Fire in the SkyS


Fireball

Meteor fireball over West Michigan caught on video


WoodTV
Wed, 25 Nov 2015 19:17 UTC
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A Wood TV8 employee captured video of what appears to be a meteor over West Michigan.

The video was recorded by a dash cam on Tuesday night over I-196 near Zeeland.

Meteors light up as they cross the sky because they are burning up as they enter Earth's atmosphere.

It's possible the meteor was part of the Leonid meteor shower. That shower peaked on Nov. 17 and 18, according to NASA, but lasts through the end of November.

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Question

Mysterious cloud appears over 6 States baffling stargazers


Strange Sounds
Wed, 25 Nov 2015 16:49 UTC
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© Glen Wurden This mysterious cloud in the sky of New Mexico was shot by Glen Wurden on November 24, 2015
A mysterious cloud suddenly appeared in the sky on November 24, 2015.

And it baffled a whole lot of stargazers over at least 6 US states.

Do you know what it was?
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© Glen WurdenCan you imagine spotting that at 5:40am and during half an hour without knowing what is going on there?
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Fireball

Bright meteor fireball seen and heard over Petersburg, Alaska

Angela Denning
kfsk.org
Mon, 23 Nov 2015 15:06 UTC
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© amsmeteors.orgThis map shows the five reports of people seeing a meteor early Saturday morning.
Petersburg was abuzz with talk of a big bang early Saturday morning. Some people believe it was lightning and thunder while others think it might have been a meteor.

On the sidewalks, at the stores, at the bars, people have been talking about a loud sound they heard around 2:30 a.m. Saturday. Most have never heard anything like it before.

Life-long Petersburg resident Devren Bennett was asleep at home in Tlingit and Haida Housing Subdivision. Like many others, he was jolted awake.

"I woke up from dead sleep to what sounded like a jet sitting on top of our house with the engine wound up all the way," Bennett said. " First thought was a landslide of some sort but there's no mountains around my house that would cause anything like that, otherwise I had no idea."

"So did you actually feel something?" I asked him.

"Absolutely, you could definitely feel the vibrations," said Bennett.
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Fireball 5

Meteorite falls near border between Costa Rica and Panama

Rico
Q Costa Rica News‎
Tue, 24 Nov 2015 03:04 UTC
La Garza 1
© La PrensaThe fishing boat La Garza 1 reported the fall of the meteorite to authorities.
A meteorite of unknown size fell early Tuesday morning in Panama's Pacific coast, near the Costa Rica border, without causing any significant damage, officials said.

"The rock fell into the Pacific Ocean, on the border between Panama and Costa Rica, near the Isla Baldones and the town of Puerto Armuelles (Chiriquí)," explained the director of Panama's Sistema Nacional de Protección Civil (Sinaproc), Jose Donderis.

The falling meteorite was spotted by fishing vessel, reporting it to the Sinaproc.

This is the first meteorite to fall in Panama since 2007, when another fell on the town of Farallón, 120 kilometres west of the Panama City, destroying a ranch.

Meteorite location
© Google Map
Sources: La Nacion; La Prensa
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Comet 2

Comet Catalina grows two tails, photographed at dawn

Bob King
phys.org
Mon, 23 Nov 2015 19:55 UTC
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© Chris Schur Comet C/2013 US10 Catalina shows off a compact green coma and two tails in this photo taken this morning (Nov. 22, 2015) at dawn from Arizona. The green color comes from carbon compounds fluorescing in UV sunlight.
Amateur astronomer Chris Schur of Arizona had only five minutes to observe and photograph Comet Catalina this morning before twilight got the better of the night. In that brief time, he secured two beautiful images and made a quick observation through his 80mm refractor. He writes:
"Very difficult observation on this one. (I observed) it visually with the 35mm Panoptic ocular. It was a round, slightly condensed object with no sign of the twin tails that show up in the images. After five minutes, we lost it visually as it was 2° degrees up in bright twilight. Images show it for a longer time and a beautiful emerald green head with two tails forming a Y shaped fan."
Schur estimated the comet's brightness at around magnitude +6. What appears to be the dust tail extends to the lower right (southeast) with a narrower ion tail pointing north. With its twin tails, I'm reminded of a soaring eagle or perhaps a turkey vulture rocking back and forth on its wings. While they scavenge for food, Catalina soaks up sunlight.
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Meteor

Meteor caught on security camera in Cincinnati, Ohio

Daniel Martins
The Weather Network
Sat, 21 Nov 2015 11:11 UTC
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Saturday, November 21, 2015, 11:11 AM - Security cameras aren't just for security, if you get the timing just right.

Cincinnati, Ohio, resident Steve Hart caught a glimpse of a fireball streaking across the night sky earlier this week.

"I installed these security cameras in August, and I've never seen anything like this," Hart wrote on Facebook. "This camera records movement and stores it up to 6 days, and when I saw this, I pulled it off of the DVR and saved it to my computer. I wish I would have been outside to see it!"

The American Meteor Society received around 75 reports of a fireball at about the time Hart captured it on camera, from as far away as Missouri and Kentucky, and as far north as Michigan.

As amazing as it is, it seems like a regular old space rock burning up in Earth's atmosphere -- not like the bizarre phenomenon spotted over southern California earlier in November.

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Fireball 2

Meteor fireball strikes the Earth somewhere in Humboldt County, California?

Kevin L. Hoover
Mad River Union
Sat, 21 Nov 2015 16:45 UTC
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© Gail ZanettiThe fireball's smoke trail.
Wednesday, Nov. 18 was a typical morning at Pacific Union School's early morning daycare program, when just before 7:15 a.m., Gail Zanotti heard an excited five-year-old exclaim that "a fireball just went over my head!"

Curious, she went outside to take a look, and it turned out to be more than just a little boy's vivid imagination. A fresh smoke trail from a possible meteorite was clearly visible to the east. Zanotti grabbed her cell phone and started taking pictures.

"I ran outside, and I snap snap snap the trail, but didn't see the fireball," Zanotti recalls.

Nor did she directly observe any impact, as the object landed out of view. Still, she's certain something struck the ground; she's just not sure where.

"It threw up a big cloud of dust," she said. "Was it up past Kneeland, or where was that?"

She then noticed a second set of north-to-south smoke trails in a different location, apparently from more objects headed southbound.

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Fireball 2

Bright meteor fireball passes over Dublin, Ireland

Michael O'Connell
The Independent, (Ireland)
Fri, 20 Nov 2015 16:15 UTC
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This footage captured by amateur astronomer Michael O'Connell was posted on youtube last night, 'Bright fireball (possible Leonid) passed directly over Dublin and visible across the UK & Ireland'.

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Fireball 3

Incoming! Earth-grazing fireball lights up New Mexico sky

Staci Matlock
The New Mexican
Thu, 19 Nov 2015 17:38 UTC
New Mexico fireball
© Thomas AshcraftA comet fragment skimming Earth’s atmosphere was visible from New Mexico and Colorado on Tuesday evening.
An 8-inch fragment of a comet blazed orange across the sky at 62,000 miles per hour around nightfall Tuesday in a spectacle that was visible just south of Santa Fe.

Lamy astronomer Thomas Ashcraft captured the event on his Sentinel camera on loan from Sandia National Laboratories.

Ashcraft said the Meteoroid Environment Office at NASA's Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Ala., confirmed that the 5:47 p.m. event was the result of a rare Taurid earth-grazer that was about as bright as the first-quarter moon.

"Earth-grazers enter earth's atmosphere at a very shallow angle and skim along the top of the atmosphere. Some actually skim and then re-enter space," Ashcraft wrote in an email. "This fireball was visible for eleven seconds and burned brightly its entire path of at least 180 miles. This means it had some mass to it to be able to burn that long."

Earth-grazers are not rare, but brighter ones, such as Tuesday's fireball, are special, Ashcraft said. "I'm not sure of the last time but I can tell you that a fireball of this size is not a common event over one location," he said. "That it was a long path earth-grazer makes it much more special."

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Fireball 2

Huge meteor fireball explodes across four states in the US


RT
Fri, 20 Nov 2015 06:04 UTC
US meteor fireball
© hooeetubeHuge Fireball Meteor Caught on Security Camera somewhere in Midwest and Southern US 19/11/2015

Residents of four US states - Illinois, Indiana, Kentucky, and Tennessee - have anxiously reported a loud blast. Their first suggestion was a meteor, but more frightening versions followed.

Some said, though, that they saw the actual meteor, and in some pictures, one can see a bright flash of light in the sky.


Comment: This youtube video shows a huge fireball meteor caught on Cincinnati resident Steve Hart's home security camera on 19/11/2015.



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