an observer named Graylord Wells, who was on the eastern slope of Talcot — 1851
Mountain saw an unidentified object:
“The evening was clear and the moon near the meridian, when Mr. Wells saw, a little south of west, and full 60 degrees above the horizon, a bright meteor apparently a foot in diameter. It shone with an orange hue, and below was a train which seemed to be 15 or 16 feet in length, fan-shaped, and possessing an apparent breath at its further extremity of two feet. The meteor rose from east to west with a slow and steady motion, and in its progress passed above or to the north of the moon. And when it had arrived on the eastern side, directly turned toward the southeast, and dropping below the moon, a part of its attendant train swept over the lunar disk.” The phenomenon gradually descended to the horizon in the southeast. The observer stated that this could not have lasted less than three minutes in moving the length of its train, and that the time of its visibility “could not possibly have been less than an hour, and was probably an hour and a half.”
Source: Coultier-Gravier, op. cit., 306 and fig. 97. 455. Case: W408