Fire in the SkyS


Fireball 4

Fireball streaks over 12 Eastern U.S. states, as another one blazes over Japan

Michael King
USAToday
Tue, 04 Nov 2014 08:29 UTC
Image
© AMSMeteors.comNearly 200 reports of a fireball streaking overhead were received the the American Meteor Society Monday night.
Dozens of reports of a fireball crossing the sky emerged Monday evening across 12 eastern states, from as far north as the Great Lakes states and extending as far south as Georgia.

As of 11:00 Monday night, the American Meteor Society said they had received nearly 200 reports of one or more meteors crossing the skies at about 6:20 p.m. Monday.

The reports came from Georgia, Indiana, Kentucky, Maryland, Michigan, North Carolina, Ohio, Pennsylvania, South Carolina, Tennessee, Virginia and West Virginia. The five reports from Georgia included one each in Rossville, Statesboro, Homer, Doraville and Alpharetta.

Most of the reports said the fireball was a greenish-to-white color as it crossed the sky.

11Alive's Greensboro sister station WFMY received a number of reports from viewers in their area.

Comment: There was another fireball seen over Chicago just one hour later:



...and another in Japan on the same day:



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Fireball 2

Meteor sighting reported over Japan


Japan Times
Tue, 04 Nov 2014 07:00 UTC
Fireball over Japan
© Kyodo/YouTube
A "brightly glistening object" moving across the sky was seen around 6 p.m. in Kyushu and the Chugoku region in western Japan, with witnesses reporting to local astronomical and weather observatories, prompting experts to suspect a meteor.

Some 10 witnesses reported seeing the fireball to the Fukuoka district weather observatory in the city of Fukuoka. They described it as a bright, shining object moving from east to west and "a bright object like something burning," according to an official.

A female visitor to Hoshi no Bunkakan, an astronomical observatory in Yame, Fukuoka Prefecture, saw a shining object in the southwestern sky and reported to the staff, the observatory representative said.
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Fireball 4

Meteor sightings across Virginia, Eastern U.S.


WNEW
Mon, 03 Nov 2014 21:56 UTC
Meteor
© WJLA file photoA meteor streaks across the night sky.
Lanham, Maryland - A green fireball was spotted in several states, including Virginia, Monday night.

WNEW received a call from a listener around 6:20 p.m. who said he saw what appeared to be a green and blue light larger than a shooting star cross the sky near I-66 W. He says it fell straight down and he was unsure at first if it was a plane that crashed.

Soon after the call, people in other parts of Va. and across the U.S. took to Twitter to describe their own meteor sightings.
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Bizarro Earth

'Phantom' lights in sky over Rochdale, UK mystery continues

Gerry Sammon
Manchester Evening News
Thu, 30 Oct 2014 12:25 UTC
Rochdale strange lights
© Matthew JacksonUnexplained blue / green lights over Rochdale.
Mystery continues to surround phantom lights that appeared in the skies over Rochdale last week.

As featured in Wednesday's Rochdale Observer, strange flashes of blue and green were spotted in the skies, power went out and homes were left without electricity during the curious episode last Thursday evening, October 23.

Some people also reported hearing a loud bang, while others thought they had seen an object shoot into the sky.

And social media users have come up with all sorts of explanations for the events, from fireworks to a solar flare, the Northern Lights and even alien activity.

The lights were spotted above homes over Rochdale, Norden, Littleborough, Newhey and Whitworth, with many residents noticing their own lights flickering, a temporary loss of power, flashes and the triggering of burglar alarms.

Comment: The sun did have a massive sunspot during the time of the sighting of the mysterious lights.

Solar flare danger - massive sunspot the size of Jupiter takes aim at Earth

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Comet 2

5 days after massive fireball sets sky on fire over Recife, another comet fragment burns up over Ceará, Brazil (VIDEO)


gaea-numero.blogspot.com.br
Wed, 22 Oct 2014 11:29 UTC
Image
Translation: SOTT.net

A bright flash in the sky caused by a meteor drew the attention of residents in the State of Ceará on Monday night (October 20th). The Civil Police of Ceará received reports of the meteor's passage through several cities in the state.

"Some residents reported the fall of an object in neighboring cities, but there is no record of anything," says officer Francisco Couto. "A lot of people claimed it was a plane crash, some said that they heard the noise of the crash," said the policeman.

Sergeant Lins, from Recife Air Base, which controls air traffic from high altitudes throughout the Northeast, said that there is no record of any missing aircraft in the region late on Monday.

For the astronomer Pedro Antunes, meteors are commonly confused with burning planes or with unidentified flying objects (UFO). "People see that flash in the sky, which is not very common, and are impressed, just imagining things, but lately we're registering many meteors in the sky of Ceará," he says.

According to the Civil Police, the meteor has seen by people in the town of Iguatu in the interior of Ceará, and on the coast of the state. "It's possible for a meteor to travel a great distance in the sky. While it suffers friction with the atmosphere, it combusts and turns into pieces. A burning plane would never go so far before hitting the ground," argues the astronomer.

Source

Comment: It's not so much friction with the atmosphere that causes meteor fireballs and comet fragments to 'slow down' - it's their electrical interaction with different charge layers of the atmosphere.

Note that this happened over the same region just five days prior to the above event:

Meteor fireball sets the sky on fire over Recife, Brazil

Tumultuous times in the sky seem fitting to tumultuous times among a divided Brazilian population, where hatred among 'factions' has been driven ever higher in the second round of presidential elections.

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Fireball 5

Fireball over Alabama captured on video

Alyssa Newcomb
ABC News
Tue, 21 Oct 2014 10:40 UTC
Fireball
© Jason Reed/YouTube
The moment a bright light streaked across the night sky in Trussville, Alabama, was captured on video last night.

The sighting came as the Earth passed through the debris cloud from Halley's Comet, which produces the annual Orionid meteor shower.

Bill Cooke of NASA's Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Alabama, told ABC News there were "several bright Orionids last night, as well as a spectacular fireball over middle Tennessee" that he said broke apart at 24 miles altitude just south of Nashville.

Comment: Another possible angle of same fireball:



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Fireball 3

'Fireball' meteor streaks across Dutch sky


NLTimes
Mon, 20 Oct 2014 17:42 UTC
Image
© Koen MiskotteFireball visible above the Netherlands last night
Last night a fireball was visible above the Netherlands.

The Werkgroep Meteoren says that it was visible as a bright sphere. The work group received more than 20 reports from people who saw the fireball within 45 minutes. This was the 5th fireball visible above the Netherlands.


Comment: The fifth? What, the fifth ever? Very unlikely! A quick search pulls up these five from recent years:

Enormous fireball seen from Belgium, The Netherlands and Germany, 13 February 2013

Meteor Fireball Explodes Over Netherlands

Fireballs seen over Germany spark UFO speculation

UK / Holland / Germany Fireball Meteor 12SEP2013

Large Fireball Over The Netherlands Raw Footage 01 18 2014


Fireballs are meteors that are much brighter than normal. They are usually seen during meteor showers. During the next few days the Orioniden shower will reach its maximum. According to the work group, the shower will probably be very visible.

The Orionidens originated in Halley's Comet, which comes close to the sun and the earth every 76 years.

Comment: Earlier in the same evening, this was filmed over the Netherlands:



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Fireball 3

Iowa photographer accidentally captures a fireball explosion and smoke trail in his night sky time-lapse

DL Cade
PetaPixel
Fri, 17 Oct 2014 00:00 UTC
Astronomers can wait decades to see or capture what Ben Lewis photographed by accident while shooting a time-lapse Ashton-Wildwood County Park, Iowa very early this morning. Called a 'bolide fireball,' what you see in the short time-lapse above is an exceptionally bright meteorite that explodes in a bright flash at its end, leaving behind this strange bright puff of red smoke.

To the untrained eye you would think a 'night fury' from How to Train Your Dragon just passed by, but this is in fact a natural phenomenon that, in real time, lasted an amazing 12 minutes!

Shot with a Canon 6D and 35mm lens at f/1.4 10 sec, and ISO 1600 with a 10 second delay between frames, Lewis was actually sleeping when this happened. When he came back to review the footage he initially thought it was an airplane, but upon closer inspection he realized it was much stranger than that.

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Fireball 5

Meteor fireball sets the sky on fire over Recife, Brazil


Metro, UK
Thu, 16 Oct 2014 19:29 UTC

The amazing moment a meteor lights up the sky above the Brazilian city of Recife has been caught on camera.

In the incredible clip, taken on Wednesday at around 10pm, the sky is illuminated with red and yellow light as the meteor crosses the sky.

Locals immediately took to social media to express their surprise at the awesome sight.

'A flaming ball broke apart as it fell towards the ground,' wrote one user on Facebook.

Comment: The above footage could be a transformer blow out, which may be connected to the widely observed fireball. Various cameras caught it:


Problem is, authorities in Recife didn't report a transformer blow-out... so the glowing 'after-effect' lights in the sky could be something else.

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Magnify

Loud boom heard in Camden, Maine a mystery

Holly S. Edwards
Penobscot Bay Pilot
Sun, 12 Oct 2014 10:10 UTC
Question marks
For some residents who were awake, the loud boom around 1:30 a.m. Sunday was unmistakable. For others, who were asleep, the sound jarred them awake.

Following the single loud noise, nothing came across the police scanners indicating that first responders or police were investigating or responding to an emergency. A call to Knox County Regional Communications Center Sunday morning revealed that nobody had called in to report an issue, or hearing a loud boom sound.

But a post on Facebook brought out reports from others who heard it.

It's not clear where the boom originated, but there have been reports on Facebook of it being heard on lower Chestnut Street, Sea Street, Trim Street and Free Street. I know I heard it on Chestnut Street, near Highland Avenue, but the sound was in the distance as it came in from an open west-facing window.

Comment: The data provided by the article points to a frost quake not causing the loud boom. Sott.net has covered many similar stories of unexplained booms and proposes the hypothesis that instances of such booms without any other explanation are in all likelihood the result of unseen meteors exploding upon entry into the atmosphere.

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