Fire in the SkyS


Snowflake Cold

Mysterious loud boom shakes homes, this time in Calgary, Canada

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Could it not have been a smaller version of one of these? Why 'frost quakes'?!
Speculation and confusion swirled after a loud boom could be heard through parts of northwest Calgary on Tuesday afternoon.

It was enough to rattle the windows at Crowfoot General Paints and baffle residents in the area.

James Cormier-Chisholm says he's never heard anything like it before.

Comment: Convenient. So they have zero data on which to base their assumption that it was a so-called 'frost quake'.

Remember the part about "never heard anything like it before"?

If it was "just a frost-quake, yeh, nuthin to worry about", don't you think folks would have heard them before?!

The description of a sharp, short thunderclap is actually consistent with descriptions of meteor fireballs exploding overhead.


Fireball

Massive meteor fireball lights up early morning sky above northern England and southern Scotland, 12 March 2014

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12 March 2014 - Rob Davis, Prestwick, Scotland, 6:13am
2-3 seconds duration. I was facing Southwest, it travelled down steeply from high to my right towards the middle of my view. It was a large green body with a white trail. Very bright, same as a marine flare, but moving much faster. The sky was already bright and clear, with Venus clearly visible in the dawn sky. The meteor was distinctly bright green, much brighter than any other sky object at that time.
12 March 2014 - Dave Wilson, Portpatrick, 6:15:00
1 second duration. East-southeast direction, electric arc blue colour. It was as bright as the moon.
12 March 2014 - Scully, Wigan 6.13am
5 seconds duration. North/west direction. Brilliant white, as bright as Venus. Fragmenting around the edges.

Comment: See also:

Emergency services called to reports of 'fireball in the sky' over UK, 10 March 2014


Fireball 2

Second large meteorite found following massive fireball over Korea

Meteroite
© ReutersReporters gather around a piece of a meteorite, which according to local authorities and scientists, was lifted from the bottom of the Chebarkul Lake, placed on display in a local museum in Chelyabinsk, October 18, 2013.
South Korean media outlets are abuzz this week with the news of the discovery of a possible meteorite, likening the rock to a jackpot worth millions of dollars.

Scientists on Tuesday told the national media the rock found a day earlier in provincial city of Jinju, about 300 kilometers (186 miles) southeast of Seoul, is likely to be a meteorite, assuming it wasn't placed there.

The condition of the surroundings, a vegetable farm on relatively flat land, meant the 9.5-kilogram (20.9-pound) rock was unlikely to have fallen from somewhere nearby, they said. They added that the rock's surface had signs of burning, which takes place when an space object enters the atmosphere.

Comment: See also:

Massive fireball captured on hundreds of cameras across Korea, enormous meteorite crashes into greenhouse, 9 March 2014


Fireball 2

Emergency services called to reports of crashing fireball - UK, 10 March

Fire Vehicles
© EADT24, UKNorfolk Fire and Rescue Service and Norfolk Police were called just after 2pm with reports of the sighting from a driver on the A1065.

Emergency services have been called to the Thetford area after a member of the public reported seeing a "fireball" in the sky which then crashed to the ground.

Norfolk Fire and Rescue Service and Norfolk Police were called just after 2pm with reports of the sighting from a driver on the A1065.

Sam Beazley, 23, from Norfolk, said he and his mother, Jill Payne, had seen the object in the sky at around 1.45pm in between Mundford and Thetford as they travelled southbound towards the Fiveways roundabout.

"I was asleep and my mum woke me up to point out this object on fire to the left of us over Thetford Forest.

"At first she thought it must have been a flare but it was far too large and was actually changing direction in the sky, rather than just falling. It looked like it might have been being controlled somehow.

"We lost sight of it when it went below the treeline - it was just bizarre," he said.

Fireball 4

Massive fireball captured on hundreds of cameras across Korea, enormous meteorite crashes into greenhouse, 9 March 2014

A bright shining object in the skies captivated observers in Suwon on Sunday night. Experts say it was probably a shooting star.
Fireball
© News 1 A shining object (in circle) is captured by an in-car camera system in Suwon, Gyeonggi Province on Sunday.
The object blazed across the night sky for some moments before crashing to earth.

Several videos capturing the scene from in-car systems were posted on social networking sites.

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Comment: Reports from eyewitnesses:
9 March 2014 - Justin Solomon, Osan AB, South Korea
UTC-+9:00 Soeul/20:45, 8:45pm
15 seconds duration. Moving in a south-easterly direction. Green in color, as bright as a full moon. No fragmentation, but it looked wicked!
9 March 2014 - Kellee Hayang, Gyeongsangbuk-do, South Korea
20:04 KST, GMT+9
10-15 seconds duration. Northwest to Southeast direction, I was facing East. White fireball with immediately orange tail and which was green at the end. Upon entering Earth's atmosphere it created a brilliant light over the town, lighting up the night sky. It started off as a tiny, white light, and as it closer it got bigger and brighter and was pure, white light. It remained intact until it burnt out, from what I could see. It appeared to get reasonably close to crashing to the ground. I was observing from the 3rd floor of an apartment building and had it not burnt out, it was within a second of dropping out of view due to a four-storey apartment across the road in front of me. It was travelling at extremely high speed.



Fireball 5

Did you hear the loud boom over Illinois?

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Viewers have called, emailed and sent Facebook messages to our newsroom questioning where this boom noise came from. TV-6 spoke with people on both sides of the river--from Davenport to Rock Island. We don't know much about where the noise came from, but some of you say you heard it.

"I heard a really loud boom," said Chris Rice.

"I heard a rumble," said Tanisha Douglas.

" I heard a pretty big explosion," said Logan Edwards.

A noise so loud that some of you say it startled you and caused your homes and businesses to shake.

"I expected to see a mushroom cloud when I went out there off in the distance," said Rice.

We contacted the police and fire departments, airport, the Rock Island Arsenal and even spoke with our meteorologist about what it could be, but no one knows.

"I haven't heard anything that loud since leaving Iraq in 2007," said Edwards.

"It sounded like something really big on the street. Like something rolling by on the street and then there was a rumble, too," said Douglas

Whether the noise was a rumble, explosion or boom, some of you tell us, this isn't the first time you've heard it.

"On January 14th I heard the sound," said Rice. "I'm used to hearing really loud sounds because I live near the river. I hear trains, barges. I've always lived near the arsenal. I hear all types of sounds, but this one was way louder."

The mystery remains unsolved....

Watch Video

Fireball 5

Irish skies lit up by 'extremely bright' fireball

Chelyabinsk Fireball
© www.chelyabinsk.ru/ReutersA fireball which burned up over Russia last February generated shockwaves which circled the globe twice.
An 'extremely bright fireball' was seen streaking across Irish skies on Saturday night before breaking up, Astronomy Ireland has said.

The organisation received "lots of reports" of sightings of the meteor which lit up the sky shortly after 9.30pm.

"Fireballs are seen quite rarely, but when they appear on a clear evening when people are travelling from work we often get inundated with reports," said astronomy Ireland chairman David Moore.

Reports from the public help to "determine the fireball's path through the sky and find out if it is likely to have ended up on land or in the sea," Mr Moore said.

Fireballs are very bright meteors caused by larger particles of debris from space, Astronomy Ireland said. They can seem close but occur "very high up in the atmosphere, approximately 70km and above", it said.

Fireball

Flashback Air France 447: The computer crash

As the first bodies from Air France 447 are found, investigators suspect a terrifying mix of weather and technological weakness was responsible

Meteor

Flashback Air France 447 crashed so quickly that passangers had no time to react

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Air France flight 447 did not break up in the air but plunged vertically into the Atlantic Ocean, according to the French head investigator of last month's crash, which killed all 228 people on board.

Alain Bouillard said life vests found among the wreckage were not inflated, indicating the accident happened so quickly that the passengers had no time to react.

Speed sensors on the Airbus A330 flying from Rio de Janeiro to Paris were not to blame, he said, though "we are far from understanding the cause of the crash".

"The plane seems to have hit the surface of the water on its flight trajectory with a strong vertical acceleration," he said, adding that investigators have found "neither traces of fire nor traces of explosives."

Fireball

Mexico: Fireball bazes over Leon's sky, March 5, 2014

mexico fireball
© MilenioThe fireball seen over León, Mexico.
A fireball was seen over León at 7:02 p.m. A journalist working at Milenio took a picture.

The rock was seen traveling towards the West. It appeared suddenly and then faded away in the horizon, around the Jalisco border. It was described as a fireball with a yellow trail.

Comment: Asteroid 2014 DX110 was travelling between the Moon and the Earth on the same day. The original source in Spanish tells us that the fireball seen over León was asteroid DX110, an assumption that couldn't possibly be true. First of all, the asteroid didn't enter the atmosphere. Had it done so, the "fireball" would have been huge!

The more likely explanation is that this is simply another of the many fireballs seen in the recent times.

If it were to have anything to do with the asteroid, we could speculate that it was a space rock fragment on Earth, just as the many others. For example, last February asteroid 2012-DA14 was passing close to our planet when a fireball shook several towns in Santa Fe, Argentina and almost exaclty one year earlier, a huge fireball over Chelyabinsk caused widespread damage.