Fire in the SkyS


Meteor

Recent meteor may have left pieces in Walker County


Rome News-Tribune
Fri, 16 Mar 2012 08:42 UTC
Image
© Christi McEntyreThis satellite photo provided by NASA shows the projected trajectory and possible impact zone of the meteorite. Lucky residents or property owners in this or surrounding areas might just find a small visitor from space some-where on their land. Click on image to enlarge.
On Wednesday, March 7, shortly after 10 p.m., a meteor ended its long journey across space just above Walker County.

Bill Cooke, Walker County native and current lead member of the NASA Meteorite Environmental Office, confirmed that NASA meteor-tracking cameras in Huntsville, Ala., Tullahoma, Tenn., and at the Tellus Science Museum in Cartersville, Ga., detected the bright fireball of a meteor entering Earth's atmosphere approximately 52 miles northeast of Rocky Face in Whitfield County at 10:19 p.m. on March 7.

The meteor was estimated to weigh about 50 pounds before its descent to Earth, at which time the intense heat of atmospheric entry would have broken the space rock into multiple smaller pieces.

NASA lost track of the meteor's fireball - meaning its disintegration was nearly complete - about 17 miles above Ga. 95 southeast of Rock Spring.
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Question

Mystery "Boom" Heard & Felt Across Georgia Region

Crystal Bruce
WSAV TV3
Thu, 15 Mar 2012 21:47 UTC
WSAV is looking into reports of a "boom" felt across the region this morning.

We checked with the Chatham Emergency Managemet Agency and the US Geological Survey. Neither report any tremors in the area.

The National Weather Service says there was no weather related activity in the area.

As far as military bases, Hunter, Ft. Stewart and Beaufort Marine Corp Air Station all say it didn't have anything to do with them.

However, the Air National Guard says anytime military jets are training off the coast they can cause a sonic boom.

And GEMA confirms that they've talked to the military and they do have some reports of training exercises going on.
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Meteor

Best of the Web: Third fireball explodes over Norway this month

Geir Barstein
Dagbladet Nyheter
Wed, 14 Mar 2012 14:59 UTC
Translated by Sott.net reader
Image
Before the dust from the previous meteor had settled down, a new meteor illuminated the night sky over the eastern part of Norway. Tonight's fireball was observed at 00.09.30 on the 14th of March, and was visible for just under 6 seconds, Steinar Midtskogen told Dagbladet.

The astronomy enthusiast had erected a camera that surveys the sky from Voksenlia in Holmenkollåsen. It is so far not possible to determine whether the object burnt up in the atmosphere or if parts of it reached the ground in the form of meteorites.

This one was weaker than the one we saw on March 1st. Whether it produced any meteorite downfall is too early to tell but it is definitely a candidate that should be followed up, according to Midtskogen.


Comment: So, maybe larger amounts of debris are entering this 'area of space', rather than the other way around?

There has indeed been an incredible number of fireballs lately, of which the three over eastern Norway are just a few...

9 March, Fireball Spotted Over North Georgia

4 March: Meteor Shower Dazzles Victorians Lucky Enough to See It

4 March: Thousands Witness Spectacular Fireball Streak Over UK

2 March: Fireball seen from southern Norway and Sweden

2 March: Green Fireball Seen All Over Southeastern Canada

1 March: Green Object Reported in the Sky Over Newfoundland

29 February: What Was The Bright Flash In The Sky Tuesday Night?

22 February: "Huge fireball" streaks through Edmonton sky

22 February: Meteor Rain in China

14 February: Exploding UFO Wakes Thousands in South Carolina

12 February: Exploding Fireball recorded over Okayama, Japan

5 February: Fireball with huge tail seen over Western Australia

5 February: Fireball Photographed Over Corfu, Greece

4 February: East coast of US lights up as another enormous fireball streaks through sky

2 February: Huge Fireball Over Tokyo, 2 February 2012

1 February: Wednesday night's Texas meteor so bright it was seen in Kansas

1 February: Halifax 'fireball' probably a meteor

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Meteor

Mystery fireball lights up sky in Tasmania


ninemsn.com.au
Mon, 05 Mar 2012 17:16 UTC
A fiery meteor has lit up the sky over Victoria and Tasmania.

The object, described as a glowing red fireball moving horizontally across the sky about 10.45pm (AEDT) on Sunday, was an unusual sight for this time of year, according to astronomer David Reneke.

Observers say the meteor was visible for about 20 seconds.

Professor Reneke says he and his colleagues are at a loss to explain the timing and exact nature of the meteor.

It may have been a slow-moving piece of rock that ignited or a piece of space junk, he said.

"It's unprecedented, we don't seem to be in a meteor shower period at the moment," Professor Reneke said.
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Meteor

Sungrazing Comet Swan Does Not Survive


Space Weather
Thu, 15 Mar 2012 16:32 UTC
Sungrazing Comet SWAN, which dove into the sun's atmosphere during the late hours of March 14th, apparently did not survive. In the following 10 hour movie, Comet SWAN enters the solar corona but does not exit again:


Comet SWAN was a Kreutz sungrazer, a fragment of the same ancient comet that produced sungrazing Comet Lovejoy in Dec. 2011. Comet Lovejoy famously survived its brush with the sun and put on a flamboyant show after it emerged from the solar fire. While Comet SWAN was cut from the same cloth, it was a smaller fragment that has completely evaporated.

The CME emerging from the sun's northwestern limb near the end of the movie was not caused by this tiny comet's impact. It is just another eruption of active sunspot 1429.

Stay tuned to comet expert Karl Battam's blog for updates.
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Meteor

Another meteorite found in Oslo


Nordic Labour Journal
Wed, 14 Mar 2012 15:03 UTC
Image
Liv Kibsgaard with her 700 gram meteorite
A woman out walking her dog on the large grassy hilltop plateau known as Ekebergsletta in Oslo found the second meteorite in as many days in Norway's capital on Tuesday. She said it was better that winning the local lottery.

"I laid awake several hours last night and thought about how lucky I was," Liv Kibsgaard told Norwegian Broadcasting (NRK) on Wednesday. Her brother, who is a geologist, advised her to be careful with the meteorite, wrap it up "and don't tell anyone right away."

Kibsgaard's discovery of a 700-gram meteorite lying on the grass at Ekeberg followed the discovery of a 585-gram meteorite on Sunday that had crashed through the roof of a cabin in Oslo's Rodeløkka district. Astrophysicist Knut Jørgen Røed Ødegaard had predicted on Monday that more meteorites could likely be found as well, and he's been proven correct.

"There are still probably more pieces lying around waiting to be found, because we can see on these stones that pieces have fallen off as they traveled through the atmosphere," Ødegaard said. "It's just to keep your eyes open. Now there are stones from outer space in Oslo and Akershus."
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Meteor

Meteorite chunk falls on Oslo


Agence France-Presse
Mon, 12 Mar 2012 13:47 UTC
Image
© Agence France-PresseAn apparent meteorite that split in two after hitting the roof of a cottage in central Oslo
A Norwegian family was flabbergasted to find that what appeared to be a piece of a meteorite had crashed through the roof of their allotment garden hut in the middle of Oslo, media reported Monday.

The rock weighing 585 grammes (one pound, four ounces), which split in two, probably detached from a meteorite observed over Norway on March 1, experts said, and had landed on the empty hut in the Thomassen family's allotment in a working-class neighbourhood of the Norwegian capital.

Astrophysicist Knut Joergen Roed Oedegaard and his wife Anne Mette Sannes, a meteorite enthusiast, identified the object as a breccia, or a rock composed of broken fragments of minerals or rock.
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Sun

Huge Sphere in Sun's Corona? Or Electrical Phenomena?


You Tube
Sun, 11 Mar 2012 00:00 UTC
Incredible!! March 11th, 2012.

SDO-AIA 171

SOHO EIT 171


Comment: It looks like a dramatic Birkeland current. Read The Electric Sky by Donald E. Scott, Ph.D. and The Electric Universe by Wallace Thornhill and David Talbott. Two good, basic books on the topic.

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Sun

A Perfect Solar Superstorm: The 1859 Carrington Event


Discover Magazine
Wed, 14 Mar 2012 10:19 UTC
Image
© NASAA solar flare erupts on January 22, 2012
Last Thursday, the world braced itself as the strongest solar storm in five years raced toward the planet. Fortunately, it delivered only a glancing blow, and global communications continued to operate without disruption. In 1859 Earth wasn't so lucky.

The Carrington Event

On the morning of September 1, 1859, amateur astrologer Richard Carrington ascended into the private observatory attached to his country estate outside of London. After cranking open the dome's shutter to reveal the clear blue sky, he pointed his brass telescope toward the sun and began to sketch a cluster of enormous dark spots that freckled its surface. Suddenly, Carrington spotted what he described as "two patches of intensely bright and white light" erupting from the sunspots. Five minutes later the fireballs vanished, but within hours their impact would be felt across the globe.

That night, telegraph communications around the world began to fail; there were reports of sparks showering from telegraph machines, shocking operators and setting papers ablaze. All over the planet, colorful auroras illuminated the nighttime skies, glowing so brightly that birds began to chirp and laborers started their daily chores, believing the sun had begun rising. Some thought the end of the world was at hand, but Carrington's naked eyes had spotted the true cause for the bizarre happenings: a massive solar flare with the energy of 10 billion atomic bombs. The flare spewed electrified gas and subatomic particles toward Earth, and the resulting geomagnetic storm - dubbed the "Carrington Event" - was the largest on record to have struck the planet.
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Meteor

Kansans witness early morning meteor

Stan Finger
The Wichita Eagle
Tue, 13 Mar 2012 07:08 UTC

A flash of light in the early morning sky over the Great Plains on Tuesday lit up social media and cyberspace as witnesses tried to figure out what they had seen.

"It was like the whole sky lit up for just a second," Joe Kleinsasser said in an e-mail about what he saw as he drove from Hillsboro to work at Wichita State University at about 6:45 a.m.

More than 50 people in five states - Oklahoma, Kansas, Arkansas, Nebraska and Missouri - reported the flash to the Lunar Meteorite Hunters website on Tuesday:

Bob Henry, program director at the Wichita State University Lake Afton Observatory, said the light appears to have been a meteor about the size of a baseball.

"Something that size is going to be very, very bright and very, very noticeable," Henry said.

Comment: Bob Henry doesn't know what he's talking about. Hundreds of thousands if not millions of people have seen meteors in recent years.

Fire in the Sky

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