Sky puts on a loud light show

Blue-green glow and booming noises are thought to be from a meteor

August 17, 2004|By M. Daniel Gibbard, Tribune staff reporter.

An object believed to be a meteor brought a fireworks show to the area early Monday, lighting the night and causing sonic booms that had some people marveling over the wonders of nature and others scrambling to call 911.

The bright lights and noise arrived just after 1 a.m. and were especially prominent in the west and northwest parts of Chicago and the suburbs, police said.

Meteor showers are common, especially during the annual Perseid showers this month, but this was different, experts said.

"Any time you hear a meteor, it's rare because that typically means the meteor didn't disintegrate until it got close to the ground," said Bart Benjamin, director of the Cernan Earth and Space Center at Triton College in River Grove. "It has to penetrate very deeply into the atmosphere."

In Buffalo Grove, Gary Franchi Jr., 27, was hanging out with friends in his back yard in the 100 block of Forest Place when something streaked across the sky, bathing everything in blue-green light.

"I've seen shooting stars before, but this was something else," Franchi said. "It was amazing. It lit up the entire back yard."

The fireball broke into three pieces and flamed out, he said. Shortly afterward, there were several loud booms.

"It was distinct. It was very deep, like a bass," he said.

Don Kunde of Northbrook was stargazing in his back yard when he saw it.

"This thing was huge. I thought it was a plane on fire for a second," he said. "It was hundreds of times the size of a shooting star."

The sound and light brought calls to 911, said Penny Mateck, a spokeswoman for Cook County sheriff's police.

Calls came from Leyden, Norwood and Elk Grove Townships, she said.

Norridge police also received calls, said Chief Charles Ghiloni.

"We responded with squad cars and ambulances, but there was nothing located," Ghiloni said.

Monday's meteor event was no match for one that hit the south suburbs in March 2003, but it is relatively rare to have two so visible incidents in a short period of time, said Mark Hammergren, an astronomer at the Adler Planetarium.

"From any one location you might expect something this bright every few years, maybe every five or 10 years," he said.

In the 2003 incident, the sky blazed with light seen from Wisconsin to Ohio when a large meteor hit the atmosphere and exploded.

Chunks of space rock rained down on Park Forest and Olympia Fields, knocking holes in roofs and leaving chunks of ancient debris for collectors to pick up. Some of the meteorites weighed several pounds, and one is on display at the planetarium.

Those finds, too, are rare, Hammergren said, and it could be why astronomers have not heard any reports of specimens this time.

"Most often, the object coming in burns up," he said.

Also, from the reports the planetarium received of the meteor's position, it is quite possible that any rock that survived would have ended up in Lake Michigan, he said.

Without physical evidence, it can be hard to tell exactly what people saw, but astronomers have received numerous calls and e-mails about lights and noise in the early morning, so they are fairly certain it was a meteor, he said.

The reports of loud noises also point toward the heavens.

"If there were sonic booms, that's a good sign there were meteorites dropped," Hammergren said.

There is also the chance that the object was not a rock but a piece of space junk, Benjamin said.

"[We have had] no reports of anything we know of falling to the ground, but there's lots of pieces of spacecraft up there, and not all of them are American," he said.

In Waukegan, authorities had a more earthly explanation for some bright lights residents reported overnight.

"We think it has something to do with the Batman movie that's being filmed downtown," said Cmdr. Dan Greathouse.