Fire in the SkyS


Fireball

Meteor shoots across Tennessee sky

Tennesse meteor
© NASA
One of two meteors that lit up the Southern sky Thursday night burned up over Tennessee.

Bill Cooke, head of NASA's Meteoroid Environment Office, said the very bright meteor entered the atmosphere over Columbia, S.C. at 9.38 p.m. The basketball-sized meteor flew northwest at speeds reaching more than 78,000 miles-per-hour, eventually burning 52 miles above Pikeville, Tenn., just north of Chattanooga. In all, the meteor flew 290 miles, which Cooke said is quite rare.

The video below is from Cooke's blog and shows the meteor shooting across the sky.


Comment: This report of a meteor was about 45 min prior to a boom heard over West Virginia on the same night.

National Weather Service believes "boom" over West Virginia caused by meteor


Fireball 5

National Weather Service believes "boom" over West Virginia caused by meteor

Image
© File photo
Charleston - We've received calls, emails, Facebook messages and tweets from many of you asking about a loud "boom" across our region. Many reports indicate that "boom" caused the land to quake.

We started getting reports of the boom around 10:30 p.m. Thursday.

We've spoken with 911 dispatchers in Lincoln, Logan and Boone Counties. Both said the National Weather Service said they believe a meteorite passed through the area, creating a sonic boom. 13 News has learned that many of you are reporting seeing a bright flash of light across the sky.

We've received calls from Logan, Boone and Raleigh counties and have even heard reports of the "boom" as far away as Kentucky. "We hear your reports," said Chief Meteorologist Spencer Adkins. Our newsroom is checking and we're also looking at things from a weather perspective."

No 911 centers we have reached out to report any emergency explosions of any kind.

New information shows people living in other states also experienced this phenomenon. For more, click here.

Comment: Worldwide fireball events going back a year.




Question

Flaming ball falls from sky in Australia and crashes 'like a bomb'

Flaming Object
© Audience submitted: Virginia HillsFlaming object falling from the sky (bottom right of photo) seen looking east from Mount Isa about 6:30pm AEST.
Residents from across central and northern Queensland have reported seeing a huge flaming object fall from the sky.

They say what appeared to be a massive ball with a blue and orange tail hit the ground in the suburb of Kelso in Townsville around 6:30pm (AEST) last night.

Resident Kim Vega was sitting in her backyard at Kelso when she saw the moment of impact.

"It was like an explosion but without a sound," she said.

"You've just seen it was like an atomic bomb effect when it would have hit the ground and all the trees and the skies lit up."

Comment: When it comes to covering up for meteors entering the atmosphere, a falling satellite is always a good explanation. In this case, it might be, but the fact is that we live in a shooting gallery, though our scientists and governments use the media to sooth us that everything is under control, when it is not, and nobody is doing anything about it.


Question

Source of loud booms in Lakeland, Florida still a mystery

Lakeland loud boom
© UnknownResidents from the area explain the loud noise they heard from their house this morning.
The two loud booms that shook Jessica Creel's Bartow home Wednesday morning sounded just like the sonic booms from the space shuttle.

But no one seems able to explain what caused people in three counties to hear the booms about 9:30 a.m. Wednesday.

Deputies at first thought it might have been from a farm shooting off a cannon to scare birds away. The migratory cedar waxwing birds love blueberries and some farmers resort to small cannons to shoo them. The Polk County Sheriff's Office often gets complaints of booms in South Lakeland that come from a cannon at a blueberry farm there. But that wouldn't explain why the booms were heard in Polk as well as Pasco and Hillsborough counties.

Some thought it might have been from some type of military maneuver, but MacDill Air Force Base said it wasn't them. Officials there said they had checked with NASA, too. Not them either.

"We just haven't been able to find anything yet," said Sgt. Brandon Shapiro, a public affairs officer for the 6th Air Mobility Wing stationed at MacDill.

Comment: See also a chart of reports of strange sounds and booms over the period January 2012 to 8th May 2014 below.




Fireball 3

Daytime "extremely bright" fireball over New York and Canada

fireball ny
© The Canadian Press/YouTube, Sam SinghA purported meteor falls vertically (centre or image) in a video taken on Ingram Drive in North York, Ont and posted to YouTube on Sunday in Sunday May 4, 2014.
People across Western New York and Ontario Canada reported seeing an extremely bright daylight fireball.

Several people caught images of the bright object appearing to explode on dashboard cameras in their cars.

It happened Sunday at about 4:16 p.m. and people said the object had a brightness rivaling the sun.

The American Meteor Society is investigating the incident.

Comment: The skies are likely to get even busier in the very near future, if the chart and trend indicated below is anything to go by. It shows the increase of fireball reports over the last 2 and a half years - particularly since April of last year!




Fireball

Meteor sighting - Bright light seen streaking across sky over southern Ontario


Dozens of Ontario residents say they think they saw a meteor streak across the sky Sunday afternoon, and an expert says there is little doubt that is what they spotted.
Ontario Meteor
© Laurence/Twitter
Peter Brown, a professor at the University of Western Ontario who studies meteors and meteorites, says the widespread eyewitness reports and images are consistent with a meteor.

Many Ontarians took to social media or contacted the American Meteor Society to report either a flash of light or a loud rumble.

Airplane

Loud boom heard along hundreds of kilometers of French west coast said to be "sonic boom"

Image
The area in South Western France over which the loud "boom" was heard by many people
An explosion heard on Sunday May 4th at around 2pm from Bordeaux to Les Sables d'Olonne in the Vendée region was the result of a fighter jet crossing the sound barrier, according to the French Air Force.

On social networks, people of the Gironde, Vendée and Poitou-Charentes regions, an area with a radius of at least 100 miles, were wondering about the source of the massive boom that shattered the tranquility of their Sunday afternoon.

Within hours, the French Air Force claimed that the boom was caused by a French fighter jet that crossed the sound barrier as it went to intercept an American Airlines flight that was having "communication problems" as it entered French airspace.

According to an Air Force spokesperson, the jet took off from Mont de Marsan, East of Bordeaux, and then proceeded up the Western coastline. Because the situation involved a possible "security threat", the pilot was given permission to go "supersonic" in order to intercept the commercial airliner in the shortest possible time.

The French Air Force claimed that 70 similar incidents had occurred in 2013, although few, if any, such booms were heard on those occasions. The question remains, therefore, why, on this occasion, a "possible emergency situation" was declared and the pilot of the jet permitted to "go supersonic", allegedly creating the loud boom.

Comment: This report is being filed under "Fire in the Sky" due to suspicions about the official story concerning the cause of the explosion.


Fireball 2

Meteor sighted over Missouri

Fireball
© Stock image from NBC
Springfield - Many of you contacted us after seeing a flash of light in the sky and hearing a big boom late Friday night. We may now have an answer to the question, "What was that?"

Local astronomers say it was a meteor associated with the Eta Aquarids meteor shower, which is set to peak early Tuesday.

The American Meteor Society states that fireballs could be seen across seven states.

After hearing initial reports from viewers around 10:30 Friday night, KY3 posted a Facebook status asking people if they had seen anything and where they were located. More than 2,000 people commented on the post saying that they had seen and/or heard fireballs.

KY3 contacted local authorities Friday night. They did not immediately have an explanation for the flash or the boom.

Fireball

Comet fragment? Unidentified flaming object over Ibiza, Spain - 16 April

Ibiza meteor
The appearance of some kind of body in flames went across the sky of Ibiza last Wednesday evening, created all kinds of speculation on the island. From a possible large meteor to the launch of a missile or rocket, several ideas were shuffled between astronomers and space enthusiasts since the video recording was released by IB3 yesterday.

The events began on Wednesday about seven thirty in the afternoon, when a free-lance camera man, Eduardo de Miguel, who was in the area of Country Club (municipality of Sant Josep ) noticed something unusual in the sky. He grabbed his camera and was able to capture in perfect condition almost three minutes footage of this strange object, following the path West, i.e. towards Sant Antoni. As seen in the video (visible in www.diariodeibiza.es ) , the body appears as a white ball of flames which looks like a typical meteorite or comet.


Members of the Astronomical Association in Eivissa (EPA ) quickly said that it could be a meteorite ( the apex body seems to be right ). This newspaper sought information from the Ministry of Defense and after the video was examined by the department from the Air Force an official spokesman denied that could be a rocket, missile or military vehicle and considered that it is most certainly a piece of "space junk". In particular, it would be a piece (not necessarily small) a section of a spaceship or rocket, after being in orbit, and then it had re-entered the atmosphere on Wednesday. When this happens, objects catching fire by friction with the air, developing a trail of flames and smoke.

Comment:
Reports of meteors or loud booms around the time of this sighting:
Fireball meteors over Japan, 17-19 April 2014
Spectacular fireball from space explodes over Russian city (Video) - 19 April 2014
New Hampshire residents say loud noise sounded like sonic boom - 16 April 2014
Loud boom in Florida blamed on military aircraft - 16 April 2014

Also, this sighting over Ibiza is similar to a sighting of a flaming object over Finland in 2006.




Fireball 2

Meteor fireball blazes over Puerto Rico, 30 April 2014 (VIDEO)

Image
© SAC
Translated from Spanish by Sott.net

The Caribbean Astronomical Society (SAC) reported that an impressive meteor was seen throughout Puerto Rico on Wednesday night, April 30, at about 9:46 pm.

The SAC was able to capture images of the bright meteor as the institution has cameras that continuously monitor the skies above the Caribbean.