Fire in the SkyS


Meteor

Third daytime fireball seen in US this year, Meteor grounds air tankers fighting Colorado forest fire

Lake George
© Christian Murdock, The Gazette
An apparent meteor grounded heavy air tankers fighting the Springer fire near Lake George for nearly two hours Wednesday afternoon, leaving firefighters without air support.

But the fiery phenomenon left people from as far away as New Mexico in awe.

The planes were near Lake George when a pilot noticed debris falling from the sky, said Ron Roth, spokesman for the Rocky Mountain Area Coordination Center. The pilots were not sure whether it was "space junk" or a meteor, Roth said.

"We're just glad it quit," Roth said. "A rather odd phenomenon."

Several other reports pointed to a rare, once-in-a-lifetime sighting.

Six reports of a meteor - seen from Winter Park, Colorado Springs and Raton, N.M. - were received by Chris Peterson, a research assistant with the Denver Museum of Nature and Science. The American Meteor Society received seven separate reports, mostly from Colorado Springs.

"These things happen all the time, but usually they just aren't seen during the day," Peterson said.

It likely wasn't one of the more than 22,000 pieces of "space junk" floating around the earth.

Officials at the North American Aerospace Defense Command, which tracks man-made objects that threaten North America, did not report any scheduled entries or objects over North America, said Lt. Col. Mike Humphreys, a spokesman.

Comment: It's possible that a passenger jet was downed by an overhead meteor or cometary explosion in late May 2009:

What are they hiding? Flight 447 and Tunguska Type Events

This is the third (at least) such event in the US alone this year.

2 April 2012 April 2 Texas daytime fireball confirmed, another Meteor seen in Chicago Wednesday

23 April 2012 Second 'Rare' Daytime Fireball Explodes Over US This Month, Van-sized Meteor NOT part of Lyrid Shower


Meteor

Unusual Sight Captured on Camera

Rare Sight
© Gary BrookerRare Sight: Oamaru man Gary Brooker, near Moeraki at the time, captured this image of a bright object in the sky on June 3.
A bright blaze shooting across the night sky has been caught on camera by Oamaru man Gary Brooker.

Mr Brooker was driving north along State Highway 1, near Moeraki, when he spotted the bright trail at 6pm on June 3.

''I was coming home along the main road and I spotted it going down so I stopped and took a photo.

''I didn't think it was a plane because the vapour trail would have been white, but this was burning.''

He said there was an obvious object leading the trail, which he believed was a piece of ''junk''.

''I wouldn't have a clue (how fast it was going). I was doing 100km on the main highway, but I had enough time to put my foot on the brake, stop and take a photo and then it was gone.

''Somebody said it could have been out near Australia. It could have been miles and miles away, but it was so bright.''

It was the first time Mr Brooker had witnessed such an event. He has since shared his discovery with other people, including a friend who has researched the sighting online.

And it turns out Mr Brooker was not the only one who witnessed the rare event over New Zealand.

Another sighting, believed to be the same object, was recorded on the internet, along with another photo, Mr Brooker said.

Meteor

Green fireball streaks across sky in southern England

Image
File photo
'A green fireball' streaked across the sky above Beaconsfield on Friday night, according to motorist Graham Lee.

The freelance photographer thinks he might have seen a meteor while driving home on the M40 and discovered several others had reported the sighting online.

Graham, from Whiteleaf near Princes Risborough, told the BFP: "I was on the M40 coming to the Beaconsfield junction at about 11.30pm and it came from left to right....

"It only lasted a few seconds and I thought it was a firework, but thought crickey that's far too large and far too fast.

"It was as bright as the sun and looked like a green fireball. I felt quite privileged to have seen it."

A website called The Latest Worldwide Meteor Reports lists several sightings of 'fireballs', 'flashes' and 'green lights' at about the same time, in various locations around Oxfordshire.

Ralph Campbell, Chairman of Aylesbury Astronomical Society, said Graham had probably seen a meteor, which is also known as a shooting star.

Attention

International Space Station damaged by meteor

Image
© ISS - Digital Camera, ESAA meteor photographed burning up in the atmosphere in August 2011 by an astronaut aboard the ISS
Everyone knows what a pain it is when you get a chip on your car's windshield from a bit of flying grit. But on Earth it is usually fairly easy to call someone in to repair it.

NASA are currently evaluating a similar spot of damage to one of the viewing windows on the International Space Station to see if that needs to be replaced.

The chip that left a visible scar on the outer pane was caused by a tiny meteoroid or scrap of space debris travelling many times faster than a bullet. It hit one of seven panes in the orbiting outpost's European-built Cupola - the space equivalent to a conservatory.

This particular impact is not thought to put the six astronauts on board in any danger. But it is a reminder that space is a dangerous place.

Astronauts aboard the ISS use the zone as a place to relax and watch the views of Earth and sky. It has provided some stunning images and videos recently of aurora displays and other spectacles including the recent Transit of Venus.

Meteor

Meteor Sighted Over Michigan/Ohio

"Reports began coming in just after 10 p.m. on Thursday of a bright object streaking across the sky at about 9:55 p.m.

"It was an incredible sight. It came from the south, streaked over head quickly and then within a second disappeared over Lake Erie," Kathy from Willoughby Hills, Ohio said. She described the sight as a bright white ball with a long, green tail.


Steven from Wooster, Ohio saw it too. He said he also saw "2 or 3 pieces that came off bottom and were traveling at a slower velocity."
The shooting star was observed across portions of Ohio, Southern Ontario, Western Pennsylvania, Ohio & West Virginia. (and Michigan)"

Read more


As it were, I first saw the reports on Twitter when the sighting was all of 3 minutes fresh as I happened to be doing a random search for the term "just saw a UFO". Nice fireball!!

Meteor

Large fireball seen in over Ohio, Pennsylvania, West Virginia and Southern Ontario

Fireball over Ohio
© Getty ImagesA meteor streaking across the Ohio skies put on quite a show for a few brief seconds Thursday evening.
Did you see it? Lots of folks across northern Ohio did. A meteor streaking across the Ohio skies put on quite a show for a few brief seconds Thursday evening.

Reports began coming in just after 10 p.m. on Thursday of a bright object streaking across the sky at about 9:55 p.m.

"It was an incredible sight. It came from the south, streaked over head quickly and then within a second disappeared over Lake Erie," Kathy from Willoughby Hills, Ohio said. She described the sight as a bright white ball with a long, green tail.

Steven from Wooster, Ohio saw it too. He said he also saw "2 or 3 pieces that came off bottom and were traveling at a slower velocity."

The shooting star was observed across portions of Ohio, Southern Ontario, Western Pennsylvania, Ohio and West Virginia.

Meteor

Large Fireball Over West Oklahoma and North Texas

This evening in the midst of Developing thunderstorms One of the flashes across the sky wasn't lightning! 1 large Bolide or Fireball came roaring to earth. Reports are coming in from Oklahoma Of sonic booms caused as the fireball streaked towards Earth.
Texas Fireball_1
© Central Texas AllSky Camera

Meteor

Bright fireball seen from Queensland, Australia

Sunshine Coast astronomer Owen Bennedick is urging anyone who saw a meteorite near Caloundra last night to contact him.

Mr Bennedick runs the Wappa Falls Observatory at Yandina.

He says he was with a group of people who saw a bright fireball in the eastern sky about 11:00pm (AEST).

"We were coming back from doing the lunar eclipse in Brisbane and on the way back ... about 11 o'clock on the southern end of the coast, a very, very large what we call a fireball or a bolloid entered the atmosphere," he said.

"It was so bright that we could see the smoke trail in behind it - very, very blue, white colour."

Mr Bennedick says it looked like the meteorite was heading towards the Caloundra area or it might have entered the water.

Meteor

Giant cosmic explosion of 774AD has left absolutely no trace - except deep within the bark of two cedar trees

It is a mystery which is truly beyond even Sherlockian scale - a cosmic explosion which left no trace behind except deep within the bark of two cedar trees.
Image
© Visual Unlimited/naturepi.comThe clues are in these rings: The rings capture microcosmic traces of particles in our skies - and tell us an explosion occurred
Fusa Miyake, of the Nagoya University in Japan, studied the growth rings of two trees dating back 1,200 years - and discovered that an explosion of epic proportions occurred between 774 and 775AD.

But there is no record of something happening in our skies in that period - except perhaps for one tiny, obscure account by a 13th-century historian.

The problem - and this is where we need to call in Mr Holmes of Baker Street - is that there should be a record.

If this was a supernova - a star exploding deep in space - we should either be able to spot the remains with modern telescopes, or find visual accounts in the written accounts of Chinese and European historians.

To get the technical details out of the way first: Trees capture particles from the atmosphere during photosynthesis, and one particle that gets buried within the annual growth rings is carbon-14.

Meteor

Fireball Blazes Over Paris