Fire in the SkyS


Fireball 5

Daytime fireball breaks up over Brazil, 20 February 2013

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© (c) 2013 LunarMeteorite*Hunter / Google Earth
Dr. Marcelo Souza, professor of physics in Campos Dos Goytacazes, called me and reported that witnesses had just seen this event from Campos Dos Goytacazes, Vitoria, and Cabo Frio, in Rio de Janeiro State, Brasil approximately 20 minutes prior. It has now been confirmed that there was a single bolide seen by many persons in north Rio de Janeiro State, Brasil.

Campos Dos Goytacazes Brasil Sentinel Allsky Network is currently checking for video capture.

Dirk Ross, LunarMeteorite*Hunter, Tokyo, Japan, Dr. Marcelo Souza, IFF-R.J. and Sentinel Allsky established the Brasil Allsky Network, the FIRST in South America, last year.

Ross says, "This event, along with the recent Russia and other large events demonstrates that Brasil needs to take the threat of an asteroid impact more seriously and expand the Brasil Allsky Network nationwide for detection".

Ross is hoping that Sao Paulo State will soon establish the second network.

Comment: A local TV report on this daytime fireball sighting in Brazil:




Fireball

Florida fireballs: Meteor streaks through sky in Sunshine State

Meteorite
© Wikimedia CommonsA fireball that was probably a sporadic meteor (not the one pictured) lit up the sky in Florida's East Coast on Sunday.

A meteoric fireball lit up the East Coast of Florida Sunday evening, only two days after a large meteor wreaked destruction in Russia, and a smaller fireball touched down in California.

The Florida meteor, sighted just before 6 p.m., was also tiny, experts told The Florida Times-Union.

But Thomas Webber, director of the Museum of Science and History's Bryan-Gooding Planetarium, said meteors and smaller meteorites strike the Earth "every hour of every day," so they're not rare.

But Sunday's sighting, though small, was bigger than most.

"This one wasn't grain-of-sand size, which what most of them are," Webber said to The Florida Times-Union.

"When we get something a little bigger, that maybe has a silicate coating that ablates off as it travels though the atmosphere and takes some of the heat with it, they can appear much brighter and last a lot longer."

Fireball 2

Mystery 'loud booms' felt, heard over the Midlands, South Carolina

Columbia, SC - News19 has gotten multiple reports of loud booms in Several Midlands neighborhoods.

The reports began coming in around 3:45 p.m. Wednesday.

We heard from worried residents in Sumter, Wedgefield, Manning, and Bishopville. The noise was so loud that windows rattled and homes shook.

Reports also came out of Summerton, Eastover, Mayesville, and Sandy Run.

We made several calls to try and find out what caused the sounds, and the State Emergecny Management Agency says it wasn't an earthquake.

Shaw Air Force Base hasn't reported any unusual flying activity and the Lynn Douglas with the Columbia Airport says she knows of no sonic booms in the Midlands.

Fireball 2

Chelyabinsk meteor explosion in pictures: Videos and photos from Russia

I happen to live 300kms away from Chelyabinsk, where a large bolide exploded earlier today. Here are all the videos I could find featuring the massive explosion and its effects.


Comet 2

Russian meteor: Hunt for debris begins, but was it a comet?

A race for cosmic souvenirs has begun after scientists said there were still many pieces of the meteorite that fell to earth near the Russian city of Chelyabinsk last week waiting to be found. The extraterrestrial origin of 53 rock fragments collected on the frozen surface of Lake Chebarkul was confirmed during analysis conducted by the Urals Federal University in the early hours of Monday. But this is just the start of the process of gathering the debris left by the large meteorite, which exploded on entering the earth's atmosphere and hit the ground in a series of fireballs on Friday. Viktor Grokhovsky, a member of the Russian Academy of Science's meteorite committee, has been put in charge of the scientific search operation. "There are a lot more fragments to be discovered in many other places ... it's only a matter of time," he said.

The search is being concentrated at the moment around a six-metre wide hole in Lake Chebarkul, about 50 miles from Chelyabinsk, discovered by locals shortly after the meteorite hit the ground. Military divers spent much of the weekend scouring the bottom of the lake, but were hampered by poor visibility and found nothing. Analysis of the pieces recovered so far, none of which had a diameter greater than 1cm, suggests that 10% of the meteorite was made up of iron. Traces of sulphite and the mineral olivine were also present. "It was a stone meteorite that belongs to a class of ordinary chondrite meteorites," said Grokhovsky.

Link to video: Russian meteorite: first fragment finds claimed

Fireball

Fireball spotted in the skies of southern Italy - February 19, 2013

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© Nicola Cambareri/CataniaPhoto of the Fireball that lit up southern Italy on February 19th 2013
A few minutes ago, at 19:18, a bright fireball was spotted in the skies of southern Italy. The first reports Strait from Messina reported a fireball on the Ionian Sea , with director from north to south, greenish and very bright magnitude.

We are awaiting further reports that allow us to understand the scope of the sighting.

After what happened in Russia, where a real asteroid 17 meters caused 1,500 wounded, This term is much more common.

A fireball , or meteor meteoroid scientifically defined, is a piece of rock the size of a small stone, which enters our atmosphere at very high speeds, which in certain circumstances may be more than the 260,000 km / h. The vision of these bodies is characterized by a ball of fire falling from the sky quickly, leaving behind a trail of light lasting a few seconds, and that only in very rare cases assumes a hazard similar to what happened in the region of Chelyabinsk.

Can take various colors from white to red, green to orange. In certain circumstances may even explode, creating spectacular light flashes (called flares) and / or change color, creating a memorable show for lucky observers. These phenomena fact can not be predicted, and being often have unpredictable occasional observers entirely. There are also very rare circumstances where the cars also produce a roar caused by the explosion, like distant thunder.

Question

Is this another daytime fireball streaking over Rio de Janeiro?

Posted on YouTube by Jaspion Santana:


Fireball 3

'Orange and red fireballs' light up night sky in Florida

  • The bright flare was likely a sporadic meteor, the Coast Guard said
  • One resident caught the rare sight on video
Residents in south Florida spotted something in the horizon that they described 'as orange or red fireballs in the sky,' according to officials.

Amanda Mayer, of the West Palm Beach area, told reporters that she noticed the bright flare in the night sky on Sunday and thought it was somebody flashing a light.

Mayer said she hit the record button on her camera just in time to capture the rare sight.
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© NBC6What's that? Residents in South Florida spotted something in the horizon that they described 'as orange or red fireballs in the sky'
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© NBC6
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© NBC6

Fireball

Is this a daytime meteor falling over Saudi Arabia?

A daytime meteor fireball falls over Saudi Arabia, causing a sonic boom and chaos on the streets...


Comment: There's been a dramatic increase of fireballs around the planet in the last few days. For more information about what might be coming down the pike in the near future read: Comets and the Horns of Moses by Laura Knight-Jadczyk


Info

Strange EM effects of Chelyabinsk meteor explosion: Why did some glass shatter, but remain intact elsewhere?

It's strange enough that so many people were able to capture video of the meteorite that streaked over Russia on Friday exploding over populated areas causing injury and large amounts of damage. We knew as of Friday that the meteorite had exploded with enough force to knock glass windows out of many buildings in the cold Siberian portion of Russia.
Meteor Damage
© SlashGear
Today we have more reports of damage caused by the meteor explosion and they are as bizarre as some of the damage reports from tornadoes we've heard over the years. For instance, in the city of Chelyabinsk, Russia some high-rise buildings had the glass blown out of every window on the top floor while other buildings had only the glass from the bottom floor destroyed. Even that's not the most bizarre report of damage caused by meteor.

Comment: There may be more to the author's tornado analogy than he realizes: both meteors and tornadoes produce - or are themselves the product of - electrical phenomena. Yes, an incoming space rock is just that, but when it interacts with the atmosphere it becomes something far larger: a massive plasma field that can produce all kinds of strange - and often lethal - effects over a wide area. Tornadoes, meanwhile, are an extreme form of 'charge-rebalancing' between lower layers of the atmosphere and the ground, which is why 'strange things happen' during them.