Meteors, fireball seen in region’s skies

Several meteors, including one described as a fireball, graced the region's skies Monday night.

Russ Baldwin, 57, of Henrico County was driving north on U.S. 1 just south of Ashland when a light shot across the sky, headed east, about 6:40 p.m.

"I saw a big fireball with a little tail of flame," said Baldwin, a computer programmer who was with his son Scott, 13. "As it passed over, there was a sudden flash, and it just disappeared."

About the same time, Frederick Kraft of Mechanicsville happened to look out his window when a white light slanted down across the sky. "I've seen a lot of meteors, and I'm sure that's what it was," said Kraft, 85, a retired teacher. "This was very bright, very bright."

It lasted about two seconds, he said.

Later that night, a Richmond Times-Dispatch reporter walking in the Fan District saw a shooting star -- a less-bright meteor -- that lasted about two seconds. And Kathy Moore, a dispatcher at the Powhatan County Sheriff's Office, saw a meteor shower in the eastern sky from her farm on the Powhatan-Cumberland county border.

"It looked like falling stars," she said. "It was beautiful."

Meteors are bits of space rock or gravel that burn and create light when they hit the atmosphere.

There was no significant meteor shower going on Monday, said Geoff Chester, an astronomer and public affairs officer with the U.S. Naval Observatory in Washington. But a person watching a dark sky can see four or five meteors an hour on an average night, he said.

Really bright meteors, commonly called fireballs, are less common but not rare, Chester said.

For Baldwin, that one second of excitement was rare enough. "It was just awesome. It was a once-in-a-lifetime experience."

Contact Rex Springston at (804) 649-6453 or .

Staff writer Christopher I. Young contributed to this report.