Fireball/meteor over West Coast

[maddog]

Turtle,

Where in the sky did you see this fireball come in, from the ocean to over Portland or the reverse ?

Maddog

[Turtle]

___The reverse. Here was my circumstance. From my second story West facing open window atop a 300' hill of Missoula flood deposits in Vancouver Washington. In the open window, my video camera, trained on the Moon/Mercury pair which lay directly West & inclined at approx 50 degrees from the horizon. The camera feeds to my little TV/VCR & I lay on a couch watching on TV Moon/Mercury; every 5 or so minutes I would get up & adjust the camera to keep the pair in view(I was zoomed in so that the Moon filled about 1/5 the screen).
___So, as I lay there watching the TV, out the open window I saw coming into view at the left edge of the window. the fireball. It's primary apparent motion to me, was left to right, and it secondarily appeared to be moving away, as well as dropping. I jumped up & ran over to stick my head out the window & follow it 'till it disappeared over the West Hills of Portland. It appeared fairly low to the horizon, a good 20 to 30 degrees lower than the elevation of Moon/Mercury.
___It lasted no more than 5 seconds, & what the one video extant does not show is the showering of sparks & intense green color (others are reporting seeing green as well). I really knew I had no chance to use the camers as it moved too fast, so I didn't even try.
___On a side note, over the 2 hours I taped of the Moon/Mercury conjunction, you could actually see Mercury taking a slight lead over Luna in the race to the horizon. Astronomy is 'da best!