Blue Moon

I took this photo on August 31, 2012, which was the Friday of the Labor Day Weekend. The temperature was perfect and there was no wind at all. In addition to it being a “blue moon,” the cloud cover somehow created an enormous and beautiful halo. As wonderful as this was, we were in store to be astonished. About 10:30 pm I noticed a bright light, above the lake, at an elevation that a small plane might fly. It was traveling parallel to the ground from the east. At first, I thought it was a plane, but the light was traveling too quickly and getting too bright to be a plane. And then it looked like a ball of fire. I pointed to it and exclaimed, “Look!” to Carolyn and our friends Paul and Tom. We all watched for another 5 seconds as it came over the land and suddenly broke into several pieces. As the pieces fell from the sky, the light they emitted grew faint and quickly extinguished. We were awestruck and dumbfounded. After we returned to Evanston, I did some research and learned that this was a fireball. Something none of had ever seen before. And likely will never see again this closely.