Fire in the SkyS


Meteor

"Fireballs of February"?

In the middle of the night on February 13th, something disturbed the animal population of rural Portal, Georgia. Cows started mooing anxiously and local dogs howled at the sky. The cause of the commotion was a rock from space.

"At 1:43 AM Eastern, I witnessed an amazing fireball," reports Portal resident Henry Strickland. "It was very large and lit up half the sky as it fragmented. The event set dogs barking and upset cattle, which began to make excited sounds. I regret I didn't have a camera; it lasted nearly 6 seconds."

Strickland witnessed one of the unusual "Fireballs of February." "This month, some big space rocks have been hitting Earth's atmosphere," says Bill Cooke of NASA's Meteoroid Environment Office. "There have been five or six notable fireballs that might have dropped meteorites around the United States."
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A fireball over north Georgia recorded on Feb. 13th by a NASA all-sky camera in Walker Co., GA.

Video link

It's not the number of fireballs that has researchers puzzled. So far, fireball counts in February 2012 are about normal. Instead, it's the appearance and trajectory of the fireballs that sets them apart.

"These fireballs are particularly slow and penetrating," explains meteor expert Peter Brown, a physics professor at the University of Western Ontario. "They hit the top of the atmosphere moving slower than 15 km/s, decelerate rapidly, and make it to within 50 km of Earth's surface."

Comment: We've been searching for any historical references to this so-called "February Fireballs" suggestion, but nothing has turned up so far. Is NASA spinning another yarn?? As James McCanney explained in Planet-X, Comets & Earth Changes, NASA's real role is to keep the public misinformed about the threat from cometary debris:
As this book goes to print, all the major observatories of the world are being taken off line. Astronomers are being told not to discuss "Planet X" with the public. As with [Hale-Bopp], NASA has shut the door on release of information. They are positioning their scientists to become part of the nightly national weather programs, and to be in position to defray any public awareness of what is truly happening with the Sun and our planetary system. (p. 84)

The truth is that NASA, the NSA, and other government agencies are prohibited by law from disclosing to the public anything that would cause a national panic. So too they will try to prevent dissemination of my theories about comets because it might cause a public to redirect its allegiance as a new and potentially dangerous comet comes into the solar system. While the government officials are using tax dollars to build safety caves for their "shadow government" in case of "major disaster", they are leaving the public out to dry with no forewarning or protection. (p. 83)
The past month has seen a number of enormous fireballs and overhead explosions, attracting a lot of attention around the world, so is NASA here indulging in a little Orwellian creative writing to present the recent fireballs as part of a recurring phenomenon that "has been observed for decades", when in fact it is entirely new (in the modern era anyway)?


Meteor

"Huge fireball" streaks through Edmonton sky

You may go your whole life without seeing a meteor. But Andy Steblyk has already seen two in less than four years.

First, there was the big meteor that made international headlines in November 2008. Steblyk had a front row seat as he was driving south of Grande Prairie. And then Tuesday night as he was driving in downtown Edmonton, Steblyk saw something very similar in the eastern sky.

"A huge fireball, and the tail was just sparkling," recalls Steblyk. "It's like something you'd see in a cartoon or in a movie."

"Even telling the story again, it makes me shake a bit that I get to see this kind of stuff. Not too many people get to see one in their lifetime, and I got to see two," adds Steblyk, estimating that the whole thing lasted between five and seven seconds.

At first he thought the flash of light was a plane crash. But as it kept falling and getting brighter, Steblyk noticed how similiar it was to what he saw in 2008. He says with luck like this, he knows exactly what he needs to do next.

Comment: Was Andy Steblyk just 'lucky' or is there presently a greater probability of anyone in the region seeing more than one fireball in his or her lifetime? Meteor statistics suggest that many more of us will have the opportunity to 'wish upon a shooting star' in the coming years.

Canada: Halifax 'fireball' probably a meteor, 2 February 2012

Meteor Flashes Through Edmonton Sky, 13 January 2012

Fireball streaks across early-morning sky in Edmonton, 31 March 2009

Fireball spotted in Edmonton sky, 27 November 2009

Fireball over Edmonton, 20 November 2008

Meteorites hit near Redwater, passed over Edmonton, 29 May 2007


Meteor

Meteor Rain in China

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The newspaper News of Shenzhen in Chinese today announced, that in the Chinese province of Qinghai was a strong meteor rain, during which on the land fell a several dozen meteorites, the largest of which reached a weight of 12.5 kg (see the photo, left).

It is reported, that the local residents heard two loud explosions in the sky and then saw the traces of fire falling meteorites. While the investigated area is only about a few square kilometers, scientists may be able to find more meteorites in this place. How to say the Chinese scientists - all meteorites are the fragments of a large meteorite, which crashed, when it entering in the Earth's atmosphere.

Meteor

Shooting star spotted in Canadian skies

Calgary - Social media was abuzz about what appeared to be a meteor shooting over the city Tuesday night, with sightings also reported from Edmonton and parts of Saskatchewan.

One reader told the Herald she saw the bright green fireball northeast of Cochrane shortly before 9 p.m. followed by a sparking tail of yellow and orange.

Alan Dyer, an astronomer with Telus Spark, encouraged people to file reports online here.

"If we get at least a few dozen reports, we can begin to triangulate the location," he said, adding witnesses should indicate where they were when they spotted the meteor.

He said most meteors burn up entirely before making it to earth.

Source: Postmedia News

Sun

Partial Solar Eclipse

Today, the new Moon passed in front of the sun, off-center, producing a partial solar eclipse. The only place to see it was from space. NASA's Solar Dynamics Observatory (SDO) sends this picture from geosynchronous orbit approximately 36,000 km above Earth's surface:
Partial Eclipse
© NASA
Using a bank of 16 megapixel cameras, SDO observed the event at multiple extreme ultraviolet wavelengths. Scan the edge of the Moon in this 171 Å image: The little bumps and irregularities you see are lunar mountains backlit by solar plasma.

Beyond the novelty of observing an eclipse from space, these images have practical value to the SDO science team. The sharp edge of the lunar limb helps researchers measure the in-orbit characteristics of the telescope--e.g., how light diffracts around the telescope's optics and filter support grids. Once these are calibrated, it is possible to correct SDO data for instrumental effects and sharpen the images even more than before.

The next solar eclipse visible from Earth's surface occurs on May 20, 2012: video.

Meteor

Video of last week's enormous fireball over South Carolina


Meteor

New Comet: P/2012 C3 (PANSTARRS)

Cbet nr. 3021, issued on 2012, February 16, announces the discovery of a new comet (discovery magnitude 21.6) by Larry Denneau and Richard Wainscoat in four exposures taken with the 1.8-m Pan-STARRS 1 telescope at Haleakala on February 15.3. The new comet has been designated P/2012 C3 (PANSTARRS).

We performed some follow-up measurements of this object, while it was still on the neocp. Stacking of ten R-filtered exposures, 60-sec each, obtained remotely, from the Siding Spring-Faulkes Telescope South on 2012, Feb. 16.6, through a 2.0-m f/10.0 Ritchey-Chretien + CCD, shows that this object is a comet: faint fan-shaped tail, nearly 6-arcsec long in PA 284.

Our confirmation image:

Comet Pan-Starrs
© Remanzacco Observatory
M.P.E.C. 2012-D03 assignes the following preliminary parabolic orbital elements to comet P/2012 C3: T 2011 Oct. 11.99; e= 0.61; Peri. = 346.39; q = 3.67 AU; Incl.= 9.38

Meteor

US: Ancient meteorite standing between one Iowa town and its water supply

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© Iowa Geological and Water Survey
The remains of a 1.5 mile-wide, 10 billion-ton meteorite are causing problems for a small Iowa town, 74 million years after it crashed onto the Earth's surface at 45,000 miles per hour.

The Des Moines Register reports that the 1,600 residents of Manson, Iowa are struggling to locate a site for the town's well due to the geological impact of the meteorite. The crash created the underground Manson Crater - which has a diameter of 24 miles and reaches into four neighboring counties.

"It's hard to predict exactly what you are going to hit," state geologist Robert Libra told the Register. "It's a jumbled mess."

For a little context, the asteroid blamed for wiping out the dinosaurs and most life on Earth 65 million years ago is estimated to have been about 9 miles in diameter. According to a 2010 article in the journal Science, that impact was the equivalent of 1,000,000 Hiroshima nuclear bombs, creating tsunamis and earthquakes measuring more than 10 on the Richter scale.

Meteor

Wilsford-cum-Lake doorstep meteorite 'biggest to fall in UK'

Wilsford-cum-Lake meteorite
© BBC NewsExperts said it would have taken at least four people to lift the meteorite
Mystery had always surrounded the origins of a 200lb (90kg) meteorite that had been on the doorstep of a Wiltshire house for more than 80 years.

Experts had wondered if the space rock had initially landed in another part of the world several thousand years ago and had been brought at some stage over to England

However, researchers now believe the 1.6ft (50cm) long rock may have landed 30,000 years ago closer to home - making it possibly the largest meteorite ever found in Britain.

Attention

Aurora Whirlpool

Sometimes the sky surprises us. On Feb. 14-15, with little warning, geomagnetic activity rippled around the Arctic Circle, producing an outbreak of auroras that veteran observers said was among the best in months. At the height of the display, a US Defense Meteorological Program satellite photographed a whirlpool of Northern Lights just north of the Bering Sea:

Aurora's
© US DMSP
"A number of images from the DMSP F18 satellite captured the dramatic auroral event of the last couple nights," says analyst Paul McCrone, who processed processed the data at the US Navy's Fleet Numerical Meteorology and Oceanography Center in Monterey, CA.

The reason for the outburst is still not completely clear. It got started on Feb. 14th when a magnetic disturbance rippled around the Arctic Circle. No CME was obvious in local solar wind data at the time; the disturbance just ... happened. Once begun, the disturbance was amplified by the actions of the interplanetary magnetic field (IMF) near Earth. The IMF tipped south, opening a crack in our planet's magnetic defenses. Solar wind poured in and fueled the auroras.