Fire in the SkyS


Fireball

Meteor fireball explodes over Crimea

Meteorite
© an-crimea.ru
A powerful explosion occurred in the sky over the city of Simferopol, the Crimea, on December 26. The origin of the explosion remains unknown; EMERCOM officials are trying to look into circumstances.

Local residents have posted a few photos taken in first minutes after the explosion. The photos depict a white trail in the sky, which usually remains behind a flying plane, but it is not straight.

Some people assumed that the explosion could be related to fighter aircraft and their aerobatic stunts.

Fireball 2

Slow-moving meteor fireball filmed over Spain

fireball
© NASA stock image
This beautiful meteor, which resembles a Christmas star, was spotted over Spain on Dec. 23, at 22:07 local time (21:07 universal time). It was produced by a fragment from a comet that hit the atmosphere at about 43000 km/h. The meteor overflew the Mediterranean Sea.

It began at a height of around 93 km, and ended at an altitude of about 60 km over the sea.

It was recorded in the framework of the SMART Project (University of Huelva) from the astronomical observatories of Calar Alto (Almería), Sierra Nevada (Granada), La Sagra (Granada), La Hita (Toledo) and Sevilla.


Fireball 2

Meteor fireball flashes across Finnish skies; more than 200 sightings

fireball path
Fireball path
An especially bright meteor streaked through the sky at around 8 pm on Friday evening. The Ursa Astronomical Association has logged more than 230 sightings of the southbound fireball.

The phenomenon is known as a bolide, an extremely bright meteor that usually explodes in Earth's atmosphere.

A local Oulu man, Markku Paaso, managed to hastily record the atmospheric ball of light with his car dashboard video camera as the bolide fell in its horizontal trajectory.

"It was like a slow-moving, super-bright shooting star," one Yle reader recounts in their sighting.


Friday's bolide is the second bright aerial anomaly logged in Finland this winter. In November a rare fireball was sighted in Lapland that caused a stir in the skywatching community for its fierce brightness. The undestroyed refuse from that earlier meteorite fell to the Earth in Northern Lapland, where it still remains.


Fireball 3

Meteor fireball with sonic boom reported over Townsville, Queensland

Queensland meteor fireball
© Mt Stromlo ObservatoryAn image captured by the Mt Stromlo Observatory on Friday night.
Residents of the Australian city of Townsville, Queensland have reported seeing a meteor overnight according to the Daily Telegraph.

One resident Melissa Kruse described a brilliant flash in the sky.
"It was a matter of seconds from first sight to it falling out of sight.

"It was pretty spectacular. There was only one."
Ms Kruse added that it looked similar to the Chelyabinsk meteor which flew over Russia in 2013.

The Townsville phenomenon was witnessed by numerous other people who described seeing a "massive light over The Strand".

The Canberra Times stated that cameras at Mt Stromlo Observatory did capture a somewhat blurry picture of the fragment emitting a bright blue-green light.

It left a blue-green light trail behind it and travelled about 80,000 to 120,000 kilometres per hour, creating a sonic boom that was heard and felt by people below.

Fireball 2

Bright meteor fireball explodes over southern Norway

Norwegian meteor fireball
© IMO/Tore MyrhenNorwegian meteor fireball on December 18, 2017
On December 18, 2017, at 16:37:07 UT, a bright meteor fireball lit up the southern regions of Norway. The event was registered by cameras of the Norwegian Meteor Network on a partially cloudy sky.

A video of the event was recorded by Tore Myhren from Lillehammer, and shows the fireball through some clouds near the horizon.

"The meteor was of sporadic origin, with a radiant located at R.A. = 331,3°, Dec. = 62,2°," writes Kai Gaarder of the Norwegian Meteor Network, as reported by the International Meteor Organization.

Some eyewitness reports describing the phenomena include:

Ørjan Solheim:
"Saw an insane powerful flash of light in Rosendal. The whole valley and the mountains lighted up. A lot of times stronger than lightning. Lasted longer and was smoother than lightning. Stopped the car and went out, but could hear no sound."

Bizarro Earth

Loud, house-shaking boom heard around Bakersfield, California

Boom in Bakersfield, CA
© KGET
This is a strange one.

At around 5AM this morning, something startled Holly Olsen as she lay in bed in her east Bakersfield home.

Not a gunshot, nor a firework.

"It was more like a 'krplow' noise," Olsen explained.

Calls and messages flooded into our newsroom.

"It sounded like a bomb going off, but not nearby," Olsen continued.

First responders heard the same around 5:09 or so.


Comment: We doubt the Sheriff's Department would be conducting the training at 5:00 am.


Fireball

Meteor fireball lights up night sky over Wisconsin's capital

Meteor over Wisconsin
© YouTube Screen Capture
Cameras outside a University of Wisconsin-Madison facility captured the moment a meteoroid streaked across the night sky.

The University of Wisconsin-Madison's Cooperative Institute for Meteorological Satellite Studies shared footage from a webcam mounted atop the building that captured the fireball's fall from the sky Monday night.


Fireball 2

Fragmenting meteor fireball captured over Russia's Sochi (VIDEO)

Sochi bolide
© YouTube/RT (screen capture)
A sparkling bolide that lit up the sky over Russia's Sochi on Friday, Alexander Ivanov, head of the Kuban University laboratory of astrophysics, told RIA Novosti in an interview.

Internet users speculated over violent clapping sounds supposedly accompanying the fireball. Some cited a hissing sound as an unidentified object flew past the location; others remarked they saw merely a flash of light.

On December 4-17 the Geminid meteor shower was expected to approach Earth, peaking on December 13-15, Ivanov was cited as saying.
"There were some flashes of light in the night sky, as a standard bolide, the size of a soccer ball, entered the atmosphere. Part of it was caught on our cameras. Armavir and Sochi also detailed their observations. This brings us to the conclusion that the object had burnt down about 20 kilometers above Earth."
A video of the phenomena has been uploaded here.


Fireball 2

Meteor fireball filmed over Denver area

fIREBALL
© Greg Kramer
Denver, Colorado residents had an opportunity to witness an astronomical event Thursday night, as a large fireball streaked across the sky above the Mile High City.

A man named Greg Kamer was filming a Christmas light display at the Denver Botanic Gardens when he inched the camera up a little bit and saw something blaze across the sky, KCNC-4 reported.


Attention

Loud explosion shakes houses as suspected meteorite hits Thunder Bay, Ontario

Meteorite crater in Thunder Bay, Ontario
© twitterCrater on Highway 61 in Thunder Bay, Ontario, Canada after possible meteorite hits the ground on December 13, 2017
Object spotted by officers Wednesday night, but now police, investigating expert can't find it

A loud explosion that shook houses in a semi-rural part of Thunder Bay, Ont., Wednesday evening may have been caused by a meteorite that landed on the outskirts of the northwestern Ontario city, according to local police.

Patrol officers were dispatched to the area of Highway 61 and Mount Forest Boulevard Wednesday around 11 p.m., to investigate, police said in a written release.

They were called by area resident Linda Pohole, who lives near the Mount Forest subdivision. She said she heard an explosion.

"I called it in thinking that something happened in Mount Forest, and maybe a house exploded," she said. "It was that loud, and my son said he felt the house vibrate."

Police searched the area and found a large, round hole in the snow on the side of the Highway 61, in the area of Mount Forest Boulevard. There were no footprints or vehicle tire tracks in the vicinity.


Comment: A couple of months ago meteorites hit roofs in South Africa and the US. Mysterious booms are increasing dramatically all over the planet, which may be indicative of space rock fragments exploding in the atmosphere.

Even NASA's own space data supports citizens' recent observations, namely the inconvenient fact that meteor fireballs are increasing dramatically.