Fire in the SkyS


Attention

Best of the Web: Meteorite starts fire in Itatiba, Brazil following separate Fireball incident in neighbouring Campinas days earlier

Translated by SOTT.net reader

After reports of an alleged fall of a fireball associated with a meteor shower over the weekend in Campinas, now it's Itatiba's turn to be subject to searches for evidence of meteorite fragments. The suspicion is that this object may have crashed into someone's property in the city last Monday. Astronomer Julio Lobo was on location throughout the day yesterday and believes this hypothesis, especially given the characteristics of the fall witnessed by the caretaker of a property. After Correio published a story about the fireball, the editorial staff has received six e-mails from readers reporting that they saw this very bright event. The astronomer explained that the phenomena in Campinas and Itatiba have no relation with each other, but the two incidents indicate that the sky is "busy."

According to the caretaker Jose Oliveira dos Santos, 52, on Monday afternoon, around 2.30 pm, he heard a noise like a jet and then a strong thump on the ground a few meters from his house, on the hill. "There's a flight corridor here, but this buzz was different. It was a sort of whistling at a rapid speed and then it diminished, with a very strong noise. I saw nothing, only listened. After the crash, I saw the fire and immediately phoned the owners of the grange," he said. For the astronomer, this account is considered "classic" of cases in which meteorite falls have been recorded, such as in the city of Varre-Sai, Rio de Janeiro, two years ago. Besides the information of the witness, Lobo listed other evidence.

Meteor

NASA Photographed and Measured the Orbits of Nearly 300 Perseid Fireballs

Earth is exiting the debris stream of Comet Swift-Tuttle, source of the annual Perseid meteor shower. According to the International Meteor Organization, the shower peaked on August 12th with ~120 meteors per hour. NASA's network of all-sky meteor cameras photographed and measured the orbits of nearly 300 Perseid fireballs:
Perseid Fireballs
© NASA
In the diagram, above, the location of Earth is denoted by a red splat. The orbit of parent comet Swift-Tuttle is traced in purple. The comet itself does not intersect Earth (good thing), but many of its meteoroids do hit our planet.

"The plot contains data from July 26th to the present," says Bill Cooke, the head of NASA's Meteoroid Environment Office. "There are 289 fireballs, 183 on peak night alone." To illustrate the intensity of the shower, Cooke offers a composite image of all the fireballs over the Marshall Space Flight Center on August 12th. "It was a great show."

For more snapshots from around the world, browse the Realtime Perseid Photo Gallery.

Meteor

Large Fireball Blazes Across Northwestern US

Flaming meteor? Disintegrating satellite? Plunging plane? Crashing comet? Here's the one thing known for sure about the huge fireball that on Aug. 7 zoomed across North Central Washington's night sky: a lot of people saw it.

"You can bet thousands of folks witnessed the event," said lifelong sky watcher Tom Forker, who saw the blazing ball from his home in Winthrop. "I've seen reports on it from around the Northwest."

Following a Wenatchee World story last weekend, dozens of local observers posted online their gee-whiz accounts of the bright, fiery object. Most reported it whooshed west to east around 10 p.m., with many describing flames, sparks and a comet-like tail flashing a kaleidescope of colors.

Many observers, in locations stretching from the Cascade crest east to Libby, Mont., also noted on sky-watch websites that the fireball was the largest night-sky object they'd ever seen.

"A lot of people said they'd never experienced anything like it," said Forker, who wrote on the American Meteor Society's website: "It's the brightest fireball I have seen in many years."

Meteor

Meteor seen and heard over Nova Scotia, Canada

It's looking more and more like a meteor was the cause of a loud mysterious boom heard Sunday night by people across western Nova Scotia.

Several witnesses are describing an object with a fiery green tail that flew across the skyline. David Landry was in Dartmouth when he watched the bright object hurtle across the sky over the Halifax bridges and towards the west shortly after 11 a.m. [?]

He said the object was "much bigger and closer" than any meteorite he had ever seen before.

Moments later people in western Nova Scotia reported hearing the booms and seeing flashes of light.

Shortly after 11 p.m. people from Liverpool to Yarmouth County and beyond reported seeing flashes of light and hearing booms. Some reported hearing two booms, a large boom followed by a smaller boom.

Unlike a lightning bolt, this flashing bluish light was reported to last for more than 30 seconds and the "thunder" was heard and felt for more than 100 miles.

Meteor

Meteorite hits moving car in Sioux City

Around 11:15 p.m. last night, Steve Bell of Sioux City was in his car at a stop sign near Lakeport Commons when he heard a loud bang and glass break.

Immediately he thought it was a gunshot and took off.

He then parked in the Hy-Vee gas station near by and noticed a dent in the top of his car.

About fifteen minutes later he returned to the stop sign where the incident happened and was shocked by what he saw.

Meteor

Blazing Meteor observed in Wenatchee, Washington

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© Dean JohnsonWenatchee Valley, Washington State
East Wenatchee - Maybe you were out Tuesday for a late-evening stroll and gazed upward to admire the night's majestic spray of stars when ...

"It came flying out of the sky like a station wagon on fire," said Rick Throneberry, a Wenatchee resident who says he saw a fireball dropping from the cosmos "like something blew up and burned in flames all the way down."

Throneberry, who lives near the corner of Maple Street and Western Avenue, said he was standing in his yard chatting with his father about 10:15 p.m. Tuesday when he glanced to the northeast, toward Waterville, and saw the fireball falling, falling beyond the rim of Badger Mountain.

"It wasn't getting dimmer as it dropped," he said. "It was still in full flame when I lost sight of it behind Badger. I even waited ... thinking there might be an explosion. It never came."

Throneberry isn't alone. Another resident, this one in East Wenatchee, witnessed a blazing ball and, thinking it was a crashing plane, called the Douglas County Sheriff's Office.

"Let's see," said Sheriff Harvey Gjesdal, scrolling on Friday through official documents for the exactly the right report. "Airplane crash, nope. Bright lights, nope. Fireball from the sky, nope. I think I might need to call you back on this one."

Question

No Explanation for Loud Boom Heard in Fremont, California

Fremont -- No explanation has been found for a loud boom, like an explosion, that was heard around 10:30 a.m. Tuesday.

Neither Fremont police nor the fire department has received information that would explain the noise.

Fire department Lt. Doug Crowell said he believes the noise may have been a sonic boom.

"It rattled the building," Crowell said of the fire department. "We haven't had any calls about it."

The News-Messenger and the police received inquires about what the noise might have been.

Meteor

Did a meteor fall in Jacksonville, Florida 448 years ago?

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© Will Dickey/The Times-UnionBased on intriguing accounts by Spanish and French explorers in 1564, University of North Florida physics professor emeritus Jay Huebner (above) believes that a strike by a meteor, comet or asteroid could have formed Round Marsh in the Timucuan Ecological and Historic Preserve. He's trying to raise funds for an expedition to discover the truth.
At sea in August 1564, a Spanish priest in Pedro Menendez' fleet wrote of a "miracle from heaven" - a comet as bright as the sun, streaking west toward Florida.

On land, the hungry, miserable French settlers at Fort Caroline were stunned by a "stroke of lightning" that, one wrote, instantly "consumed about 500 acres and burned with such a bright heat that the birds which lived in the meadows were consumed."

The fire burned for three days. The river "seemed almost to boil." Enough fish died to fill 50 carts.

A retired University of North Florida professor thinks the Spanish comet and the French lightning strike were very likely the same thing - an object from outer space that struck at the edge of the St. Johns River in Jacksonville.

It could have been a meteor, asteroid or comet 100 feet across, says UNF's Jay Huebner. Most of it would have vaporized on impact, with trees and animals incinerated in unimaginable heat. Water from the river and marsh would have made a roaring waterfall as it rushed to fill the crater left by the strike.

That crater, Huebner theorizes, is today's Round Marsh in the Timucuan Ecological and Historic Preserve.

Meteor

Unexplained lights, noises appear again in Baraboo

For the second time in four months, Baraboo residents have reported unexplained flashes of light accompanied by loud booms.

The Baraboo Police Department received reports before 3 a.m. Sunday of flashes and thunderous bangs from locations on Tenth Street, Birch Street, Park Street and numerous other areas.

Officers who heard the bangs themselves believed they came from somewhere south of the city, according to a police report. But they were unable to determine who or what caused them.

Eric Kaun of Reedsburg was walking near Pierce Park when the first incident occurred. He said he witnessed a flash in the sky. About three seconds later, he heard what sounded like the crack of a gun, but much louder.

"It wasn't a firework," Kaun said. "It was more of a strobe-light effect that lit up the entire night sky. And there was no residual gunpowder flare falling from the sky."

Meteor

Giant Diving Fireball Filmed Over Gulf of Mexico, June 2012

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Startling night-camera footage of what appears to be a giant fireball coming down over (and possibly into?) the Gulf of Mexico. This website claims it filmed on June 13, 2012.