Fire in the SkyS


Question

Residents of North Routt, Colorado trying to solve mystery of what rattled homes

BOOM
Residents in North Routt County are still trying to figure out what caused some homes and a fire station to rattle from the Clark area all the way to the shores of Steamboat Lake on Thursday morning.

Some residents wondered whether it was a sonic boom, an earthquake, or an avalanche.

But with no offical reports of an earthquake made in the area that day, the source of the boom appears to remain a mystery.

Residents started to try to solve the mystery when North Routt Rumors, a local news source in the area, asked its Facebook fans whether anyone else had experienced what felt like a "roof sliding" between 9 a.m. and 10 a.m. Thursday.

Question

Police in Wyomissing, Pennsylvania investigating reports of loud booming noise

BOOM
Wyomissing police said that they are investigating what residents described as an "extremely loud boom" that shook their homes about 12:40 p.m. Sunday.

Initial reports from investigators southeast of Wyomissing Hills indicated that there was no fire, but the cause of the noise had not yet been determined.

A resident of Birchwood Road who called the newspaper reported that the boom rattled the roof and walls of his home and that several neighbors rushed outside to see what had happened.

Another resident who lives in the 100 block of Woodland Road said that it felt like an earthquake.

This story will be updated when further information is available.

Fireball

Bright meteor fireball over the US Midwest seen as far south as Alabama

Fireball over the Midwest
Did you see it?

A fireball lit up the sky over Tennessee and North Alabama Thursday evening, January 18th. Dr. Bill Cooke from NASA's Meteoroid Environment Office tells us it was actually high above Missouri and still bright enough to be seen as far away as Florence, Alabama and Franklin County, Tennessee.

Binoculars

Mysterious boom shakes homes in northern Illinois

Yorkville, IL water tower
© Don Wiley
Was it a sonic boom? A UFO crash? A meteorite?

The source of a loud boom that shook houses in the Yorkville area Saturday afternoon is a mystery to law enforcement and other experts.

Sgt. Dave Lawson of the Kendall County Sheriff's Office said police were notified of the boom at 4:35 p.m. Saturday.

"This is a giant mystery," Lawson said. "I don't know of an easier way to say it. We had units out pretty much immediately in the area and we were unable to figure it out. We actually had off-duty deputies at home that heard it and felt it."

Lawson said the KenCom dispatch system received reports about the boom from as far as Plano and even one report from Minooka.

Fireball 2

SOTT Focus: Michigan Meteor Event: Fireball Numbers Increased Again in 2017

meteor fireball michigan
Still from a dash-cam video of the meteor fireball event over Michigan, 16 January 2018.
Another major meteor fireball event occurred in the US earlier this week. Shortly after 8pm on Tuesday evening, a bolide estimated to have been up to three meters in diameter blazed across southern Michigan before exploding somewhere high above Detroit. Though brief, the meteor caused a blinding light that briefly turned night into day across metropolitan Detroit, most of Michigan, and was seen as far away as Des Moines, Iowa and Toronto, Canada.

This one was a little different than the 'regular' fireball events occurring globally these days: people across southern Michigan also heard a powerful boom that arrived about three minutes after the white-out, and the event even registered as a magnitude 2.0 earthquake on local seismographs.

Fireball 5

Meteor fireball lights up night sky over Michigan; USGS registers impact as M2.0 earthquake - fragments found (UPDATE, PHOTOS)

Meteor over Michigan
© Mike Austin/YouTube
Residents in several cities across Michigan reported seeing a bright and colorful flash travel through the sky before hearing a loud boom. The US Department of Homeland Security confirmed that it was a meteor fireball.

Numerous videos recorded by security cameras and dashcams in the Metro-Detroit area and surrounding cities Tuesday night show a flash of bright light zooming across the sky, instantly turning night into day for an instant.


Comment: UPDATE: Wed, 17 Jan. 2018 (18.15 CET)

USGS has registered this event as a M2.0 earthquake with the epicenter at New Haven, just north of Detroit in Michigan.
Meteorite seen and heard in Detroit area. Location is approximate. The magnitude reported for this meteor cannot be directly used to compare its size to an earthquake because the source of the seismic signals are different.
The American Meteor Society (AMS) has received almost 400 reports of the event. The flashing light and loud boom felt across Michigan and seen as far away as New York City and parts of Canada on Tuesday night was a meteoroid entering the atmosphere, according to NASA.

A post on the NASA Meteor Watch Facebook page, said the meteoroid traveled northwest from the Brighton area to the Howell area, citing the American Meteor Society's website. The 1 a.m. post read:
"Our analysis yields a similar result, and we have calculated that this was a very slow moving meteor - speed of about 28,000 miles per hour,"

"This fact, combined with the brightness of the meteor (which suggests a fairly big space rock at least a yard across), shows that the object penetrated deep into the atmosphere before it broke apart (which produced the sounds heard by many observers). It is likely that there are meteorites on the ground near this region - one of our colleagues has found a Doppler weather radar signature characteristic of meteoritic material falling to earth."


UPDATE: Sat, 20th Jan. 2018

The Daily Mail reports meteorite hunters have found fragments:
Meteorite hunters who flocked to Detroit from across the U.S. after a meteor exploded are finding the fragments.

Most of the fragments landed in Hamburg Township.

meteor michigan found fragments longway planetarium
The first fragments were located Thursday by professional hunters Larry Atkins and Robert Ward of Arizona, according to the American Meteor Society.
WHAT IS A METEOROID

A meteoroid is a small chunk of asteroid or comet.

When it enters Earth's atmosphere it becomes a meteor, fireball or shooting star.

The pieces of rock that hit the ground are meteorites, and are valuable to collectors.

The remnants must be analyzed by a lab to be accredited as meteorites.
Atkins owns Cosmic Connection Meteorites, while Ward operates Robert Ward Meteorites.

'It's a really spectacular specimen,' Ward said while holding one of the meteorites.

'Two days ago, this was hundreds of thousands of miles past the moon, and now I'm standing here holding it in my hand.

'It's been a real good day.'
meteor meteroid michigan fragments found
Ward said he used seismic data, Doppler radar and witness information to narrow down where to search.

Meteorite hunters seek permission from landowners before searching on their property, Ward said.

Ward estimates he's collected about 600 meteorites from around the world over the years.

Longway Planetarium astronomers have also located three meteorites that'll be displayed Friday.
michigan meteor meteoroid fragment found

Darryl Pitt, a New York City resident and meteorite consultant to Christie's auction house, is offering $20,000 for a recovered fragment weighing at least 1 kilogram.

'I want to motivate more people to look,' Pitt said.

'Meteorites are extraordinarily rare and the world is just coming to terms with how special they are.'



Fireball 4

Albertans report meteor fireball over the province

Fireball over Alberta
© Global News
Dozens of Albertans took to social media Wednesday evening to report seeing a large fireball in the sky over northern parts of the province.

Corbet Kratko was driving near the intersection of Highway 21 and Westpark Boulevard in Fort Saskatchewan when he said he saw the bright light descending through the sky.


The maintenance inspector with Alberta Transportation captured video of what appears to be a falling fireball on his vehicle's dash-cam at approximately 5:21 p.m.

Witness Rogan Hennie told CBC News he was driving north near Lacombe, Alta., around the same time when he saw what he described as "a meteor" in the sky.

Fireball 2

Second meteor fireball flashes over Ohio

Meteor over Ohio
© ABC13
More fireball reports flooded in just before midnight Wednesday night. Several dozen reports came into the American Meteor Society around 11:50pm EST. Reports centered over Indiana, but went as far south as Nashville, TN and as far north as west central Michigan. Toledo seems to be on the edge of the observations, while reports were as far west as Chicago.

The fireball was not as bright as Tuesday night's meteor, and a sonic boom was not observed. The white flash was observed on the west side of Toledo, and the reports were more numerous closer to Fort Wayne, IN. We will have more information as it becomes available.

Fireball 3

Meteor fireball seen over Northland, New Zealand

Fireball - stock image
Stock image
Residents of a Far North holiday hotspot were treated to a flashy display of space fireworks late last night.

Cable Bay resident Sheryl Day was out on her deck at about 10.45pm when she saw what she described as a "large, intense yellow fireball, tinged with green".

"Out of the corner of my eye, I saw something bright, and as I turned, this great thing, almost like a fireball, just whizzed by.

"While Day frequently sees meteors when gazing at the night sky, these were typically distant and fleeting.

But this object, she said, seemed much closer as it "wooshed down and then just disappeared".

Fireball 3

Astronomer attributes flash of light, sonic boom in Dallas/Ft. Worth neighborhood to exploding meteorite

Flash of light and boom in DFW, Texas
© YouTube/CBS DFW
A mysterious "boom" rattled a North Texas neighborhood and residents have no idea what exactly it was or what it could mean.

Residents in North Oak Cliff said they heard an explosive noise around 8:34 p.m. on Wednesday night. Some reported seeing a flash first, then the load noise.

Resident Isaac Martinez managed to capture a short video of the event from his security cameras.

"Out of nowhere, just this pow!" said Phillip Washington, who heard the noise from his Kings Highway apartment. "Just this huge explosion."

Washington was one of many who reported hearing the noise.