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   SUBJECT: LOOPING FIREBALL DAZZLES OBSERVES IN N. EAST        FILE: UFO1150   
      
      
   GLOBE, Boston, MA - Feb. 23, 1990   
      
      
   By Richard Saltus   
      GLOBE STAFF   
      
        Reports of a fireball that blazed through the skies over the Northeast on   
   Sunday, changing colors and even executing a fiery loop before vanishing, have   
   been filtering into local agencies, a Museum of Science official said   
   yesterday.   
      
        Observers from Novia Scotia to New Jersey reported the Scotia to New   
   Jersey   
   reported the spectacular fireball, which they said was visible for more than 10   
        seconds at 7:50 p.m. Sunday in the southeastern sky.  One witness on Cape   
   Cod "said it descended at an angle and changed from white to green to orange,   
   which is not unusual," said Walter Webb, assistant director of the museum's   
   Hayden Planetarium.   
      
        "It went into a cloud and lit it up like a sunset," Webb said the observer   
   reported.  "Then the thing went up vertical and came down again in a closed   
   loop, leaving a glowing trail behind it." Fireballs, which are not   
   uncommon, occur when a sizable fragment in space -usually an asteroid - is   
   captured by the Earth's gravity and is burned by the atmosphere.  If such a   
   fragment is consumed high in the atmosphere, it is called a meteor or "shooting   
   star."  If it is large enough to survive its ;ounge toward Earth and becomes   
   brighter than the planets in the sky, it is called a fireball.  The fiery   
   object   
   is called a meteorite when it is large enough to reach the Earth's surface.   
      
        Though they usually slice through the atmosphere on a straight path,   
   fireballs occasionally skip off layers of air like a stone on a lake, perhaps   
   the cause of the fireball's looping maneuver, Webb said.   
      
        Webb, who is collecting eyewitness descriptions, said reports came from at   
   least a dozen residents of Nantucket and Martha's Vineyard, plus the control   
   tower at Logan Airport and Coast Guard officials.   
      
        Webb has sent word of the sighting to the Scientific Event Alert Network   
   at   
   the Smithsonian Institution in Washington.  A spokeswoman theresaid the   
   nationwide network receives, on average, between 5 and 20 fireball sightings a   
   month.   
      
   =END=   
      
                    
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