Meteor shower may explain UFO sighting by Mount Pocono man

By ADAM McNAUGHTON
Pocono Record Writer
January 19, 2008

Something unusual in the sky made such an impression on a Mount Pocono man last month that he's still wondering about it.

Ernest Gross wants to know if anyone else saw the same strange, luminous, unidentified object that caught his attention.

"At first I thought it was a satellite," Gross said. "But it was coming too low and too fast. If it was a satellite coming down then it must have landed somewhere and someone has to know about it."

Gross said he was out of bed to use the bathroom around 3 a.m. on Dec. 14, when he happened to look out the window and catch a view of the object — which he described as being twice the size of the moon — streak across the sky.

"I was looking north, at about a 30-degree angle, and saw it fly across from west to east in an arching motion," he said. "It was so fast, just a second and it was out of sight."

Gross said the object had similar illumination to the moon, with a fuzzy outline and soundless.

But it's possible, according to an East Stroudsburg University astronomer, that the object could have a scientific explanation.

"The Geminid meteor shower had peak activity over Dec. 13 and 14," said ESU professor David Buckley. "They were very visible this year and would have been best viewed after midnight."

Gross' description of a bright white, fuzzy-outlined object traveling very fast matches known descriptions of the Geminid meteors.

The annual Geminid shower has a reputation for producing bright white meteors that leave few visible streaks.

"Something moving that fast would almost certainly be a meteor," Buckley said. "And these meteors would have been visible all over the world."

But Gross remains adamant that what he saw was much too large to be a meteor, at least one that no one else noticed.

"If it was a meteor it was a huge one," he said. "I wouldn't have thought much of it if it was a tiny thing."

Gross said his description might refresh the memories of anyone else who could have seen the object and not reported it. "It was a clear night, no clouds," he said. "It's only a one-in-a-million chance that I saw it. But if anyone else did, they'd remember."