© Screenshot via YouTube/ AMS American Meteor Society
SOTT
SIGNS
OF THE
TIMES
OF THE
TIMES
Welcome to Sott.net
The World for People who Think
Fire in the SkyS
© Screenshot via YouTube/Meteors
It was so bright it could be seen up to 400 kilometres away.
The stunning phenomenon just after 4am on Thursday morning was recorded on external cameras in the framework of the SMART project, operated by the Southwestern Europe Meteor Network (SWEMN), from meteor-observing stations at the Calar Alto Observatory in the Filabres mountains, as well as in Sierra Nevada and Seville.
Texas astrophotographer Ethan Chappel captured the incredible sight while he was filming the planet, and said the event on Jupiter's southern equatorial belt "looks awfully like an impact flash." A bright spot can be seen appearing out of nowhere before it quickly fades away.
"After I checked the video and saw the flash, my mind started racing! I urgently felt the need to share it with people who would find the results useful," Chappel told ScienceAlert.
Astronomer Jonti Horner said he had "never seen anything like that before," and described the flash as "just totally breathtaking."
"A lot of the time these things will go unnoticed and unobserved," he explained. "Half of them will happen on the far side of the planet. So there's a lot of things working against seeing these events."
© ATLAS
The University of Hawaii's Asteroid Terrestrial-impact Last Alert System program on Mauna Loa caught an image of the meteor that briefly lit the sky brighter than a full moon.
According to a UH news release, the ATLAS program, located at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration facility on Mauna Loa, searches for hazardous asteroids, and its all-sky weather-monitoring camera captured an image of the meteor during routine monitoring of the night sky.
"They are scientifically interesting and visually spectacular but pose no threat whatsoever," said ATLAS principal investigator Larry Denneau. "These occur over Hawaii Island maybe once every few months, and around the world there are dozens per night."
Comment: The statement that these meteors 'pose no threat whatsoever' isn't entirely true. See:
Early risers around the Perth metropolitan area were stunned by a bright green light filling the night sky on Wednesday morning, but what looked like Armageddon was most likely a meteor, according to a Perth Observatory staffer.
Just before 6am 6PR News director Lisa Barnes was out for her morning run near Ellenbrook when she saw the phenomenon light up the sky.
"It was so amazing to see, it lit up the whole sky, a quick flash of light and then it drew my eyes to where I was heading (...) and then it was like a ball of light and I watched it fall."
Mrs Barnes said it was much bigger and brighter than a shooting star.
© Brisbane Times
"It was so amazing to see, it lit up the whole sky, a quick flash of light and then it drew my eyes to where I was heading (...) and then it was like a ball of light and I watched it fall."
Mrs Barnes said it was much bigger and brighter than a shooting star.
© National Park Service
What?
The Delta Aquariids meteor shower is a spectacular display of what is essentially space dust and bits of debris from a comet (or comets) in our orbital path that flew close to the Sun.
The comet sheds particles that then smash into our atmosphere - around 60 miles above Earth - and zoom across our skies at about 90,000mph (150,000kph), at times vaporizing into shooting stars and leaving a trail of blazing light behind.
A lime-green meteor as bright as the full Moon streaked across Canadian skies on July 24th and may have delivered free samples from the asteroid belt.
At 2:44 a.m. EDT on July 24th, a wolf near Eel Lake in southern Ontario jerked its head skyward in surprise as a 12-inch (30-cm) diameter meteoroid suddenly illuminated the forest like a transitory full moon.
The object, a stray from the asteroid belt, finally found a home after countless years of aimless orbiting — the heavily forested lake country some 200 kilometers north of Toronto not far from the town of Bancroft.
Assorted wolves and night predators weren't the only ones with their eyes on the surprise. Plenty of of people saw it, too. Nearly 50 eyewitness reports were submitted to the American Meteor Society's (AMS) fireball reporting page by observers from Michigan to Québec. Gary N. of Hamilton, Ont. described the color as bright "lime green." Jenny K. of Getzville, NY called it "the size of my fist."
© SOMN - Western UniversityAn all-sky camera network captured this fisheye view of a full-moon-bright fireball searing the sky over southern Ontario early on the morning of July 24th. It may have dropped meteorites.
The object, a stray from the asteroid belt, finally found a home after countless years of aimless orbiting — the heavily forested lake country some 200 kilometers north of Toronto not far from the town of Bancroft.
Assorted wolves and night predators weren't the only ones with their eyes on the surprise. Plenty of of people saw it, too. Nearly 50 eyewitness reports were submitted to the American Meteor Society's (AMS) fireball reporting page by observers from Michigan to Québec. Gary N. of Hamilton, Ont. described the color as bright "lime green." Jenny K. of Getzville, NY called it "the size of my fist."
© STR/AFP/Getty ImagesThe object was spotted ‘coming down from the sky’ and then excavated from a 150cm-deep hole by residents of Mahadeva village.
Madhubani DM Shirsat Kapil Ashok told TOI that the incident took place around 2.30pm on Monday. "Agriculture labourers working the paddy field where the meteorite struck claimed that they saw a fireball-like object coming down from the sky and made a deep crater where it hit the ground. The farmers also saw smoke coming out from the spot in the water-filled agriculture field," Shirsat said.
Displaying the 'meteorite' wrapped in a red cloth on Tuesday morning, the Madhubani DM said the stone-like object has magnetic properties. He added that the mysterious object was kept secure in the treasury office at the Madhubani collectorate.
"I have written a letter to the principal secretary of the science and technology department along with a copy to the principal secretary of state art, culture and youth affairs department," Shirsat said, adding the sample was sent to Patna on Tuesday evening.
"The science and technology department will take a decision regarding further action. The object might be sent to space research organisations like ISRO or any museum," Shirsat said.
The bright light in the sky was visible in areas from Ontario to New Jersey.
In various pieces of footage shared on social media a bright ball of light can be seen in the night sky.
According to local news reports, sightings of the meteor were recorded in Massachusetts, Rhode Island, Connecticut, Vermont, New York and New Jersey, amongst other states.
The celestial display was also visible in the east of Canada in provinces including as Ontario.
Comment: The American Meteor Society (AMS) has received over 360 reports about a meteor fireball seen over Connecticut, CT, DE, Delaware, MA, Maine, Maryland, Massachusetts, MD, ME, NC, New Hampshire, New Jersey, New York, NH, NJ, NY, PA, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, RI, VA, Vermont and VT on Thursday, July 25th 2019 around 03:04 UT.
This video was uploaded to YouTube by the AMS (www.amsmeteors.org). Credit:Peter R.
© AFP/European Southern Observatory Handout
With a diameter of up to 120 meters, asteroid 2019 OD soared past our planet moving at roughly 43,000 miles per hour at a distance of 222,160 miles from Earth, NASA's Center for Near-Earth Object Studies (CNEOS) said. The celestial object capable of inflicting massive damage was closer to Earth than our immediate satellite the Moon, which lies 238,900 miles away.
Comment: It's not "extremely rare." It's not even "rare."
It USED to be, before 1994, when Comet Shoemaker-Levy broke up and impacted Jupiter.
Since then, comets/asteroids have been observed hitting Jupiter on a number of occasions...
- 26 May 2017: New impact flash seen on Jupiter
- 10 Sept 2012: Jupiter Swallows an Asteroid - or a Comet?
- 3 June 2010 + 20 August 2010: Fireballs Light Up Jupiter
- 19 July 2009: Jupiter Scar Likely from Rocky Body
Notably, this most recent one occurred almost 25 years to the day that Shoemaker-Levy hit Jupiter in mid-1994.