Live Weather Cameras and Bramon recorded a meteor that crossed the sky over Paraná and Rio Grande do Sul in the early hours of this holiday, Tuesday (02).


(Translated by Google)

CBET 5064 & MPEC 2021-V21, issued on 2021, November 02, announce the discovery of a new comet (magnitude ~19) by A. Maury and G. Attard on CCD images taken on October 24.3 UT with the 0.28-m f/2.2 Rowe-Ackermann Schmidt astrograph at San Pedro de Atacama, Chile in the course of the MAP (W94) survey. The new comet has been designated P/2021 U3 (Attard-Maury). This is the 4th amateur comet discovery of 2021. It is also the second comet discovered using the synthetic tracking technique (using TYCHO software).

Stacking of 51 unfiltered exposures, 60 seconds each, obtained remotely on 2021, Oct. 27.3 from X02 (Telescope Live, Chile) through a 0.61-m f/6.5 astrograph + CCD, shows that this object is a comet with a compact coma about 6" arcsecond in diameter and a tail 6" long in PA 275 (Observers E. Guido, M. Rocchetto, E. Bryssinck, M. Fulle, G. Milani, C. Nassef, G. Savini, A. Valvasori).

Stacking of 66 unfiltered exposures, 60 seconds each, obtained remotely on 2021, Oct. 29.9 from G18 (ALMO Observatory, Italy) through a 0.30-m f/4 reflector + CCD, shows that this object is a comet with a compact coma about 5" arcsec in diameter and a tail 6" long in PA 270 (Observers A. Valvasori & E. Guido).

Our confirmation images (click on the images for a bigger version; made with TYCHO software by D. Parrott)

We received 94 reports about a fireball seen over AR, IA, IL, IN, KS, MN, MO, NE and WI on Sunday, October 31st 2021 around 01:37 UT.

For this event, we received one video and 3 photos.

We received 40 reports about a fireball seen over England and Wales on Saturday, October 30th 2021 around 18:31 UT.

For this event, we received one video and 2 photos.

At dawn this Wednesday (27), a meteor crossed the sky in the three states of southern Brazil: Paraná, Rio Grande do Sul and Santa Catarina. According to the Brazilian Meteorological Observation Network (BRAMON), at least 8 cameras recorded the phenomenon.

In Rio Grande do Sul, the meteor was seen passing through Bom Princípio and Taquaral. In Santa Catarina, cameras from Florianópolis, Morro Grande and Monte Castelo recorded images of the fireball crossing the sky, which also appeared in the Paraná cities of Telêmaco Borba and Curitiba.

A team led by Southwest Research Institute has updated its asteroid bombardment model of the Earth with the latest geologic evidence of ancient, large collisions. These models have been used to understand how impacts may have affected oxygen levels in the Earth's atmosphere in the Archean eon, 2.5 to 4 billion years ago.

When large asteroids or comets struck early Earth, the energy released melted and vaporized rocky materials in the Earth's crust. The small droplets of molten rock in the impact plume would condense, solidify and fall back to Earth, creating round, globally distributed sand-size particles. Known as impact spherules, these glassy particles populated multiple thin, discrete layers in the Earth's crust, ranging in age from about 2.4 to 3.5 billion years old. These Archean spherule layers are markers of ancient collisions. "In recent years, a number of new spherule layers have been identified in drill cores and outcrops, increasing the total number of known impact events during the early Earth," said Dr. Nadja Drabon, a professor at Harvard University and a co-author of the paper.

"Current bombardment models underestimate the number of late Archean spherule layers, suggesting that the impactor flux at that time was up to 10 times higher than previously thought," said SwRI's Dr. Simone Marchi, lead author of a paper about this research in Nature Geoscience. "What's more, we find that the cumulative impactor mass delivered to the early Earth was an important 'sink' of oxygen, suggesting that early bombardment could have delayed oxidation of Earth's atmosphere."

The abundance of oxygen in Earth's atmosphere is due to a balance of production and removal processes. These new findings correspond to the geological record, which shows that oxygen levels in the atmosphere varied but stayed relatively low in the early Archean eon. Impacts by bodies larger than six miles (10 km) in diameter may have contributed to its scarcity, as limited oxygen present in the atmosphere of early Earth would have been chemically consumed by impact vapors, further reducing its abundance in the atmosphere.

We received 42 reports about a fireball seen over AL, GA, NC, SC and TN on Sunday, October 24th 2021 around 01:05 UT.

For this event, we received one video and one photo.

We received 38 reports about a fireball seen over AR, CO, IA, IL, KS, MO, MN, ND, NE, OK and TX on Saturday, October 23rd 2021 around 11:54 UT.

For this event, we received two videos.

We received 30 reports about a fireball seen over CT, MA, NH, NY, Ontario, Québec and VT on Saturday, October 23rd 2021 around 10:12 UT.

For this event, we received 5 videos and 2 photos.