Brian McGleenon
ExpressTue, 08 Oct 2019 00:02 UTC
© ESA via globalookpress.com
The largest asteroid from the group is bigger than the Great Pyramid of Giza in Egypt. According to the agency's Centre for
Near-Earth Object Studies (CNEOS),
Earth will see a total of seven asteroids fly past on October 8. As noted by CNEOS, these asteroids are 2019 TU, 2019 TW1, 2019 RK, 2019 TC1, 2019 SB6, 2019 TM and 2019 TS.
These asteroids will arrive starting early on Tuesday.
Although
most of these asteroids will approach Earth from very safe distances, one of them is expected to fly close to the planet.
According to CNEOS, 2019 T1 will zip past the planet from 0.00378 astronomical units or roughly 351,000 miles away, which is just slightly greater than the distance between the Earth and the Moon.
Comment: If space agencies the world over are anything to go by, mitigating the threat of space rocks is increasingly high on the agenda, and for good reason:
RTFri, 11 Oct 2019 19:10 UTC
© National Park Service
When a barrage of fireballs recently rained down on Chile, many assumed it was a meteor shower and moved on. However, analysis has since dismissed that theory and experts are struggling to explain the unidentified falling objects.
The mysterious, fiery phenomena crash-landed in seven locations in Dalcahue City on the Chilean island of Chiloé late last month. They sparked a flurry of blazes which firefighters had to scramble to extinguish.
Initial news reports claimed that the fireballs were likely a meteor shower, however an analysis by geologists from Chile's National Geology and Mining Service has since found that none of the seven crash sites contained any traces of meteorite.
© American Meteor Society (screen capture)
Observers map of AMS event 4940-2019
The American Meteor Society (AMS) has received 246 reports about a meteor fireball seen over France (Auvergne-Rhône-Alpes, Île-de-France, Bourgogne-Franche-Comté, Bretagne, Centre-Val de Loire, Grand Est, Hauts-de-France, Normandie, Nouvelle-Aquitaine, Occitanie, Pays de la Loire and Provence-Alpes-Côte d'Azur) on Wednesday, October 9th 2019 around 17:47 UT.
A
video of the event (
4940-2019) was uploaded to the AMS website.
RTTue, 08 Oct 2019 20:57 UTC
Missile... or something else?
The crew of a passenger plane traveling to Mexico got a rare opportunity to witness a test-launch of a Trident nuclear missile as it flew over the Pacific Ocean. Unaware of what it was, they filmed the dramatic sight.
A beautiful streak of light that exploded outward into a wide beam of white light turned out to be a Trident missile. In the footage, the crew can be heard saying 'Wow,' as they look out at the shooting star beside their Airbus liner.
The video published by The Drive was shot from a plane flying from Guadalajara to Tijuana
sometime in early September. It clearly shows two-stage separations as the missile launched from the Ohio-class submarine USS 'Nebraska' skips through the sky westward.
Comment: Hmmm...
We're skeptical.
Trident test-fires are usually solitary launches, and are sometimes fired in pairs. But four in quick succession?
And why did the
Navy press release give a vague date range and landing location (where the missiles come down onto a target range) on this occasion? They usually specify when and where a missile was launched and came down.
Also, whoever sent that video to
The Drive didn't include the time/date on which the pilots flew.
As the
Drive article points out:
We don't know the distance of the aircraft to the missile, and of course, the aircraft's altitude and range from the missile is going to make a difference as to where it appears in the sky from the aircrew's perspective, but this looks too flat even taking those factors into account.
Now, we've reported on this kind of sighting many times over the last two decades, and they're typically connected with test-launches of missiles. What often happens though is that a missile launch is associated with the sighting/footage
after the fact, and often very clumsily at that.
The RT article above says the video "clearly shows two-stage separation" of a missile, but there's nothing clear about it. The thing is, that 'separation' feature has been observed in similar videos that have been taken of objects that could
not be tied down to a nearby missile launch.
What we're getting at is that these pilots may have witnessed something coming
into the atmosphere, at a 'flat' angle, not leaving it...
For more on the similarities of missile and comet/meteor trails, check out:
Incoming! Meteor or Comet Fragment Explodes Above Southwestern US, Prompting US Army 'Missiles' Cover-up
Reading Celestial Intentions Through the Wrong End of the Telescope: Missiles, UFOs and the Cold War
© Twitter/Courtesy of @AardwolfEssex
One social media user caught a video of the
fireball shooting across the sky while he was driving. (See below)
Although unclear, the object appears to fit the description of a fireball, which is a meteor that burns as brightly as the planet Venus in the morning or evening sky, according to the American Meteor Society.
According to several reports, the annual Draconid meteor shower is expected to generate around eight shooting stars every hour starting Tuesday.
© SMART project
On October 3, 2019, the SMART project captured yet another fireball; this time, it flew over northeastern Portugal:
The meteor was reportedly generated from a comet that hit the atmosphere at about 230,000 km/h. It began at an altitude of about 135 km over the northeast of Portugal, and ended at a height of around 96 km over southwest of that country.
On the same day, The American Meteor Society received
18 reports of a meteor over the Netherlands. The increasing
number of fireballs reported on the planet doesn't bode well for humanity. See:
This weekend, NASA's Network of All Sky Meteor Cameras captured a rare fireball--a "Daytime Sextantid." Here it is disintegrating over Arizona just before sunrise on Saturday, Oct. 5th:
Daytime Sextantids are so rarely seen that the American Meteor Society
says "spotting any [Daytime Sextantid] activity would be a notable accomplishment." Consider it noted. NASA cameras on
Kitt Peak,
Mount Lemmon, and
Mount Hopkins caught the fireball in mid-flight, allowing a solid triangulation of its orbit and identification as a Daytime Sextantid.
Daytime Sextantids are related to the Geminid meteors of December. Both belong to the "
Phaethon-Geminid Complex"--a complicated swarm of debris that includes "
rock comet" 3200 Phaethon along with asteroids 1999 YC and 2005 UD. The ensemble appears to be the remains of a giant
breakup of ... something ... thousands of years ago.
Comment: Two separate meteor fireball events also took place over US skies on 5th October. Over one hundred reports were sent to the American Meteor Society (AMS) for each.
4849-2019 from Florida and the Carolinas and
4848-2019 from the Ohio area.
The fireball as seen from Galway, Ireland. The phone-camera's lens is facing roughly north-northeast. The trajectory appears to be from west-northwest to east-southeast.
Another big meteor fireball was
seen a couple of nights ago, at around 9pm on October 4th, this time over Ireland and western parts of the UK. In fact, we're not sure that it was one solitary object.
Here's footage of a fireball that was taken in Galway in the west of Ireland:
The American Meteor Society received 19 reports of a fireball over Ireland, Scotland and Wales. AMS member 'Paul K.', also based in Galway, captured this footage of the event:
© AMS/Eduardo S.
On September 29, 2019, a meteor was captured by
EXOSS as it flew over São Paulo, Brazil. The footage was uploaded to the American Meteor Society by 'Eduardo S':
© YouTube/J. Prestridge
On September 30, 2019, American Meteor Society member 'J. Prestridge' captured video of a bright flash of light attributed to a meteor on her home surveillance camera:
Comment: If space agencies the world over are anything to go by, mitigating the threat of space rocks is increasingly high on the agenda, and for good reason: