Orangeburg resident Gary Swift was standing in his front yard on Mount Hope Drive north of town around 1 a.m. Monday, taking his late-night smoke before retiring. He wasn't thinking about sleep after what happened next.

Swift saw what he described as a "bright, white fireball move across the sky" from the north to the southwest.

"It scared me out of my shoes," Swift said, explaining how the nighttime sky instantaneously became full of light.

"It was bright enough to light up the entire sky with the color of lightning and cast shadows through the tall pines that line my property," Swift said. "It lasted several seconds before breaking up into fragments, which turned red and faded out of sight along the southwestern horizon."

Swift said the speed of the fireball confused him at first.

"It appeared so suddenly and was so bright that it made me jump and I first thought someone was shining a spotlight in my yard or perhaps that a transformer had blown," he said.

Swift said though he is no professional stargazer he does enjoy the nighttime sky. His only regret is that his 12-year-old daughter, Jessica, did not experience it with him.

"The way it split up was pretty," he said. "When it did break up, it burst into a bunch of red embers almost like fireworks."

Midlands Astronomy Club member Paul Romanyszyn said meteors are not unusual this time of year.

"If you are out at night, you will see a good fireball pop up at random," he said.

Visibility depends on cloud cover, as well as the velocity and direction of meteors as they enter the atmosphere, he said.

The online American Meteor Society explains that such phenomena are produced by small fragments of cosmic debris entering the Earth's atmosphere at extremely high speeds.

Romanyszyn said the best time to view meteor showers is between midnight and dawn due to the motion of the Earth as it revolves around the sun, with the leading edge -- the morning side -- encountering more meteors than the trailing edge.

The late fall is also a common time to spot meteors due to the Earth's tilt on its axis as well as other factors, Romanyszyn said.

T&D Staff Writer Gene Zaleski can be reached by e-mail at gzaleski@timesanddemocrat.com or by phone at 803-533-5551. Discuss this and other stories online at TheTandD.com.

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