Anchorage Daily News

Maybe you're one of the lucky ones and have already seen it. But if not, you still may have a chance to catch a spectacular sky show that is coming to us this month courtesy of Earth's passage through the remnants of a comet.

Fireballs and bright streaks of light seen in the sky to the north, south and west of Anchorage on Thursday evening were evidently part of the Taurid meteor shower, the annual spray of comet dust over the Earth's upper atmosphere at this time of year, according to a University of Alaska Fairbanks scientist.

Alisha Klingenmeyer of Anchorage recalled driving north on Minnesota Drive about 8 p.m. Thursday when something out the windshield got her attention.

"I see an orange-ish, reddish fireball going across the sky, super fast, and it's going down, and I thought: 'Oh my God! Is that an airplane crashing?'?" Klingenmeyer said Friday. "... I thought my mind was playing tricks on me. This had tons of color, and it was bright."

Ruth Lavrakas of Anchorage saw a streak low in the southeast as she and a friend walked beside Westchester Lagoon about 6:45 p.m.

"We were just walking along gabbing and kind of simultaneously we both saw it and both pointed, and it was a ball, a perfectly circular ball of light, and it was a bluish-green, and it had a huge tail, and it looked kind of like (the comet) Hale-Bopp, but up close," Lavrakas recalled.

Paul Vos was watching a movie with his wife and son at their home in Hope about 8:30 p.m. when all three saw a flash through their living-room window, an arc of light over the mountains in the southern sky.

"It had a real long tail, kind of a silvery white, and from a real perspective it was about the size of a large softball or basketball or soccer ball," Vos said. "It was not super fast, but it was fast, moving about 30 degrees above the horizon."

In each case, the streak moved east to west and lasted no more than five seconds, the witnesses said.

Gordon Edmiston, a supervisor at the Anchorage Air Route Traffic Control Center, was at work Thursday evening when three people called his windowless office to say they'd seen unusual flashes in the sky.

Their reports included a streak to the north that appeared to be over Talkeetna, a "ball of fire" over Homer and "meteor showers west of the airport," Edmiston said.

Residents of Fairbanks also saw the meteors, said Neal Brown, director of the Alaska Space Grant Program, an educational organization.

Meteor showers -- more commonly but erroneously called "shooting stars" -- occur when Earth's atmosphere collides with space debris, according to the National Aeronautics and Space Administration.

Often, it's debris that has come loose from a comet's body after some of the comet's ice has evaporated during its passage around the sun, said John Chappelow, a post-doctoral researcher at the University of Alaska Fairbanks' Geophysical Institute.

The dust particles are usually tiny, sometimes microscopic, although they can be the size of large rocks. But the collision occurs at 65,000 mph, NASA says. No matter the particle size, the resulting chemical reaction produces a blaze of light and sometimes vivid color -- the meteor.

As anyone who watches the night sky knows, meteor displays are fairly common. Some meteor showers occur so regularly they have names -- Taurids, Leonids and Perseids -- which reflect the constellations from which the showers appear to emerge.

The Perseids occur in July and August, the Leonids in the second half of November and the Taurids in late October and early November. Each event stems from the debris left by a particular comet. In the case of the Taurids, the comet is Encke, discovered in 1786.

This year's Taurids, whose weeklong peak of meteor activity NASA said would start today, were expected to be brighter and more frequent than usual, Chappelow said.

"We're running through the (comet's) orbit, which is like a flow, an orbiting ellipse of debris, and we're passing through an especially dense knot of this stuff," he said. "And the Taurids are known to supply generally larger objects ... the size of marbles, or gravel."

The meteors sometimes seem to be very low in the sky, appearing almost as if they can be touched. Lavrakas thought the object she and her friend saw was about the size of her fist and no higher than 75-100 feet off the ground.

But they are not at all low, Chappelow said. The objects are dozens of miles up.

"If it's still hot enough to emit light, it's still pretty high," he said. "It would have to be basketball size to get anywhere near the surface."

Thursday evening's meteor intensity may occur again in coming days, Chappelow said.

"I'd say that people's chances of seeing bright objects in the next few days are excellent," he said.

The better viewing is generally after midnight, and the best time is in the vicinity of 3 a.m., said Don Martins, chair of the UAA Department of Physics and Astronomy.

Meanwhile, the National Weather Service predicts clear skies and generally good viewing for the next two nights.

Daily News reporter Peter Porco can be reached at pporco@adn.com or 257-4582.