I WAS lying on our living room sofa last night at about 11 p.m., reclining full-length on the couch and facing the front windows, which look out through tulip poplar trees and over a hill. I have been recovering from a shoulder injury and have been unable to sleep in bed because it is too painful. I was planning to stay in that spot for the night. In the distance, I could see the twinkling lights of the local mall. The retail behemoth was also in a state of quasi-slumber. The mall never really sleeps but it does rest, with its doors locked, its retail clerks dispersed along the highways and byways, its vast continent-sized parking lots empty of cars.

It was very pleasant lying there, gazing out through the trees. I said to my husband before he went to bed how much I liked falling asleep before the windows. When he left, I continued to look at the sky.

Suddenly, as if on cue, a green fireball with a long tail appeared over the horizon. I would say it was above a spot just beyond the mall, a point no more than a mile away. It streaked downward for about two or three seconds and then vanished. It was extremely bright, more vivid than any object I have ever seen in the sky. It appeared to land somewhere beyond the mall.

My first thought was that it was a plane that had exploded. I waited to hear a loud sound as it landed. But there was none. Then I thought for a moment. “Did I really see that or could I have imagined it?” But I knew it was real because it was so unlike anything I have ever seen.

I called my husband. “You must have seen a fireball,” he said. Fireballs are falling meteors.

He then gave me a lesson in fireballs, explaining that thousands of them fall every day but that most are not seen. According to the American Meteor Society:

Several thousand meteors of fireball magnitude occur in the Earth’s atmosphere each day. The vast majority of these, however, occur over the oceans and uninhabited regions, and a good many are masked by daylight. Those that occur at night also stand little chance of being detected due to the relatively low numbers of persons out to notice them.

Additionally, the brighter the fireball, the more rare is the event. As a general thumb rule, there are only about 1/3 as many fireballs present for each successively brighter magnitude class, following an exponential decrease. Experienced observers can expect to see only about 1 fireball of magnitude -6 or better for every 200 hours of meteor observing, while a fireball of magnitude -4 can be expected about once every 20 hours or so….

…. Our best estimates of the total incoming meteoroid flux indicate that about 10 to 50 meteorite dropping events occur over the earth each day. It should be remembered, however, that 2/3 of these events will occur over ocean, while another 1/4 or so will occur over very uninhabited land areas, leaving only about 2 to 12 events each day with the potential for discovery by people. Half of these again occur on the night side of the earth, with even less chance of being noticed. Due to the combination of all of these factors, only a handful of witnessed meteorite falls occur Each year.

As an order of magnitude estimation, each square kilometer of the earth’s surface should collect 1 meteorite fall about once every 50,000 years, on the average. If this area is increased to 1 square mile, this time period becomes about 20,000 years between falls.

In other words, the mall, which will surely last for eons, may not see another event like this for 50,000 years.

I was in the right place at the right time. What is remarkable to me is that it was as if I was poised to see it, lying there before the window, comfortably viewing the night sky. The best things often happen when we expect nothing.

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