Fire in the SkyS


Fireball 4

Video of huge meteor over England and Wales

Harry Haydon
The Sun
Thu, 09 May 2013 08:30 UTC
A fireball streaking across Britain left stargazers stunned last night. The green-tinged meteor shot over England and Wales in a northerly direction at around 9.45pm. Experts believe the meteor might have formed from debris from Halley's Comet. Many observers took to Twitter to report the phenomenon with sightings apparently recorded in Cornwall, Hampshire, Lancashire, South Wales and Worcestershire.


Suzy Buttress, of Basingstoke in Hampshire, said she spotted the celestial body while driving along the M3.

She wrote on Twitter: "I have just seen the biggest meteor in my life! It was also noticeably green, and appeared very large compared to regular meteors I've seen."

Louise Darnell also reported the unusual event on the social networking site.

She wrote: "Seen the brightest and lowest shooting star ever! It was definitely a UFO..??"

Reports suggested the meteor crossed Britain from the South East towards the North West.

Space scientist Maggie Aderin-Pocock said the meteor's size was unusual.

She said: "It seems that this one was particularly large and particularly bright, which is why it's caught so much attention."

"It's quite likely to be part of the Eta Aquarids, which is the debris left by Halley's Comet. And twice a year we pass through the debris left behind by the comet and when this happens we see more of these shooting stars, but there must have been a large lump left behind which is what caused such a bright meteor to be seen."
Read More...
Fireball 4

Fallen meteorite discovered in Connecticut for second time in a month


New Haven Register
Thu, 09 May 2013 21:12 UTC
Meteorite
© Yale Peabody Museum
The Yale Peabody Museum said a second meteorite has been found in a Connecticut building, 19 days after one hit a home in Wolcott.

This second meteorite was found in a Waterbury home Thursday, according to a press release.

This object was not seen or heard as it fell, but Dr. Stefan Nicolescu, mineralogy collections manager at the Yale Peabody Museum of Natural History, said in the release that he believes "it is highly likely the Waterbury meteorite is related to the April 19 fall in Wolcott."

The Waterbury meteorite is about 4 inches long and weighs 1.6 pounds. It had the same type of dark crust, magnetism, and interior color as the Wolcott meteorite.

Nicolescu said the museum hopes to confirm whether or not the meteorites are related with further testing.
Read More...
Fireball 2

Fireball Meteor explodes near Tokyo, Japan


Foxcrawl
Tue, 07 May 2013 15:51 UTC
A meteor exploded over Japan terrifying dozens people in the early morning of May 6, 2013. An amateur photographer captured spectacular images of the blast which were then posted on the Internet.


The space rock disintegrated in the atmosphere releasing a noisy boom over Saitama Prefecture, near Tokyo. The celestial event took place at 3.58 a.m. local time and a video footage shows the meteor appearing as a fast moving fireball whose intensity gradually increases.

The first snaps were uploaded by an eyewitness on the blog Sonotaco.jp before spreading across the social networks.
Read More...
Fireball 5

Large meteor spotted in night sky in England and Wales


BBC
Wed, 08 May 2013 20:58 UTC
Meteor
© BBCThe meteor was captured on CCTV by the BBC in Cardiff.
A meteor has been spotted travelling across the night sky by people in many parts of England and Wales.

Sightings of the celestial body were reported on Twitter in areas such as Cornwall, Hampshire, Lancashire, south Wales and Worcestershire.

Suzy Buttress, of Basingstoke, described witnessing the meteor as a "once in a lifetime thing".

Space scientist Dr Maggie Aderin-Pocock said the phenomenon was likely to have been debris from Halley's Comet.
Read More...
Fireball 2

Large meteor explodes in Wyoming sky

Laura Hancock
Star-Tribune
Mon, 06 May 2013 20:00 UTC
Meteor Over Wyoming
© American Meteor SocietyThe red line is the estimated trajectory of the bolide, which is a meteor that explodes in the atmosphere. The green pins indicate where the trajectory started and the red pins indicate where it ended. The human-looking icons represent each of the eight reports that the American Meteor Society received of the event. The direction of the icon represents where each person was “standing” when the bolide was spotted. .
A large meteor exploded in the sky above southern Wyoming on Sunday night and was observed from as far as 400 miles away.

Jordan Dowers of Olympia, Wash., was driving along Interstate 80 near Laramie with his father when they spotted it about 10:45 p.m.

"The first thing we noticed is the sky lit up really bright," said Dowers, 23. "At first it was, 'Where did that lightning strike come from?' Then it was much, much brighter than lightning. From the south, it was neon blue. It looked like it was going to hit the ground. Then it just disappeared."

Eight witnesses reported the event to the American Meteor Society, including people as far away as Idaho and Colorado.

Technically, the meteor is called a bolide, said society volunteer Mike Hankey, who lives in Baltimore.

Comment: And there was an earthquake around the same time/area: Earthquake Magnitude 4.2 - 28km W of Soda Springs, Idaho. Interestingly, the technical data from USGS shows a Depth of +/- 11.3km with an uncertainty of =/- 10.9km...

Also, do not confuse the fact that more fireballs events are taking place with the fact that more people are becoming aware of them. It's not that more fireballs are being observed due to more people looking out for them; more fireballs are being observed because more fireball events are happening!

Read More...
Map

Flashback Heat map reveals every spot on Earth meteorites have hit

Raymond Wong
DVice
Wed, 13 Feb 2013 00:00 UTC
meteorite heat map
© Unknownmeteorite heat map from 2300 BC
There's no doubt that last week's meteorite strike in Russia has many many people wondering which places near them have been impacted by space rocks. Using data from the Meteoritical Society, Javier de la Torre, co-founder of Vizzuality and CartoDB, whipped up a neat little heat map for The Guardian showing every point where scientists have discovered evidence of meteorite impacts.

The map shows 34,513 recorded points on Earth that have been struck by meteorites since 2,300BC. As impressive as that figure might seem, it doesn't include data for where meteorites that haven't left any evidence, like every single one that landed in an ocean, or impact sites that haven't been discovered yet.
Read More...
Fireball

SOTT Focus: Something impacted the fertilizer plant in West, Texas... most likely a Comet fragment!

Philipos Moustaki
Sott.net
Thu, 02 May 2013 12:51 UTC
Joe Quinn asked recently: Was the West, Texas Explosion a Meteorite Impact?

More information has come to light that suggests exactly that, and, at the very least, strengthens the idea that a 'missile' strike of some kind caused the explosion.

We now have four different video angles of the fire at the fertilizer plant.

In the first three videos, we can see the explosion that happened afterwards. In the last video, we can't see the explosion, but it gives us another vantage point of the site in flames:

Video from viewpoint #1:


Video from viewpoint #2:

Read More...
Fireball 3

Meteorite lands on home in Wolcott, Connecticut

LeAnne Gendreau, Ryan Hanrahan and
NBC Connecticut
Tue, 23 Apr 2013 16:30 UTC
.

A Yale expert confirmed Tuesday that an object that crashed through a house in Wolcott Friday night was a meteorite.

Larry Beck, of Williams Court in Wolcott, called police at 10:20 a.m. on Saturday and said a rock crashed through the roof of his house on Friday night and damaged the roof and copper piping, and cracked the ceiling in his kitchen.

"All the sheet rock had broken apart and it was on the floor," Beck said.

That was around the time that people from several towns along the shoreline called police and reported a loud boom that rattled windows.

Beck told police that he'd heard a loud crash and thought that a joist or rafter had broken.
Read More...
Fireball 5

Video: Suspected meteor interrupts concert in Argentina


The Telegraph, UK
Mon, 22 Apr 2013 14:05 UTC

Video footage, captured in the early hours of Sunday morning in Argentina, showed fans watching a band.

During the concert, a bright light appeared in the sky to the right of the stage.

It started off as a small greenish glow, before becoming a larger, brighter fireball.

The suspected meteor then fell to earth, with some locals reporting that they felt the ground shake as it hit.
Read More...
Meteor

What really happened? According to "experts", fireball that fell on Dharamsala villagers not a meteorite, but explosives


The Indian Express
Sun, 21 Apr 2013 12:48 UTC
The mysterious fireball, which fell in Jadrangal village here, injuring two women, was not a "meteorite", but "low intensity explosives", the state forensic experts claimed Saturday.

"It was a low intensity explosive which contained radicals of Barium Nitrate, Aluminium and Iron Oxide, normally used in incendiary projectiles," Dr Arun Sharma, Director, Himachal Pradesh Forensic Science Laboratory told reporters here.

In a first-of-its-kind incident, two women sustained minor injuries as the explosives fell from the sky on the village on March 21.

Two women were doing some household work when the fireball hit the surface and some of its parts fell on the women after splitting following which they sustained burn injuries on arms and back.

The rumours of it being a meteorite started spreading soon after the incident.
Read More...