Our first detailed eyewitness report of this extraordinary event comes from the Astropolis.pl forum:
Observation sent in from Krakow by Vader, 19.10.2012, 11:33AM
"I saw many shooting stars yesterday, but what I saw about at around 2:20 AM CEST (approximately) cannot be forgotten. I had just come round from the back of the house and was looking in the direction of the Little Bear (Ursa Minor) and Draco (Dragon) constellations. A light-yellow meteor appeared, which sped toward the northern horizon, from the border of these constellations. Then it flew between Zeta Draconis (Nodus I) and Eta Draconis (Al Dhibain) of the Dragon, rapidly brightened to a negative magnitude and changed colour to an intense light-green. Something like those popular laser pointers.
The phenomenon ended up to the right and below the Beta Draconis (Rastaban) and Nu Draconis, where there was a very bright flash and it broke up. It actually became almost as bright as day in that moment. It's hard for me to judge the brightness, because I very rarely see this kind of phenomenon. I think it could well have been of magnitude -8. The overall time of its flight was about 3-4 seconds.
After its passage, I instinctively looked at Jupiter and noted how dark it looked in comparison. The meteor left a visible trail in the sky, which I watched for about one minute. Once I calmed down, I ran inside to get my camera and tripod, then set it up to focus on Jupiter and made a few shots in that direction (55 mm, ISO 1600, 13 sec). The first photo was taken at 2:25 and the second one at 2:38, when the trail was still slightly visible. The brightest star in these photographs is the Beta Draconis.
PS: small focal length, large cro, high ISO, hence not the best quality images."
Comments:
mago83, in Bialystok, northeastern Poland, wrote: "I saw the end of the passage with a fading 'tail'. In fact, the view was breathtaking."
QbaC, in Sierpc, central Poland, 125 km northwest of Warsaw, wrote: "Hey, I too had an opportunity to see it... electrifying! At around 2:20 AM, a group of us were standing at a gas station close to Sierpc, looking at the western sky when suddenly it became BRIGHT as if it was a short-circuit on a power pole. When we turned around, we could see a thick trail left in the sky below Ursa Major following the passage and fragmentation of a meteor. This trace was visible for several [between 10 and 20] seconds! The flash of light was so bright that it lit up the whole surrounding area. Even a friend who was on the bus saw the flare! I often look at the stars, but have not seen anything like that before!"
Brahi wrote: "Thankfully this thing didn't hit the Polish Fireball Network (PFN43) station in Siedlce, operated by Maciek Myszkiewicz, which recorded the fireball ;) It looks like its brightness was over -12 mag during the flash. Traces on next frames are displayed for 16 minutes. Probably a monstrous Orionid.
Comment: These reports from Poland have been further verified by another eyewitness report, sent into thelatestworldwidemeteorreports.blogspot.jp: The spectacular fireball seen in San Francisco and beyond on Wednesday 17th October was also, contrary to most reports, not part of the Orionids. It has been pointed out that these two particular meteors clearly came from different sections of the sky than one would expect Orionids to arrive from (i.e., from the direction of the constellation Orion).
Calculating distances, trajectories and possible points of origin of such highly unusual events, happening now on a daily basis, and for which we have little to no frame of reference in modern history, in order to assess which annual or bi-annual meteor shower they formed part of, obscures the plain truth of the matter: NONE of these enormous meteor/fireball events have anything to do with the usual background noise of meteor showers, which come and go all year round and produce little flits of 'shooting stars' in the sky, not near-fatal impacts.
If the recent series of fireball events are telling us anything, it is that there is surely an enormous quantity of new cosmic debris that has turned up in our inner solar system.