Fire in the SkyS


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Northern California fireball lights up early-morning sky

San Francisco -- A fireball lit up the predawn Northern California sky Thursday, according to reports from early risers.The possible meteor was reported about 5:25 a.m. by people across California and as far away as Fernley, Nev., about 30 miles east of Reno."Wow, what a sight to have seen!" David Rivas of Seaside (Monterey County) wrote in an e-mail to The Chronicle.

He said he and his wife saw the streak as they were driving on Highway 1 north of Monterey. "It first appeared as a quick movement of sorts, maybe similar to a shooting star or quick lightning strike off to the east."Then, Rivas said, "it grew into "something shaped like a giant orange crayon."

Others described what they had seen on the American Meteor Society website.

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Green fireball flashes through Winnipeg, Manitoba sky, 15 January 2013

Many Winnipeggers were stunned by a sudden whitish-green flash in the night sky Tuesday.

It happened at about 10 p.m. and the mystery light was gone as suddenly as it appeared.

Scott Young at the Manitoba Museum said he's not 100 per cent certain about it, but all signs point to the light being a meteorite.

"They slow down so quickly and they heat up so quickly that often they just explode in what's called a terminal burst and that's often a greenish colour," he said.

"So the colour sort of tips me off and also just the speed that this comes over."

If it was a meteorite, it would only be the 14th time in Manitoba history that one has come through the atmosphere in this province, Young said

Question

Sky explosion?: Mysterious "explosion" sound, heard for at least last three months, Montauk, New York

Montauk map
© Google Maps
Police are investigating a mysterious exploding sound that has been occurring intermittently in Montauk for months.

Investigators believe someone is setting off a large mortar fireworks, but they have no arrests have been made since officially beginning an investigation in October.

The explosions, about a half-dozen or so, mainly occur in the evening, on weekends, sporadically, and only once on any given day. The most recent sound was reported on Sunday, police said.

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Multicolored fireball blazes over Northeastern U.S., 5 January 2013

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© American Meteor SocietyJanuary 5th, 2013 East Coast Fireball
The American Meteor Society has received 50 reports of a bright meteor that occurred near 06:33 EST on Saturday evening January 5, 2013. Brightness estimates of this fireball vary considerably, but the average lies near magnitude -18, which lies between the light produced by the full moon and the sun. Every color of the rainbow has been reported with green being most mentioned. Below is a map of the witness reports for the NE USA fireball event and can also be found in the fireball logs, refer to event 28 for 2013. Click the image below to see the interactive event map.

For those not familiar with meteors and fireballs, a fireball is a meteor that is larger than normal. Most meteors are only the size of small pebbles. A meteor the size of a softball can produce light equivalent to the full moon for a short instant. The reason for this is the extreme velocity at which these objects strike the atmosphere. Even the slowest meteors are still traveling at 10 miles per SECOND, which is much faster than a speeding bullet. Fireballs occur every day over all parts of the Earth. It is rare though for an individual to see more than one or two per lifetime as they also occur during the day, on a cloudy night, or over a remote area where no one sees it. Observing during one of the major annual meteor showers can increase your chance of seeing another one of these bright meteors.

Question

Even more mystery booms reported in Utah, California

Mystery Booms
© Who Forted?
They showed up this week in Oklahoma, were then recorded in Massachusetts, and one reader even reported them in Indiana, but it seems that the "Mystery Booms" are still going strong with new reports coming out of the West Coast.

The first new set of strange explosions were heard in Weber County, Utah last night around 9:00 PM, prompting hundreds of concerned citizens to phone the local authorities. Interestingly enough, when Fox 13 News rang up the University of Utah to check in with the Seismograph department, they claimed that while there were no earthquakes to speak of, they did pick up some unidentified "sonic activity" around the time the booms were reported.

One resident believed that the noises were related to aircraft:
Sonic booms. They're not supposed to break the sound barrier of the continental U.S., but they did so. I know they're doing some night training over the West Desert because I saw a string of tracers being fired high in the sky tonight, about 10 or 11 o'clock. Way out west of Skull Valley.
The local Hill Airforce base, on the other hand, claims that they had no aircraft in the air after 6:00PM. Likewise, the National Guard stated that had no weapons training that day, while the ATF told reporters that there were not rocket tests that day either. Hrmm..

Blackbox

They're back: Unexplained 'booming noises' reported from South Carolina to California

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California Mystery:

The loud explosion that jolted North Hollywood on Tuesday night remained a mystery the next morning, authorities said. An officer at the Los Angeles Police Department's North Hollywood station said police searched the area for a half an hour Tuesday night but had no luck in determining what caused the sound. The officer said police received numerous calls about the noise. At about 9:30 p.m., numerous people began tweeting about a loud explosion. Some thought it had come from a North Hollywood Metro station; others reported hearing an explosion in Studio City. "Mysterious explosion a few minutes ago. What's going on? #LA" tweeted @ThatVitalSpark. "Seriously, any leads what the hell this boom was in North Hollywood? Im shook up a bit" tweeted @RajRawal37. A Reddit user posed the question: "What just blew up in North Hollywood?" By 10:30 p.m., there were more than 120 comments, but no crowd-sourced answer. However, possibilities ranging from alien invasions to meteors were proposed. - LA Times

Massachusetts mystery:

Salem and Marblehead police officers searched the area of Ocean Avenue early Saturday morning for evidence of what could have caused the large boom that prompted residents across the area to call 911. According to Sunday morning's Salem police log, At 1:34 a.m., police received multiple calls regarding a "loud bang" on Ocean Avenue. They were unable to locate the source. Many of our readers in Marblehead also reported hearing the sound, which has some town residents wondering whether or not it is coming from the harbor. This isn't the first time we've written about mysterious explosion noises being reported in the area late at night. Theories offered so far have included youngsters with powerful fireworks, cannons from boats in the harbor, malfunctioning electrical transformers, UFOs and the shifting of tectonic plates under the city. - Marblehead Patch

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Meteor sighting in skies over Moose Jaw, Saskatchewan, Canada, 7 January 2013

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Moose Jaw resident Greg Wheler saw a meteor in the northern Moose Jaw skies close to 10 p.m. Monday night.

"It turned bright white with a blue centre and burned up as it flew east to west," said Wheler in an email to the Times-Herald. "It caught my eye through my living room window."

Chris Beckett, volunteer and national observatory chairman of the Royal Astronomical Society of Canada Regina centre, said the meteor sighting was most likely part of the tail end of the Quadrantid meteor shower that peaked last week.

"There's a couple of meteor showers that peak right now and these tend to be brighter, slower-moving meteors," said Beckett. "I've seen lots of them in years past and they'll get your attention even from the city."

Comment: Nothing to see here folks, it's just another fireball...


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'Meteor' found by Saudi man near his house

Meteorite?
© Emirates 24/7The 'meteor' found by a Saudi man near his house.
A Saudi man has found a solid object that he believes to be a meteor that fell near his house and broke into several pieces.

Mashari Al Subai said the object's fall had created a small pit in the ground behind his house in the western Saudi town of Raniya before it fragmented into small and medium-sized parts.

He said the large piece he found has a semi-transparent hazel colour, adding that the colour changed abruptly when the object was heated.

"I conducted a small test on the object. After I heated it for five minutes, its colour changed to golden yellow before it regained its original colour gradually," he said, as quoted by the Saudi Arabic language daily 'Sabq'.

He said he had sent a piece of the object to the Saudi Ministry of Oil and Mineral Resources for testing and identifying. Sabq did not specify the size of the object.

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Fireball and explosion in sky over Santiago del Estero, Argentina

fireball
© unknown
Google translation: The quiet of the morning was broken yesterday by a loud noise and explosion that was heard over a wide area of ​​the Alberdi department. Some witnesses said that, previously, a fireball had streaked across the sky in a west to east direction. It is believed that it could have been a meteorite falling.

Question

Unexplained "boom" regularly echoing over Guthrie, Oklahoma

Mystery Boom
© Who Forted
No one knows what's causing it, but everyone can hear it: a loud, bone rattling "boom" that shakes the sky, causing locals to phone their friends (and the police), asking "what the hell was that?"

According to Mayor Chuck Burtcher, the noises are nothing new either, admitting that he started getting asked about them three months ago, but even he doesn't know what's unnerving his town, musing that the booms could possibly be from oil exploration (though they're too far from town to cause such a noise, reported KFOR NewsChannel 4)

Other residents have their own theories, ranging from local shooting ranges to a lone man at the edge of town who owns a cannon and fires it off for fun. One of the most logical explanations for the strange noise were exploding transformers, but the local electric company says they haven't had any transformers blow lately.