How slow can a "falling star" fall?

Usually I see a “shooting star” for a split second. Looking in the night sky here in St. Louis about ten minutes ago, I noticed a falling star being trailed by another for a good minute or so. They traveled a good about before burning up one after the other. Is this normal?

ETA: I clicked a “moved topic” and the forum read IMHO, thought I added this topic there and posted this to request a move. Now realize it is in General Question.

Hmmm. Given that the Discovery undocked from the International Space Station tonight and would have passed over roughly when you saw the two “falling stars”, I’m going to hazard a guess that this is what you saw.

They both turned orange and disappeared… Is this okay?

Finagle is probably right; this sounds very much like the ISS and Shuttle. See this page for sighting times and azimuths. They disappear because the reflective angle becomes so obtuse that you no longer see reflected, or they become eclipsed by the Earth.

Shooting stars (meteors) will typically be in view for just a few seconds or less. Because of their speed (usually interplanetary) and small size before they burn up, they just don’t last longer than this. When RVs from ballistic missiles re-enter the atmosphere (moving at speeds considerably less than that of a meteor, and surviving until impact) you can’t even see the motion of the RV; all that is visible is a streak of light that suddenly appears from sky to ground. Even high speed cameras will only catch one or two frames.

Stranger

Their not supposed to land until Thursday around 7. They aren’t supposed to finish working in space until 2 in the morning. I checked your site and bam, timing was perfect. What were they doing though?

Geez, I find myself in the most uncomfortable position with having to politely disagree with Stranger on this one. On Kwajalein, I watched several ICBM reentries from Minuteman IIIs launched from Vandenberg and watched the RVs reenter the atmosphere on their way to a lagoon impact and while I didn’t actually time them, they were clearly visible as glowing dots that took several (~5-6) seconds to go from initial glow to impact. The long streaks you see in pictures of the events are due to long exposures.

The orange colour is caused by the atmosphere - the object (satellite, shuttle, whatever) is no longer being directly illuminated by the sun, but the light from the sun is passing through the atmosphere first, and the blue components are being scattered.

This is particularly obvious during a partial lunar eclipse - there is a part of the moon directly illuminated, and thus yellow. There is a part of moon in the earths shadow, and is black. Between the two is a band fading from black through copper-red to the yellow edge - the atmosphere, which cuts down the brightness where it is thickest, and is stunningly beautiful if you can see one on a clear night.

Si

Even more familiar example, it’s the same reason sunsets are red.

To be clear, were the objects you saw traveling roughly west to east?

Wouldn’t a meteorite’s burn time be influenced by the angle in which it enters the atmosphere?

If it is clear tonight where you are, they should be passing over again about an hour later than yesterday.