January 23, 2012 at 7:37 p.m. local time, I saw this meteor fall. It seemed to fall on the castle of Forcalqueiret in Provence, already so ruined …
This meteor belongs to the sporadic family, no known shower exist at this time of the year. Slow, it has about 3 seconds to disintegrate by emitting a beautiful ocher yellow light.
My sketch was made naked eye in the cold of this early winter evening. We can see the sky from the Pleiades to the feet of Orion, passing through the Hyades in the constellation Taurus. I tried to take account of different colors like Betelgeuse and Rigel, respectively red and blue. The Great Nebula in Orion also shows a little pink shade than the surrounding stars.
I made this sketch on white paper with caracole pencils, using directly the correct reverse colour black for white, blue for the meteor, light blue for Betelgeuse and M42, and yellow for Rigel. The final work is to invert the scanned sketch.
Michel Deconinck
It must has been such an incredible surprise. I loved your sketch indeed, nice job!