For two days now, villagers and authorities in the west coast of Zamboanga remain baffled after a big ball of fire streaked from the southern skies at 5 a.m. on Wednesday, hitting the coastal water before exploding and illuminating nearby villages.

Senior Inspector Edilberto Alvarez, the police commander of Station 9, confirmed the mysterious phenomenon but could neither offer a clear explanation of the incident at Barangays La Paz and Talisayan.

Alvarez said a dull but loud explosion occurred later at the sea water fronting Barangay Talisayan.

"It was confusing because based on my own experience an improvised bomb if exploded would not create such bright and colorful light covering a massive area compared to that one... whatever it was," Alverez said.

The police official also dismissed the possibility that the ball of fire that exploded was man-made.

Dar es Salaam and Arusha - The sighting of a strange bright light in the sky on Sunday night left hundreds of Tanzanians amazed with astronomy experts connecting the incident with unpredictably heavy rains that pounded Dar es Salaam and other parts of the country on Monday.

The 'strange light in the sky' took a number of Dar es Salaam and Arusha residents by surprise and the incident scared many. Sunday nights normally find some people in big cities enjoying last hours of the weekend in public places but this time round the situation was different as some gave up drinking and rushed home fearing the worst.

Reports from weather stations around the world, however, indicate that Sunday night's sky sighting was that of 'Comet Ison' and the occurrence had been predicted before. The comet may be sighted in different parts of the world between September 29 and October 1.

Dr Noorali Jiwaji, lecturer at the Open University of Tanzania (OUT) at the faculty of Science Technology and Environmental Studies said the incident was likely to have built up moisture sufficiently thus causing the heavy rains on Monday. The last Sunday night, from around 7 pm most parts of the country observed the middle of the circle with a small point of light like a star moving steadily with the cloudy disk thus causing panic to some people.

What timing... It all gets shut down just as ISON approaches and it's raining fireballs?

What is it? Some surely natural phenomenon has appeared in a video that, so far, has defied clear identification. The above time-lapse video was made to record Perseid meteors above Hopewell Rocks in New Brunswick, Canada late this summer. The video, which ran from 9:30 pm August 11 to 3:00 am the next morning, records several meteor and satellite streaks beyond a picturesque background. Each image records a 30 second exposure. At about 25 seconds into the video, however, an unusual patchy green glow appears to cover the sky. Possible explanations include airglow, aurora, lighting from an artificial or natural source, or something completely different. This APOD is an attempt not only to solve this intriguing sky riddle, but to measure how powerful the APOD readership is as a citizen-science, collective-intelligence engine. If you have insight into what might be causing this phenomenon, please contribute to the discussion.

Video Credit & Copyright: Kevin Snair, Creative Imagery

Reports of meteor sightings are coming into the American Meteor Society by the thousands. According to one of the latest reports posted at the American Meteor Society website, "Its been a busy week for the AMS as we are bombarded by fireball reports from all different parts of the country. The latest event took place over Alabama and Georgia last night September 28th 7:30 PM local time. Over 250 witnesses from Virginia, Maryland, Kentucky, Tennessee, North Carolina, Alabama and Georgia have reported the event so far. Below is a heat map of the witnesses who saw the event. Click the image below for the event detail page and witness reports." _[1]

Exactly why these meteors are coming into the atmosphere at this time is unknown. NASA and NOAA have yet to publish any reports on this phenomenon, although they did confirm the September 10, 2013 meteor that streaked across the sky in Alabama in theguardian.com article 'Meteor enters atmosphere over Alabama and disintegrates, says Nasa'.An excerpt from the article reads, "Officials at the Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville say a baseball-size fragment of a comet entered Earth's atmosphere above Alabama at 8:18pm CDT Monday. Nasa officials say the meteor traveled at a speed of 76,000 mph. They say just three seconds after hitting the atmosphere, it disintegrated 25 miles above the central Alabama town of Woodstock, producing a flash of light. Nasa spokeswoman Janet Anderson says that because it penetrated so deep into Earth's atmosphere, eyewitnesses heard sonic booms." _[2]

September, 22 - 2013. Sunday, 8:30 pm. At Ichmul, Chikindzonot city, south of Yucatan peninsula - Merida's state, in a poor community where live some remnants of mayas, the fall of a fireball that came from the sky, scared and still is scaring the dwellers of the place.

The locals were waiting to see a show of small circus in the center of the community, when they suddenly, all saw an object in flames falling at high speed.

A large fireball was seen streaking through the night sky by at least 21 people - three of them from Delaware - about 7:30 p.m. Sunday. Witnesses reported the sighting on the American Meteor Society's website.

Middletown-area resident Dan Foraker said he also spotted it, and described the meteor as a "perfectly round ball of fire."

Foraker, who lives near Drawyers Creek off Shallcross Lake Road, said he was sitting outside talking on the phone with his son about the Redskins game, when all of a sudden a ball of fire appeared over the line of trees.

"I've never seen anything that big. I didn't know if there was a plane going down," he said. "It lasted for about six seconds and went down behind the trees. I didn't hear a sound, but I was waiting to hear a loud boom."

Foraker said he called police and a county officer showed up later and said that the state police helicopter was the only aircraft that had been up in the air about that time.

A supervisor with the New Castle County fire board today said no calls were received about that time and no one was dispatched on any calls for a plane down.

The picture you see is of a meteor "Fireball" over Indiana on Friday night. You might remember that just last week there was one seen over Canada. And then, just last night (Saturday), many News 2 viewers in Middle Tennessee saw another one. This one was also seen over Alabama according to Twitter posts I have seen.

My good friend James Spann in Birmingham says that Bill Cook from NASA says that this was the 15th significant one this month and that is "very unusual". It's hard to catch video like this on your phone because the meteor goes by too fast. The pictures of the Indiana and Canada meteors were taken by police "dash board cams".

A video of Saturday night's from James Spann's Google+ page:

Another video of the fireball over Alabama last night... captured by Melanie Witt... who writes...

"I am a band parent of the Cleveland High School Golden Force Marching Band and videoed the meteor at the band competition in Weaver, Al. We first thought the band playing on the field had shot something into the sky as part of their show but everyone decided it was a meteor. It was an amazing sight!!!"

UPDATE:

A video of last night's "fireball" taken over Alabama and relayed by James Spann of ABC 33/40 Birmingham. He also got some more comments from Bill Cooke, of NASA's Meteoroid Environments Office at the Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville:

"I would say the fireball originated in North Alabama and moved east-southeast, finally burning up over Atlanta (we had a bright one over that city 7 days ago!). The video shows that it was about the brightness of the crescent Moon, which means we are talking about a meteoroid a few inches in diameter. hard to be more precise without a speed measurement."

Moscow - A 15-meter (approximately 50 feet) asteroid, similar to the one that exploded above Russia in February, was detected hours before it nearly missed the Earth over the weekend, Russian scientists said.

Vladimir Lipunov of the Moscow State University and the Sternberg Astronomical Institute said on Sunday a network of telescopes operated by his team recorded a celestial body approaching the planet.

"[The asteroid] was discovered on Friday night by our station near Lake Baikal and nine hours later it flew within 11,300 kilometers of the Earth surface, below the orbit of geostationary satellites. It was about 15 meters in size," he said.

The scientists originally thought that it could be a man-made object, such as a spent rocket booster, but rejected the idea when they couldn't find a match in the space junk catalogue.

Lipunov said his team had notified the International Astronomical Union of their discovery, but it is yet to be confirmed.

A meteorite exploded on February 15 above the Urals city of Chelyabinsk. The meteorite weighed 10,000 tons prior to the explosion, according to expert estimates. About 1,500 people were injured in the blast, most of them by glass shattered by the shockwave.

Stamford, Connecticut - An explosion leveled a six-bedroom house on Tuesday, scattering debris hundreds of feet away, but nobody was inside and there were no serious injuries, authorities said.

The homeowner was outside near a pool house on the property in Stamford, about 35 miles northeast of New York City, at the time of the explosion, said the town's director of public safety, Ted Jankowski. The homeowner was alert and conscious when emergency crews arrived, and he was taken to a hospital for observation.

Next-door neighbor Charlene Heffernan said she heard the blast.

"I thought a plane hit my house," Heffernan told The Stamford Advocate. "I have never heard anything so loud. My house shook from the top down."

Mayor Michael Pavia said the cause of the blast was under investigation but authorities suspected gas was involved. He said a 500-gallon propane gas tank on site was under a controlled burn Tuesday afternoon.