5 Feb 2012: 'sas' Perth - 01.10am 10 sec. Australia - Yellowish huge yellowish shooting star not that I saw. No photo
5 Feb 2012: 'Rhett' WA Kalgoorlie - 1:05:00 15 seconds. N-S, Green As the moon N/A I've never see anything like it, it had a huge tail.
5 Feb 2012: 'dan' perth, WA, Australia - 1:18 15 seconds. N-S, orange, blue, yellow brighter than moon, larger than moon none massive, bigger than moon.
5 Feb 2012: 'Tara Isaac' Perth, Western Australia - 01.10 hours approx 20 secs. E-W, Large, bright green fiery head, long white tail. Brighter than Venus. No photo, seen while driving freeway North
Fire in the Sky
© lunarmeteoritehunters.blogspot.com
Kudos to http://lunarmeteoritehunters.blogspot.com for putting this map of eyewitness reports together. The Neon Markers are Sighting Reports and the Red Circle Markers are Allsky Camera Locations. Hopefully one of them picked up visual of this fireball.
Kudos to http://lunarmeteoritehunters.blogspot.com for putting this map of eyewitness reports together. The Neon Markers are Sighting Reports and the Red Circle Markers are Allsky Camera Locations. Hopefully one of them picked up visual of this fireball.
"It looked a lot brighter than a shooting star," German Osorio wrote on InsideNova.com's Facebook page. "Maybe only a few hundred feet up and it had that color that propane gets when it burns."
Kseniya Ledbetter of Fairfax said she spotted the fireball as she drove along Braddock Road east of Va. 28 around 10:15 p.m. "The most beautiful thing I ever saw! It was changing colors and then went out right above Hampton Chase neighborhood."
NASA, the FAA and the National Weather Service have yet to weigh in on the sky phenomena, but the website "The Latest Worldwide Meteor/Meteorite News" had more than 100 posts Saturday about the fireball from people in Virginia, New Jersey, New York, Maryland and North Carolina.
The American Meteor Society had 56 reports of a fireball sighting, again from New Jersey to North Carolina. Most reports came from Virginia and Maryland.
"Big and blue with a red tail. Looked like a meteor to us," Jessica Guido of Stafford wrote on our Facebook page.
Witnesses reported seeing the fireball between 10 and 10:30 p.m. All described it as very bright and very low.
"It was awesome, bright as could be with a hint of blue green," wrote Michele Janke, who saw the fireball along Prince William Parkway.
© Bill Metallinos
Photo details: Canon EOS 40D camera; 15mm fisheye lens; f/2.8; ISO 800; 30 second exposure; Photoshop; Cropped.
Car's DVR camera captured a UFO. A glowing object fell from the sky on the outskirts of the village Novobureysk. The footage shows the date and time: January 22, 2012, 9:10.
Cbet nr. 3012, issued on 2012, February 04, announces the discovery of a new comet (discovery magnitude 18.3) on CCD images taken with the 0.45-m f/2.8 reflector at La Sagra, Spain on January 29.1, 2012. The apparently asteroidal object was later noted by Jaime Nomen on La Sagra images taken on Jan. 30.2 to be a possible comet with slight diffuseness. The new comet has been designated C/2012 B3 (LA SAGRA).
We performed some follow-up measurements of this object, while it was still on the neocp. Stacking of 10 R-filtered exposures, 20-sec each, obtained remotely, from the Haleakala-Faulkes Telescope North on 2012, Jan.30.6, through a 2.0-m f/10.0 Ritchey-Chretien + CCD, under good seeing conditions, shows that this object appears "soft", compared to the nearby field stars of similar brightness (stellar FWHM of 1.2").
Our confirmation image:
M.P.E.C. 2012-C23 assignes the following preliminary parabolic orbital elements to comet C/2012 B3: T 2011 Nov. 29.91; e= 1.00; Peri. = 49.22; q = 3.52 AU; Incl.= 106.85
We performed some follow-up measurements of this object, while it was still on the neocp. Stacking of 10 R-filtered exposures, 20-sec each, obtained remotely, from the Haleakala-Faulkes Telescope North on 2012, Jan.30.6, through a 2.0-m f/10.0 Ritchey-Chretien + CCD, under good seeing conditions, shows that this object appears "soft", compared to the nearby field stars of similar brightness (stellar FWHM of 1.2").
Our confirmation image:
© Remanzacco Observatory
© Wayne England
Out-of-this world beauty: An amazing comet streaks over a swamp in South Australia. It was captured by photographer Wayne England who was lying in wait
Out-of-this world beauty: An amazing comet streaks over a swamp in South Australia. It was captured by photographer Wayne England who was lying in wait
Caught on camera over a swamp in Australia the stunning image shows the trail of the Comet Lovejoy as it passed close to Earth.
Lying in wait in the darkness in Poocher Swamp Game Reserve near Adelaide, was photographer Wayne England who took this amazing snap.
As his picture shows the darkness of the swamp and the reflection of the water made the perfect backdrop to reflect the comet zooming across the sky.
Mr England, 40, who is a member of the Astronomical Society of South Australia, said he first heard about the comet travelling close to Earth in December and had several nights to try and catch a glimpse at 4am in the morning on Christmas Eve.
© Sarah Lazarovic for The National
Four months later and we are ducking again, but this time the author of our fear is not some rocket scientist who forgot that what goes up must come down, but the universe itself.
It isn't, it turns out, the old tin cans we should be concerned about so much as the thousands of Near-Earth Objects (NEO) - asteroids large and small - heading our way, some with the potential to explode in our atmosphere with the force of a nuclear arsenal and cause an Extinction Level Event.
Remember the dinosaurs? Well exactly.
The good news is that we are getting quite good at spotting these things. So far Nasa, which began looking in earnest in 2005, has discovered 8,000, with another 70 popping up every month.
Comment: Exactly, then what??
It's not big kick-ass asteroids we need to be thinking about. It's the possibility of micro-meteorites and cometary dust bringing all sorts of chaos people in the modern era haven't seen before.
New Light on the Black Death: The Cosmic Connection
© JAXA
Nearly six years after it was proposed, Japan's Space Activities Commission has finally approved the development of Hayabusa 2, successor to the Hayabusa asteroid probe, which returned samples to Earth in 2010 (see 'Asteroid visit finds familiar dust').
Hayabusa 2 will aim for 1999JU3, a small asteroid about 900 metres in diameter. The asteroid is slightly bigger than the first mission's destination, Itokawa, but it is supposedly more primitive and contains more organic or hydrated materials, which may provide clues about the origins of the Solar System. The Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA) plans to launch Hayabusa 2 in 2014 or 2015, land on the asteroid in 2018 and return to the Earth in 2020.
Hayabusa 2 will be closely based on its predecessor, but will incorporate many "lessons learned" from the problems encountered by the first mission. In the original Hayabusa, the ion-thrust engines died before the end of the mission, so the team will work to extend their operating life. The probe crashed down on the surface when it attempted its first landing, because of a malfunction of an obstacle-detection sensor. The sensor will be scrapped and navigation systems improved to enable a smooth touch-down.
Wichita, Kansas - If you saw an unusual bright light moving across the sky Wednesday night, chances are, you were looking at a meteor.
A patrol car dash camera in northern Texas captured the falling meteor as it was streaking across the sky around 8 p.m. Wednesday night.
"There was a bright light that was seen in the sky from Wichita through Oklahoma and down into Texas," said director of Lake Afton Observatory, Greg Novacek.
Traveling anywhere from ten to forty miles per second, he estimates it landed in Texas, just south of Waco.
"There was actually a sonic boom heard near Waco from the meteor," said Novacek.
While most meteorites are never found because they land in the ocean, Kansans seem to stumble upon the space rocks more often than others.
"Kansas actually ranks second in the U.S. for recorded meteorite falls and the only state ahead of us is Texas," said Wichita Meteorite Society Founder, Jerry Calvert.
Comment: Reports of fireball with huge tail seen over Western Australia
Huge Fireball Over Tokyo, 2 February 2012
Fireball Photographed Over Corfu, Greece
Russia: Something fell from the sky in the village of Novobureysk
US: Wednesday night's Texas meteor so bright it was seen in Kansas
Canada: Halifax 'fireball' probably a meteor
Rhode Island, US: Extremely bright 'unexpected' meteor caught on camera