Fire in the SkyS


Fireball 2

Video shows stunning meteor fireball light up sky over Houston, Texas

Michelle Iracheta
Houston Chronicle
Thu, 05 Dec 2019 23:10 UTC
Meteor fireball over Houston, Texas
© Hunter Moliver"I thought it was one of the most incredible things I have ever seen in the sky over Houston! The blue flash and the long tail were magnificent." - Hunter Moliver

Reports of fireballs flashing through the night sky have steadily increased since 2006, according to data from the American Meteor Society.

Sometimes referred to as "shooting stars," fireballs, which are very bright, fast-moving meteors that appear to streak across the sky leaving behind a luminescent trail, are tracked by the organization, which encourages and promotes interest in meteoric astronomy.

So far this year, the organization has tracked nearly 300 events around the world compared to 2006, when only three events were reported, data showed.


Comment: The uptick in meteor fireball sightings continues as sott.net has been reporting for years now.


On Thursday, the agency received roughly 50 reports about a fireball seen over Louisiana, Oklahoma and Texas. The majority of the reports came from Houston, according to the data.

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Fireball 2

Bright meteor fireball streaks through night sky over Alabama

Leada Gore
Al.com
Thu, 05 Dec 2019 02:56 UTC
Alabama meteor
© NWS Birmingham
The National Weather Service's cameras captured a bright meteor streaking through the night sky in central Alabama.

The NWS tweeted it has received multiple reports of a "vivid and long-lasting meteor/fireball" around 7:25 p.m. Wednesday night. The video was taken at the Shelby County Airport.

If you missed tonight's shooting star, don't worry. You'll have another chance this month when the Geminids meteor shower peaks overnight from Dec. 14-15.

You can see the video below.


Comment: Meanwhile the American Meteor Society (AMS) received 150 reports of a meteor fireball over the US Midwest, including Illinois, Indiana, Wisconsin the previous day on Wednesday, December 4th 2019 around 00:16 UT.



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Fireball

ANOTHER large asteroid, discovered last week, to make Earth fly-by on Friday

Chris Hook
7News
Mon, 02 Dec 2019 18:05 UTC
asteroid didymos didymoon
© European Space agencyAIM and Didymos binary
An asteroid as big as the Egyptian pyramids is zooming towards Earth and will squeeze past us on Friday - if it doesn't smash on to our home planet's surface. Named 2019 WR3, NASA expects the space rock to make a "close approach" to Earth later this week.

The space agency has classified the asteroid as a "near-Earth object (NEO)" which means its orbit brings it very close - in cosmic terms - to Earth.

The asteroid was first spotted late last week.
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Fireball 2

Best of the Web: Astronomers suspect 2016 meteor fireball event in Australia was caused by asteroid that had been 'captured' by Earth's gravity

Jasper Hamill
Metro UK
Mon, 02 Dec 2019 18:01 UTC
asteroid earth artist impression
© GettyBoth space rocks detected recently could cause major damage if they crashed into our planet
Humans have good reason to fear comets, asteroids and other massive space objects.

Now we'd like to add 'mini-moons' to the list of heavenly bodies we should be worried about. Scientists have claimed our planet was recently hit by one of these mysterious rocks, which exploded in a gigantic fireball.

A mini-moon is an object which becomes entangled in Earth's orbit as it's zooming through space. It will either whirl around the planet harmlessly forever, zoom off back off on its journey through the solar system or, in the worst case, smash into our planet.

'Objects gravitationally captured by the Earth-Moon system are commonly called temporarily captured orbiters, natural Earth satellites, or minimoons,' scientists wrote in a new study published in The Astromomical Journal.

Comment: God, MSM reporting on space rocks is INFURIATINGLY stupid...
"Scientists say there's just no way to know when and where they'll impact us because even in our near-Earth environment they're highly unstable and unpredictable... but we're glad to report that everything was, is, and always will be JUST FINE!"
Anyway, the astronomers who published this paper have touched on something we've been wondering about: whether some (or most) of the 'slow-moving meteors' may in fact be objects that had been previously captured by Earth's gravity.

The same phenomenon is apparently occurring with respect to other planets in our solar system, whose numbers of 'moons' grow by the year. Those new 'moons' are typically accounted for by 'better observation technology', but clearly the actual numbers of 'moons' are growing...

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Fireball 2

SOTT Focus: Volcanoes, Earthquakes And The 3,600 Year Comet Cycle

Pierre Lescaudron
Sott.net
Sun, 01 Dec 2019 19:53 UTC
In two previous articles, I proposed explanations for the events that triggered the Younger Dryas.

In the article titled Did Earth Steal Martian Waters, I described how, ca.12,500 BP, an electric discharge may have transferred part of the Martian water and atmosphere to Earth (see pink arrow on the diagram below).

In the article titled Of Flash-frozen Mammoths and Cosmic Catastrophes, I explained how, about 4 centuries earlier, ca. 12,900 BP, several cometary fragments hit the Earth's Northern hemisphere (see turquoise arrow) causing the subsequent global cooling.

Greenland temperature 18000 BP - now
Greenland temperature 18000 BP - now
While writing those articles it appeared more and more clear that these were only two of three catastrophic events that preceded the Younger Dryas. In the diagram above, we can see that a third event occurred ca. 14,400 BP (see green vertical line).

This event had an even greater magnitude than the two events that followed it since it induced a 10°C drop as compared to the two following events which 'only' induced a 7°C drop.

In the present article, we will explore the specifics of the 14,400 BP event and explain how it might be part of a larger 3,600 year cometary cycle.
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Fireball 4

Night sky lit up by apparent meteor over Camarillo, California

Anthony Kurzweil
KTLA
Tue, 26 Nov 2019 06:18 UTC
Fireball over Camarillo, CA
© KTLA
A bright light lit up the sky over Camarillo late Monday night.

The unexpected sighting was witnessed by drivers on the 101 Freeway about 11:30 p.m.

The video shows what appears to be a meteor briefly streaking above the freeway traffic.

The activity comes less than a week after the alpha Monocertoid -- aka Unicorn -- meteor shower dazzled skygazers.

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Question

Marlboro, New Jersey's late-night mysterious booms remain unexplained

Lori Steineck
Canton Repository
Tue, 26 Nov 2019 12:49 UTC
Mystery boom (stock)
© KY3
Monday night's mysterious "booms" that could be heard throughout the area remained a mystery Tuesday.

Township Trustee Wayne Schillig surmised the noise might have come from someone illegally target-shooting at night.

Police Chief Ron Devies was in the police station when both booms rang out — the first at 8 p.m. and the second at 8:45 p.m.

"I was indoors and our building's pretty tight. It's a brick structure," he said, adding, "I heard it clearly."

Devies initially thought the sound was the result on someone dropping a heavy item into the recycling bin outside. When he heard the second boom, he knew it wasn't that.
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Fireball 5

Flash of light, window-shaking boom heard in Peru, Illinois

Craig Sterrett
The Times
Mon, 25 Nov 2019 16:22 UTC
Mystery boom in Peru, IL
© WGLC
After a loud, deep kaboom shook windows in Peru on Sunday night, neighbors began pointing fingers at possible fireworks enthusiasts.

Could it have been a fireball? Mike Hankey from American Meteor Society said www.amsmeteors.org received 13 notifications Sunday about fireball sightings over Iowa and Illinois. However, most of those were logged at 5:30 p.m. So, not likely.


Comment: Meteors can explode in the atmosphere without being seen which may explain why it wasn't reported to the American Meteor Society in that time frame.


However, Peru police chief Douglas Bernabei said police could not pinpoint the source of a 9 p.m. boom that resulted in many calls from various neighborhoods to the dispatchers.

"Widespread reports in multiple locations," he acknowledged.
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Fireball 3

Mysterious 'fireball' streaks across Oregon sky, leaves cops scratching their heads


RT
Mon, 25 Nov 2019 17:08 UTC
mystery fireball oregon
© Polk County Sheriff’s OfficePossible fireball over the Oregon Coast Mountains
Photos of what looks like a fireball falling in Polk County, Oregon, has sparked a frantic search amid reports of a plane crash. Nothing was found, however and police now believe it was a meteor. Netizens have their own ideas.

It all started on Thursday evening, when the Polk County Sheriff's Office received a 911 call alerting them about a possible plane crash in the area southwest of Polk County. The caller then sent a couple of photos that show what resembles a white streak an airplane might leave behind when going down.

Police rushed to locate the site of the reported crash, sending a helicopter to scan the wooded area in the hope of recovering some wreckage. However, the extensive search has turned up nothing, leaving police dumbfounded over what actually just whizzed above the rural area.

Comment: See the local news interview with Richard Romano here.

The American Meteor Society received two reports of fireballs over Portland, Oregon and Friday Harbor, Washington on the same day.

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Meteor

'Boom!' Sonoma Valley, California residents look to skies for answer following nocturnal noises

Christian Kallen
Sonoma Index-Tribune
Fri, 22 Nov 2019 00:13 UTC
Mystery boom in Sonoma Valley, CA
© Press Democrat (file photo)An amateur astronomer sets up his home-made 18" Newton Reflector during the monthly public viewing night at the Ferguson Observatory in Sugarloaf Park. Though there were few reported meteors on the night of Nov. 21, many people heard distant sonic booms with no known source.
People all over Sonoma County looked up at about 7:40 p.m. on Thursday, Nov. 21, when a brief series of "booms" rolled across the valleys. But there was no glow in the sky, the stars were visible in the cloudless sky. Was it thunder?

Or was it a meteor?

It may be no coincidence that the sound corresponded to a large but infrequent meteor shower, known as the Unicorn (or Monocerotids, from the constellation of its visible origin), seen only every 25 years or so - and last reported in 1995. But meteors are usually silent apparitions, fleeting and ghostly.

In social media groups, many people dialoged about the Thursday night noises. Descriptions of the noises ranged from "rumbles like thunder" to "like a limb fell on the house."

And it didn't seem to be particularly localized, but strong throughout the Sonoma Valley, in Nextdoor neighborhoods from Temelec to Denmark Street. Similar social media networks reported the noises at about the same time in Healdsburg, 25 miles away. Others on Facebook said it was heard in Sebastopol, Santa Rosa, Cloverdale, Petaluma, Napa and Marin.
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