Huge New Zealand explosion likely caused by meteor 12 September 2006 Stuff.co.nz A meteorite is believed to have burned up over Canterbury today before slamming into the ground in a field. A loud boom heard throughout the region was most likely to be from a meteorite, up to the size of a medicine ball, Stardome Observatory in Auckland says. The loud boom was heard over Canterbury, with sightings as far afield as Hanmer Springs in North Canterbury, and Hinds in Mid-Canterbury. Observatory spokesman Andrew Buckingham told NZPA: "We're still finding out what's going on". Initial reports had come through the police communications system, with follow ups from eyewitness accounts. "It sounds like a large meteor coming down... soccer ball size upwards," Mr Buckingham said. It was more likely to be one large rock entering the earth's atmosphere as a fireball, rather than a meteor shower. The boom was either the meteor breaking the sound barrier or exploding as it burned up. Stardome Observatory in Auckland's spokesman Andrew Buckingham said it was not a particularly unusual event. New Zealand had one or two fireballs a year. This one had been "at a time and place where people have seen it". It sounded very similar to a bright fireball seen in Taranaki on July 7, 1999, he said. Stardome wanted to see camera or film footage of the fireball, he said. Emergency services were inundated with calls from the public about the noise, with initial reports suggesting a meteor strike. A Christchurch Fire Communications spokesman said the first calls from the public started at 2.53pm today, with people reporting windows rattling and the air "shaking". There was speculation a "sonic boom" had been caused by space debris, he said. Several people reported seeing a glowing red ball streaking over the Canterbury sky. "Whilst sunning myself in Ilam, I saw a bright meteorite fly high over one of the buildings with a yellow tinge. It continued for about five seconds before breaking off into two smaller pieces and disapearing. Seconds later a loud rumble permeated the air, which startled me," said Georgia Weaver from the University of Canterbury. The meteor has shown up on the McQueen's Valley seismograph. A GNS Science spokeswoman said they were aware of the incident. "Something has hit the ground hard, it's not an earthquake," she said. An Air Force spokesman told NZPA none of their aircraft were responsible - none of the current fleet went fast enough to create a sonic boom. The Christchurch airport had reported they had no planes that were capable of making such a noise. Kevin Graham, garage workshop owner in Rolleston - 22km southwest of Christchurch - told NZPA when he heard the boom his first thought was it was a September 11 anniversary attack. "I don't frighten very easily, but I was just about sh**ing myself." Mr Graham said he was inside his workshop at the time the boom hit. "I've been talking to my wife at Addington and she had run outside because she thought the stand was going to collapse. And I ran outside because I thought my place was going to collapse as well." Mr Graham said he could feel the shock waves in the air so thought it was close, but a truck driver had reported to a local rep he had seen a meteorite fall from the sky into a field in Hinds, 19km southwest of Ashburton. He said the sound was like a CNG tank exploding. "It started off with a little boom then a real massive boom. And I mean massive - like the daddy of all booms." The noise was so loud it shook the garage, he said. "I was wondering what happened and I thought 'Oh, September 12', because we're a day ahead of the States. "As you do, because everyone is talking about it at the moment." Hanmer Springs police officer Senior Constable Chris Hughey likened a meteor shooting across the skies over Canterbury today to Haley's Comet which he saw when it last passed near Earth in 1986. Mr Hughey said he saw the meteor to the south of the North Canterbury resort town just before 3pm and it appeared to be coming in on a 30deg angle travelling west to east. "All it looked like was a vapour trail from a plane coming in at huge altitude," he said. "It was a crystal clear day here in Hanmer and it appeared to have a red ball or something at the front. Then it split into about three and just disappeared." Mr Hughey said he did not hear the loud sonic boom that was heard in Christchurch and elsewhere. "We didn't have the explosion. It wasn't that overly startling from here, but it was something I've never seen before." Mr Hughey said he'd seen a few small meteors "coming in here and there" over the years but nothing like today's one. . ."never coming in on that angle. "I've seen them going horizontally across the sky. "I've never seen one coming virtually straight down like that. "It just disintegrated at great altitude. It was moving, too. I don't know what speed they come in at, but it was going." Mr Hughey said the show lasted no more than a few seconds. "I called a radio station and told them to expect a few calls," he said. "I don't think they believed me." The Press and NZPA

Mysterious light streaks across Washington sky By JIM FORMAN KING 5 News Monday, September 11, 2006 SEATTLE - Around 7:30 p.m. Monday, KING 5 News' phones started to ring as viewers reported seeing a ball of flames shooting across the skies of Western Washington. The calls came in mostly from Pierce and Kitsap counties. Michael Witig and his wife were out barbecuing when they saw something streaking through the sky. They kept rolling as the fiery tail grew behind the mystery object. KING 5 News contacted the Air Force, FAA, National Weather Service and other local authorities, but could not immediately find an explanation for what streaked across the sky and what was caught on tape.

Flashback: Fireball sparks plane crash alert Monday, 21 August 2006, 11:25 GMT 12:25 UK A meteor shower sparked fears a large aircraft was crashing into the sea off the Hebrides. The Maritime and Coastguard Agency in Stornoway received dozens of calls on Friday night about a fireball falling from the sky. Lifeboat crews in the Western Isles were alerted as emergency services prepared for a large scale disaster. However, the cause of the fireball was linked to meteor shower Kappa Cygnid which peaked at the weekend. A coastguard spokesman said: "We received numerous 999 calls with around 40 alone on Friday night. "People were reporting seeing something like a plane going down with a tail of smoke behind it. "It would have been a shooting star from meteor activity." Five meteors The spokesman added: "We discussed the situation with RAF Kinloss and other sources and concluded it was meteor activity. "We got calls from all over such as Stoer on Skye and from Barra to Barvas." Kappa Cygnid is active between 15-22 August. Five meteors can be seen in an hour but it can also result in bright yellow-blue fireballs, according to the British Astronomical Association's website.

Flashback: Fireball Seen Over Texas August 3, 2006 A police dashboard camera caught a fireball streaking through the night over central Texas Tuesday night. Some say they saw the object split into several pieces before it died out. One astronomer believes it was a meteor, though some others say it might have been space junk re-entering the atmosphere. So far, no word from NASA, which tracks space junk.

Flashback: Fireball sightings stretch to Wyoming RONA JOHNSON COLUMN Posted on Sat, Jun. 24, 2006 On June 2, Dayne LaHooe was driving on a gravel road through Grand Teton National Park in Wyoming when something caught his eye. "It was the most spectacular thing I've ever seen - I have never seen anything like it before," he said. LaHooe called after he read my June 10 column in the Herald about the fireball that streaked across the sky June 2. "It shot across the sky and looked like it landed right behind the Tetons," he said. LaHooe, who works in Jackson Hole, Wyo., figured it was about 9:30 p.m., because the stars hadn't even come out yet. He didn't say much to anyone about it because he thought they wouldn't believe him. But he did tell his girlfriend and her father. Then, as luck would have it, his girlfriend's father, who lives in the Twin Cities, was driving through this area and somehow came across my column and sent it to LaHooe. From Minnesota Errol and Chris Johnson, who are from Chewelah, Wash., were in Roseau, Minn., on June 2. They were celebrating Errol's uncle Glen Johnson's 86th birthday. It was about 11:30 p.m. and Errol and about five other family members were sitting in the breezeway of his uncle's home when they heard some distant booming noises. "My wife said it sounded like a baseball bat hitting the side of the house - like a sonic boom, I thought," he said. Johnson decided to go outside to see if there was anything going on. "Almost immediately, I saw two large fireballs with tails fly by, moving from the south-southeast as they appeared to descend to the north," Errol said. He called to the other family members to come, but the meteor was out of range by the time they got outside. Johnson and his wife didn't hear anything more about the fireball until after they had returned to Washington. "My aunt and uncle sent a thank you card and they sent along your article," he said. That's when Johnson called me. Using Google Earth, Johnson was able to find the exact longitude and latitude of where he was standing when he saw the fireballs, which were 48 degrees, 50 minutes, 34.68 seconds north latitude and 95 degrees, 45 minutes, 38.84 seconds west longitude. "As far as the angle off of the horizon, I am thinking I had to be looking up about 60 to 75 degrees as I looked directly east," he said. Over in N.D. At the same time that Johnson saw the fireball, Leann Weber was in a tractor cultivating a field about 3 miles north of Cando, N.D. It was about midnight and there was no moon. "All of a sudden, the sky just lit up," Weber said. She said the fireball stayed in the sky for about a minute. "As it was falling, you could see debris coming off it and it started breaking apart," she said. "I've never seen anything like it, and probably will never see any like it again. I guess it's a good reason to keep cultivating late at night." Weber, who works at the Herald as a copy editor, was reminded of the sighting when she was reading my column the night before it appeared in the Herald. If you read my column June 10, you know that I was sitting in University Park in Grand Forks during the American Cancer Society's Relay for Life when I saw the fireball. It's fun to hear from people who saw the fireball, but I still haven't received any photos - hint, hint. And it would be really cool to find out if anyone has found any pieces of the meteorite. I have to apologize to anyone who has been trying to e-mail me lately. My e-mail address has been missing an "r" for the last month and wasn't caught until this last week. I haven't been ignoring your e-mails, I just haven't received them.

Flashback: Fire in the sky: A bright fireball that blazed over the Northland on Friday night BY STEVE KUCHERA Duluth NEWS TRIBUNE STAFF WRITER 7 June 06 The mysterious light seen over the Northland on Friday night was an especially bright meteor seen in at least two states and Canada. "Anyone who saw it should count themselves as lucky -- they are probably not going to see another one like that in their lifetime," Scott Young said. Young is an astronomer and manager of the planetarium and science gallery at the Manitoba Museum in Winnipeg. The museum is collecting reports of sightings of Friday's fireball, which traveled from south to north over the Northland about 11:35 p.m. Friday. "We have a couple hundred e-mails, and my receptionist is taking phone calls as quick as they come in," Young said. "I'm sure thousands of people saw it, because it went right over our cottage country area." Using information from witnesses and the mathematical process of triangulation, the museum hopes to determine the fireball's exact path. "That intersects the ground at some point, and that's where you go look for pieces," Young said. If the museum is able to triangulate the fireball's path, it will publish the results so residents can look for its remains. Young believes it likely that parts of the fireball survived their fiery plunge. "There was a sonic boom heard over the Lake of the Woods area, and that generally means that it has penetrated very low into the atmosphere," he said. "If it does that, then generally pieces can survive." According to NASA, as many as 4 billion meteors enter the Earth's atmosphere every day, many at speeds about 45 miles per second. Friction with the air causes them to glow. Most meteors are just specks of dust that burn up in a brilliant streak of light. Fireballs are different. They can weigh pounds -- large enough to illuminate a long path through the sky. Some fireballs, called bolides, explode with a loud, thunderous sound. Friday's fireball broke into several pieces, witnesses said. "It broke up into two pieces -- one big ball and one little ball," said Tim Leseman of Eveleth. Many people who saw Friday's fireball compared it to fireworks traveling horizontally rather than vertically. From any spot, it was visible for as long as 15 seconds. "Unfortunately, it doesn't seem to have been enough time for anyone to take a picture," Young said. The fireball was seen from places as far afield as Brandon, Manitoba (more than 100 miles west of Winnipeg), northwestern Lake of the Woods (where it appeared to pass directly overhead), Orr, Eveleth, Duluth, the Lake Mille Lacs area and Danbury, Wis. "Everyone generally thinks it was just over the trees or just over the hills, but when a meteor like this is actually visible, it's usually 20 to 40 kilometers (12 to 25 miles) above the Earth," Young said. "It's way, way up there." A meteor's chemical makeup and temperature determine what color its glow will be. Many witnesses described Friday's fireball as being green or bluish-green in color (common for a stony meteor), turning to red near the end of its flight. Chris Magney of Duluth saw the fireball as he walked in the University of Minnesota Duluth area. "I just looked up, and right there in front of me I saw what looked like a firework," he said. "It was giving off some kind of trail. It wasn't an evenly spaced trail. It was kind of sparking off parts. It looked to be kind of bluish-green." The fireball was larger than past meteors he's seen. "This was probably one-eighth or one-tenth the size of the moon -- much larger than any background star," he said. "Just because of the light intensity it must have been pretty hot, whatever it was. It was moving as fast as the shooting stars I've seen." He watched as it appeared to follow an arc, vanishing over the northwestern horizon. Leseman was letting his dog out when he happened to look up to the west as the fireball blazed past. It was in sight for perhaps 10 seconds. "It was the size of the moon and it was moving slowly from south to north," he said. "It was very bright with a long tail, and it looked like it was rolling as if it was burning up.... I got a huge chill watching it." STEVE KUCHERA can be reached at (218) 279-5503, toll free at (800) 456-8282, or by e-mail at skuchera@duluthnews.com.

Flashback: Fireball: Object in sky nets 100 calls By ADAM CLAYTON Winnipeg Sun The Manitoba Museum has been flooded with phone calls from people who spotted a strange object in the sky. Resident astronomer Scott Young said the museum has received at least 100 calls about an eerie green light that appeared in the sky on Friday night. Young believes the object was either a small asteroid or a chunk of comet that shattered into several pieces after burning up in the Earth's atmosphere. "The receptionist is doing nothing but answering calls and taking numbers right now and I think I'm up to 180 e-mails," he said. "Lots of people saw it." Eyewitnesses from Dryden to Brandon and as far south as Duluth, Minn., have reported seeing the object. EYEWITNESS ACCOUNTS SOUGHT Ufology Research of Manitoba, a Winnipeg-based independent centre that collects data on Canadian UFO reports, is assisting the museum in gathering eyewitness accounts to determine the object's flight path. Spokesman Chris Rutkowski said he's received more than a dozen calls so far. "They all report seeing a brilliant blue or green light moving through the sky with a long tail," he said. "There may have been somebody who captured it on a cellphone camera." Young said the end point of the object's flight path is somewhere in northwestern Ontario. It's not known whether any pieces reached the ground. "The first step is to figure out the trajectory and where pieces might come down," he said. "If it's a reasonable place to go looking, then we'll look for pieces," he said. People can send an e-mail to skyinfo@manitobamuseum.ca or call 956-2830.