Fire in the SkyS


Fireball 2

Covering up the celestial threat yet again: Boom! goes the mystery?

Little-known military flight area might be cause of noise reports
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The Lake Andes Military Operations Area is shown in the lower right portion of this map taken from a report on the website of the Department of Defense’s Environment, Safety and Occupational Health Network and Information Exchange.

Some Mitchell-area residents were in a state of bewilderment last Saturday night after hearing a loud boom.

Though definitive information is scant, the boom could have been from a jet flying at supersonic speeds through a little-known military operations area.

The boom was heard around 11 p.m. and spawned calls to law enforcement officials in Mitchell and Mount Vernon, who did not determine a cause for the noise.

The National Weather Service office in Sioux Falls reported rain that night, but not much thunder. A lightning strike would be heard as a boom nearby where it hit, but would sound like a rumble from farther away.

Davison County Chief Deputy Steve Harr heard dispatchers discuss calls they received about a big boom. He heard reports of people who heard it in Mitchell, Mount Vernon and five miles northwest of Mount Vernon.

"This was a first for me," Harr said.

The noise may have been a sonic boom created by a jet flying faster than the speed of sound. The speed of sound varies with altitude and temperature, but is about 770 mph. The sonic boom would travel with the aircraft. Because the speed of sound can constantly change, it is possible to unintentionally break it.

The jet may have been flying through the Lake Andes Military Operations Area, an airspace used by the military for simulated air combat and complex missions, and practice maneuvers. It is the only such military operations area in the state, other than a small portion of the Powder River military air space in Montana and Wyoming that juts into South Dakota's northwest corner.

Fireball 3

More cosmic fireworks with mass demonstrations, this time in Cairo

meteor egypt
© Screenshot YouTube
Is it just a coincidence that fireballs were filmed over Cairo and Sao Paulo/Rio de Janeiro as mass demonstrations peaked in Egypt on July 2nd, and Brazil on June 18th, 2013?

Check it out at 11 seconds... sure looks like a meteor/fireball to us.


Comet

Cosmic surprise! Fireball 'with comet-like tail' streaks over Brazil, 18 June 2013

A fireball crossed the night sky on the night of Tuesday and was seen by many observers in the southeast region. The fireball had reddish color and may have been caused by reentry remains of a Chinese rocket type Long March.

According to some observers who wrote for Apolo11, the fireball crossed the sky slowly towards southeast and appeared to have a small tail like a comet.

"The 23h40, an object crossed the sky Araçatuba-SP. From the moment we saw it, was near the zenith going towards the southeast and was up near the horizon, behind houses, which could no longer see," said the observer Diego Adelson, who witnessed the passage.

According to Adelson, the object had reddish glow and brighter than the planet Venus. "You could see a small trail behind," he said.


Comment: How interesting that the recent surge in protests in Brazil peaked around this time... and that this comet fragment, completely undetected by authorities, was seen from Sao Paulo and other cities where the mass demonstrations are taking place...

Update 4 July 2013

Thanks to SOTT.net reader CIS for pointing out this second video of the meteor/fireball/comet fragment over Brazil on 18 June 2013:




Fireball

Covering up the celestial threat again: "Sonic boom" shakes homes in Nantucket, Massachusetts

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A powerful noise believed to be a sonic boom from a passing aircraft swept over Nantucket Wednesday night, shaking houses and rattling the nerves of island residents in mid-island neighborhoods and areas of the south shore.

The incident was reported around 9:45 p.m. Wednesday night by many island residents who took to social-media sites to describe the loud noise that shook their homes and ask if others had experienced the same thing.

While the suspected culprit is a military aircraft that broke the sound barrier over the island, there was no definitive confirmation of the specific source of the noise.

Nantucket Memorial Airport tower manager Patrick Topham stated in a message "we have no confirmation as to what caused it at this point. We have to assume that it was a sonic boom caused by a military aircraft."

Nantucket police lieutenant Jerry Adams stated the source of the noise was a "sonic jet."

A similar incident occurred several months ago on the evening of Wednesday, March 21, when Nantucket residents reported a loud noise that shook houses.

Comment: A sonic boom from a military jet does not cause houses to shake...


Meteor

Meteor strike: Investigating a cosmic crime scene

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© YoutubeA meteorite causes panic as it falls in the Ural Mountains region of Russia, Feb. 2013.
A new video tells the tale of an unlikely bit of astronomical forensics.

Is there anything sneakier than an asteroid? They run silent, run deep and run very, very fast - hurtling toward Earth from any point in the vast bowl of the sky at speeds that can exceed 40,000 mph (64,000 k/h). They typically whiz right past us or plunge harmlessly and spectacularly into the atmosphere, burning up before they hit the ground - unless, of course, they explode in the sky or collide with the surface, leaving a massive footprint of destruction for miles around.

Asteroids - or, in their atmospheric incarnations, meteors or meteorites - don't do that kind of damage very often anymore, perhaps once every 70 to 100 years on average.


Comment: This may change very soon, as Earth is facing an imminent cosmic threat.


But when they do, they can spell big trouble. You could ask the folks living in the Tunguska region of Russia in 1908, where a 330 ft. (100 m) rock exploded in the sky one morning, flattening trees in an 830 sq. mi. (2,150 sq. km) radius. You could ask the dinosaurs - if they weren't all dead of course, thanks to a 6 mi. (10 km) rock that struck off the Yucatan 65 million years ago, throwing up a sky darkening debris screen that made the planet too cold for them to survive.

Fireball 5

Narrow escape for British family after red-hot sulphuric meteorites rain down on their Shrewsbury garden

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© Yahoo!News/SWNSSarah Marston-Jones shows off some of the inch-wide fragments which landed in her garden.
A mother-of-two told how her young children had a lucky escape - after fragments from a meteor shower rained down in their back garden.

Sarah Marston-Jones was playing outside with Harry, two, and Benjamin, four, when asteroid rocks fell behind her house in Shrewsbury.

The teacher heard a large 'whooshing' sound and a 'cracking' noise as 15 rocks from the meteorite shower blazed through the earth's atmosphere and onto her lawn at 9.30am on Tuesday.

She was forced to rush her two young children off their trampoline to safety indoors as brown and black fragments showered down just inches from where they were playing.

The red-hot rocks, some of which were more than an inch wide, even left a strong burning smell in the family's Shropshire garden.

Comment: Officially, meteorites are not supposed to be red-hot when they hit the ground. So much for experts...


Fireball 5

Dramatic meteor streaks across San Francisco, California skies

Meteor
© Danville PatchThis screen shot captures the last big Bay Area meteor siting to create a stir, the Orionids shower in October.
A dramatic meteor reportedly lit up the skies over the East Bay Saturday night, streaking over Alamo and crossing over the Las Trampas Regional Wilderness toward Moraga, according to one witness.

"It looked like a missile," said a Walnut Creek Patch reader, who said it covered miles in a second in a fast, straight line, with a contrail. "We all jumped up."

Meteors of course are a common occurrence, but sometimes they can create quite the buzz, as did the Orionid earlier this year. Read about how that impacted the Bay Area here.

To report meteor sitings or find out news about sitings, here's a cool blog tracking such things: Lunar Meteorite Hunters.

Fireball 5

Meteorite crashes through roof of Pennsylvania business

Meteorite
© KDKAThe mysterious rock.
Mercer, Pennsylvania - There is a mystery surrounding a strange-looking rock that came crashing through the ceiling of a Mercer County business.

It happened sometime late Thursday night or early Friday morning. Employees of the business discovered the shiny, sharp-looking object inside their warehouse Friday morning.

They also found an eight-inch by eight-inch hole in the building's 30-foot high, steel roof where the object came into the building.

The object left a nice dent in the building's cement floor where it landed, too. The owner of the company says he believes the rock could be a meteorite.

However, there's been no official word as to exactly what the object is.
Meteorite_1
© KDKAThe dent in the floor.

Fireball 2

Covering up the celestial threat: Sonic boom heard in Essex, Cambridgeshire and Hertfordshire

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It was probably an overhead explosion from a meteor, like this one over Russia in February
"Loud explosions" heard across the east of England were caused by a sonic boom when a jet broke the sound barrier.

The noise, at 11:30 BST, caused shaking and smashed windows and prompted calls to police in Cambridgeshire, Essex and Hertfordshire.

The Ministry of Defence said a Typhoon jet from RAF Coningsby in Lincolnshire was launched when communication was lost with a Heathrow-bound plane.

It is understood the plane, travelling from the USA, landed without incident.

Air traffic controllers had become concerned but communication was re-established with the passenger airliner and there were no problems on board.

Comment: A sonic boom from a fighter jet does not 'smash windows' or cause 'whole houses' to shake...


Fireball 4

Huge green fireball with red tail blazes over central Poland, 20 June 2013

Fireball Poland
© PKIMFireball over Poland, 20/21 June 2013
A huge fireball as bright as a Quarter Moon crossed the sky over Poland just before midnight on Thursday, reports the Polish Fireball Network (PKiM). It was seen as a falling green ball with a red tail, as reported by a witness from the town of Piaseczno, near Warsaw.

At 23.55 pm local time, Thomas Lewandowski, a member of the PKiM, saw a huge fireball that swept low over the horizon and ended with spectacular flashes. It was seen in the northwest part of the sky when observed from a location near Warsaw.

This observation was quickly confirmed by Paul Zareba who runs a Polish Fireball Network station equipped with four cameras. One of the cameras recorded the phenomenon in all its glory.

The fireball was also picked up on radio waves. Stayed tuned for more information.