Fire in the SkyS


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Exploding meteor seen in South African sky

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© ReutersA fireball blazed across the horizon, leaving a long white trail in its wake which could be seen as far as 200km away in Yekaterinburg, about two weeks ago.

Cape Town - Residents across Cape Town claimed to have sighted a meteorite on Tuesday after what appears to have been a fireball "exploded" in the sky.

It is said to have been sighted just after noon. Nicola Loaring, an outreach astronomer at the South African Astronomical Observatory, said they had received about four or five reports.

The green and blue light with a white tail that was reported to them appeared to be that of "a fireball, which is a bright meteor".

Fireballs were caused by dust formed in space that enter Earth's atmosphere.

"There are two meteor showers in March with one peaking on March 13 and this could be related to that.

Loaring said another meteor shower would start later this month and peak in April."

"Meteor showers are best viewed in the morning. Up to eight an hour can be seen," Loaring said.

People shouldn't be alarmed since these were "common and predictable".

Company director John Houston captured part of the event on camera while he was driving on the N1 from Stellenbosch.

There was a "huge" explosion that left a white cloud close to the Durbanville hills, he said.

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Large hole in Dawe's Lake, Newfoundland discovered following 'sonic boom'

Dawe Lake
© Lindsay Bird/CBCIce covering Dawe's Lake appears to have been disturbed by a large object.
An amateur astronomer says a large hole in the ice on Dawe's Lake near Badger in central Newfoundland must have been caused by an object that fell from the sky.

"We've looked all around," said Jim Gillard, who runs the Twillingate Astronomical Observatory. "There don't appear to be anything else that could've caused this, except something that fell out of the sky."

The hole, which measures about 55 metres by 60 metres, was first discovered on Friday morning by a cabin owner in the area.

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Dozens of people in 7 states report seeing fireball in sky Saturday, some from northern Ohio

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© Getty ImagesAn Orionid fireball streaks towards the Big Dipper, seen in a dark sky over the desert in central Arizona.
Cleveland - More than two dozen people from seven states - including Ohio -- reported seeing a fireball in the sky over the weekend.

The American Meteor Society posted Monday on its website that 25 people submitted reports about the sighting Saturday, which apparently happened at about 7 p.m. Nearly half of the reports were from Ohio.

Here are a few of the narratives submitted by the observers:

"I was driving on SR 39 heading NW when I saw this very bright white ball with a tail in my left peripheral vision. I turned to look, saw it had a tail, then disappeared for a split second, then a bright flash and it was gone. Amazing and beautiful." - Shelia H. / Millersburg, Ohio

"Smoky trail like a com trail. the head looked like it was glowing." - Andrea S. / Cleveland, Ohio

"This is the second time I have witnessed a meteor during the day. I regularly view meteor showers during nights they are expected. It was very exciting. Just happened to be looking in the right direction at the right time!" - Linda F. / Green, Ohio

NewsChannel5 reporter Paul Kiska saw the fireball, too. He also submitted a report:

"I've seen a few meteor showers and but never a fireball this huge, this bright, this beautiful!"

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Fireball with 'electric blue tail' streaks over Oman, 7 March 2013

07 March 2013 - Keith Harvey, Fins (near Sur), Oman
10-20 seconds duration. It went from overhead to the horizon. Direction of travel: Southeast. Orange colour. As bright as Venus. Location: Approx. 23N 59E
07 March 2013 - Susie Barka, Muscat, Oman @ 19.15
5 seconds duration. North-South. It was a large elongated fireball, burning white hot, with an electric blue tail followed by a green band and then an orange band. It was as bright as the sun and very large.

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Fireball breaks up over Northeastern U.S., 11 March 2013

Initial Reports

11 March 2013 - Lisa, Cape May, New Jersey, USA, around 4:45 am EST
I saw it for 2 seconds through a window facing southwest. It went straight down. It was white/blue color and as bright as the moon. It looked like a huge shooting star.
11 March 2013 - Bwas, Herndon, Virginia, USA 04:30 EST
2-3 seconds duration. North-south, from my left to right. I was facing south. It was low on the southern horizon and green in color. As bright as the moon. Awesome!

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Second fireball blazes over Poland in four days

On March 6th, 2013, 13 seconds before midnight UT time, a beautiful fireball crossed the sky over southern Poland. It was first reported by Pawel Zareba at PFN station 42 in Blonie. A few hours, it emerged that quite a few PFN cameras captured the event. The fireball was also visible from the Czech Republic. According to preliminary calculations, the fireball arrived to us from the vicinity of Jupiter and faded away at an altitude of 68 km above the planet's surface.
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23:59:46 UT PFN 42 Błonie, Paweł Zaręba POWIĘKSZ

Comment: Bright green fireball expodes over Poland, resulting in shockwave and 'mighty roar'


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Meteor streaks across U.S. Midwest sky

Cleveland - A meteor was seen across parts of nine states Friday night.

Many reports were made to the American Meteor Society from Illinois, Indiana, Kentucky, Michigan, New York, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Virginia and southern Ontario, Canada.

The meteor was reported around 9 p.m. as people reported seeing a streak of light headed across the night sky. The American Meteor Society website showed the meteor apparently falling over southern lower Michigan.

More reports of meteors were received Saturday night around 6:45 p.m. although none of these reports have been confirmed at this time.

The following is video from Friday night's sighting:


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Mystery solved: Where exactly the Russian meteor came from

russian meteor
© AP Photo/Chelyabinsk.ru, Yekaterina PustynnikovaScientists estimate the meteor moved throughout the atmosphere at a rate of 13 to 19 kilometers per second.
A scientific team from Colombia was able to trace back the explosive space rock's origins using "simple trigonometry."

It's been nearly two weeks since a blazing meteor suddenly appeared over Russia's Ural region, and exploded seconds later over the city of Chelyabinsk. The destruction it caused is well documented: $33 million in estimated damage, 1,500 injured, and zero fatalities - amazing, considering the fireball detonated with 30 times the force of the atomic bomb dropped on Hiroshima.

But where in heaven's name did the the thing come from to begin with?

Poring over crowd-sourced footage, researchers Jorge Zuluaga and Ignacio Ferrin from the University of Antioquia in Medellin, Colombia, were able to use "simple trigonometry to calculate the height, speed, and position of the rock as it fell to Earth," says BBC News. More importantly, the duo was able to find out where Russia's most famous meteor was likely born.

Using astronomy software developed by the U.S. Naval Observatory, Zuluaga and Ferrin gathered enough data to trace the meteoroid's origins in outer space. The information included the meteor's relative angle to the horizon, the shadows it cast, and video timestamps of the rock's screaming descent.

Comment: For more indepth information about the future possibility of these kinds of events, read the latest of Laura Knight-Jadczyk's books, Comets and the Horns of Moses. It contains the most important information about comets and meteors never found (or ever will be found) in the mainstream media.


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Flaming fireball seen from Ontario, Michigan, Ohio, Illinois and Indiana, 8 March 2013

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© LunarMeteoriteHunter / Google Earth
Initial Meteor Sighting Reports

8 March 2013 - Jeff Massecar, Toronto, Ontario, Canada 21:15
2 seconds duration. S - N direction, I was facing west. It was a bright streak with a little bit of orange. As bright as a street lamp and it had a tail, very cool!
8 March 2013 - Gayann Reynolds, Oxford, Missouri, USA 21:15 EST
5 seconds duration - E-W direction, from my left to right. White color and orange flames. It was a bright as the moon. I saw flames!

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Days notice: Another newly discovered asteroid to buzz Earth this weekend

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A newly discovered asteroid the size of a football field will cruise through Earth's neighborhood this weekend, just days after another space rock made an even closer approach to our planet. The 330-foot-wide (100 meters) asteroid 2013 ET will miss Earth by 600,000 miles (960,000 kilometers) when it zips by on Saturday. The space rock flyby will come just days after the 33-foot (10 m) asteroid 2013 EC approached within 230,000 miles (370,000 km) of us early Monday. When asteroid 2013 ET passes Earth, it will be at a range equivalent to 2.5 times the distance between the planet and the moon, making it too faint and far away for most stargazers to spot in the night sky.

But the Virtual Telescope Project in Italy, run by astrophysicist Gianluca Masi, will webcast a live telescope view of the space rock's flyby on Friday, beginning at 2 p.m. EST. There is no danger that 2013 ET will hit Earth, researchers say, just as 2013 EC posed no threat. But their flybys are slightly unsettling nonetheless, since both asteroids were discovered mere days ago. Indeed, many space rocks are hurtling undetected through Earth's neck of the cosmic woods. Astronomers estimate that the number of near-Earth asteroids tops 1 million, but just 9,700 have been discovered to date. Undetected objects can strike Earth without warning, as the surprise meteor explosion over Russia last month illustrated. The 55-foot (17 m) asteroid that caused the Feb. 15 Russian fireball detonated in the atmosphere before astronomers even knew it existed.