camera to the scope and struggled to find focus. Nothing to key into except the lunar edge. There was a hint of color to the unaided eye and photos taken by a variety of people show an orange to reddish hue. Certainly not the blood moon (except one photo Ryan has used on the SLAS facebook page, pretty thin blood on that one, but definitely red). About mid totality cirrus clouds moved it and almost obliterated the moon entirely, but they didn't last. SLC lucked out and got a visual treat last night.

Wall Street Journal has a 60 second video of the eclipse. Nicely put together.

http://www.wsj.com/video/rare-supermoon-lunar-eclipse-in-60-seconds/23E3E4BD...

for those of you, like Dave :( who missed it.