Fire in the SkyS


Meteor

Daylight fireball filmed from Boise Idaho in February

Image
If that's a contrail, where's the plane?
Meteorite filmed over Boise Idaho on 3 February 2012.


Meteor

Eta Aquarid Meteor Update

The eta Aquarid meteor shower, due to peak on May 5-6, is already underway. Cameras in NASA's All-Sky Fireball Network have picked up more than a dozen eta-fireballs this week, including seven last night alone. NASA astronomer Bill Cooke prepared this diagram showing the orbits of the fireballs detected so far:

Eta Orbits
© NASA
"The purple line traces the orbit of Halley's Comet, source of the eta Aquarids," says Cooke. "Blue lines are orbits of the individual fireballs determined from simultaneous observations by multiple cameras." A statistical analysis of the data shows that the fireballs hit Earth's atmosphere traveling about 66 km/s (139,000 mph) and disintegrated about 90 km (52 mi) above Earth's surface.

Forecasters expect the shower to peak this weekend; the best time to look is during the hours before sunrise on Sunday, May 6th. Because the shower's radiant is located below the celestial equator, southern hemisphere observers are favored, but even northerners should be able to see a few eta Aquarids. Super-bright moonlight will cap the meteor rate at about 30 per hour.

Meteor

Aquarid meteor shower to coincide with super moon

Earth is entering a stream of debris from Halley's Comet, source of the annual eta Aquarid meteor shower. Because the shower's radiant is located below the celestial equator, southern hemisphere observers are favored, but even northerners will be able to see at least a few flecks of Halley-dust disintegrating in the atmosphere when the shower peaks this weekend. The best time to look is during the hours before sunrise on Sunday, May 6th. Bright moonlight will cap the meteor rate at about 30 per hour.

In recent nights, NASA's all-sky meteor network has picked up a number of early eta Aquarid fireballs. This one was bright enough to shine through the glow of sunrise and clouds over Tullahoma, Tennessee, on April 29th.
Image
© NASA

Meteor

Meteorite Hunters Find Fragments from the Recent 'Daytime Fireball' in California

Image
© Franck Marchis' Cosmic Diary blogMeteorite expert and researcher Peter Jenniskens with a fragment of the bolide seen over California on April 22, 2012.
Meteorite hunters have been successful in locating fragments from the huge meteor visible in the daytime skies over California last weekend. One of the successful hunters was Peter Jenniskens, an expert in meteors and meteorites, perhaps best known for retrieving the fragments of asteroid 2008 TC3 which fell in Sudan in 2008. Astronomer Franck Marchis wrote in his Cosmic Diary blog that Jenniskens realized the size of the California meteor was very similar to 2008 TC3, and so fragments should have reached the surface, just like they did in 2008.

Jenniskens went out searching and found a four-gram fragment of the meteor in a parking lot in Lotus, California.

Update: NASA and the SETI Institute are asking the public to submit any amateur photos or video footage of the meteor that illuminated the sky over the Sierra Nevada mountains and created sonic booms that were heard over a wide area at 7:51 a.m. PDT Sunday, April 22, 2012.

Marchis wrote that several scientists from the Bay Area met at NASA Ames Research Center on April 24 to discuss a strategy for a search campaign, examining a radar data map which showed that dozens of fragments from the 100g to 1 kg range may have reached the ground.

Meteor

NASA shares photo of meteor in Nevada skies

Image
© Lisa Warren/NASA-JPL/APAn image provided by NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory shows a meteor over Reno, Nevada on April 22, 2012.
NASA has released a photograph of a flaming meteor that unleashed a powerful sonic boom Sunday morning, rattling houses in California and Nevada when its disintegration released energy equivalent to a 5-kiloton explosion.

The former space rock entered Earth's atmosphere around 8 a.m. PT on April 22 and exploded over California's Central Valley, according to NASA, which pinpointed the location in a map posted on its website.

According to space.com, several witnesses initially thought they had experienced an earthquake.

"An event of this size might happen about once a year," said Don Yeomans of NASA's Near-Earth Object Program Office. "But most of them occur over the ocean or an uninhabited area, so getting to see one is something special."

Comment: We've noted for several years that the amount of space debris coming in or around the planet has been on the rise. Have a look at some of these articles for more info.

The Hazard to Civilization from Fireballs and Comets
Cosmic Changes, Planetary Instability and Extreme Weather
And keep an eye on this section: Fire in the Sky, as we continue documenting these occurrences.


Meteor

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

A thunderous boom accompanied by a greenish fireball hurtling across the sky shattered the morning tranquility of many residents of Nevada and northern California on Sunday.

According to the Associated Press, the unannounced pyrotechnics prompted a flood of 911 calls in both states.

"It made the shades in my room shake hard enough to slam into the window a couple times," one Reno, Nev., resident, who initially thought it was an earthquake, told the AP.

"It knocked me off my feet and was shaking the house," said a mother in Arnold, Calif., who said she heard a booming sound at about 8 a.m. "It sounded like it was next door."


Comment: Sierra Fireball Decoded - Not a Lyrid

Choice quotes from the above video:
"It happens right around April 22 every year..."
"The people who saw this were very lucky..."
"A rare daytime shooting star, no cause for alarm..."
There's an even better quote here from another 'expert' interviewed by the Wall Street Journal:
"It happened at the height of an ongoing meteor shower that happens every year. In that part of the country it's visible in the sky for several days... uhm... the Lyrid meteor shower..."
Image
...They have got to be kidding us! Oh wait, they are...

It's raining fireballs! April 2 Texas daytime fireball confirmed, another Meteor seen in Chicago Wednesday

The idea that NASA or anyone else can know in advance that a "mini-van-sized meteor" is going to explode in the sky on a particular day in a particular part of a particular country is total BS when we remember that in recent years asteroids have whizzed past Earth and their presence has only been detected at the very last minute, totally confounding all 'predictions':

Bus-sized asteroid shaves Earth with one day's notice

This is not business as usual folks, don't let them fool you by ridiculing it with X-files theme songs or 'expert views'.


Meteor

Sierra Fireball Decoded - Not a Lyrid

On Sunday morning, April 22nd, just as the Lyrid meteor shower was dying down, a spectacular fireball exploded over California's Sierra Nevada mountain range. The loud explosion rattled homes from central California to Reno, Nevada, and beyond. According to Bill Cooke, head of NASA's Meteoroid Environment Office, the source of the blast was a meteoroid about the size of a minivan.

"Elizabeth Silber at Western University has searched for infrasound signals from the explosion," says Cooke. "Infrasound is very low frequency sound which can travel great distances. There were strong signals at 2 stations, enabling a triangulation of the energy source at 37.6N, 120.5W. This is marked by a yellow flag in the map below."
Image
© Unknown
"The energy is estimated at a whopping 3.8 kilotons of TNT (about one fourth the energy of the 'Little Boy' bomb dropped on Hiroshima), so this was a big event," he continues. "I am not saying there was a 3.8 kiloton explosion on the ground in California. I am saying that the meteor possessed this amount of energy before it broke apart in the atmosphere. [The map] shows the location of the atmospheric breakup, not impact with the ground."

Meteor

Loud boom over Northern California and Nevada thought to be from meteor

Image
A picture of a very active Leonid meteor shower.
The Tuolumne County sheriff's department said they are investigating the possibility that it might have been the physical impact of an overnight meteor shower. Some people in the Tahoe area said they saw what they believed to be a meteor just prior to the sound.

People who live in in Lake Tahoe, El Dorado County, Placer County, Tuolumne County, Amador County and Nevada County contacted our sister station in Sacramento. KCRA is reporting that they heard the sound just after 8:30 a.m.

A television station in Reno said they received similar calls from the city of Reno and as far away as Incline Village.

Meteorologists in California and Nevada including our own Rob Mayeda said there were meteor showers Saturday night that could have still been going on Sunday morning.

Meteor

Witness claims to see impact of meteor in Brazil [VIDEO]

Image
© unknown
At approximately 23:20pm on April 21, a meteor was seen passing over the city of Campos dos Goytacazes, from southwest to northeast, according to recent reports of people who saw the fireball, probably lasting over 10 seconds and very bright.

Eyewitness Report
I saw just now, at 23 hrs something strange across the skies. A foreign object, whose shape could not identify. It had speed like that of a plane, but had a long flaming tail in the opposite direction of its trajectory... A man says he is facing the convent and the meteorite was in the direction of the convent He also asserts that it is in the sky for more than 40 seconds... A woman says that the comet was coming in from the southwest direction... A friend claims to have seen the impact, as it fell near the cane fields...

Lunar Meteorite Hunters [Edited for Clarity].

Meteor

A wonderful night in April - April 21 and the 3D Lyrid Meteor Shower

This weekend, NASA scientists, amateur astronomers, and an astronaut on board the International Space Station will attempt the first-ever 3D photography of meteors from Earth and space.

"The annual Lyrid meteor shower peaks on April 21-22," says Bill Cooke, the head of NASA's Meteoroid Environment Office. "We're going to try to photograph some of these 'shooting stars' simultaneously from ground stations, from a research balloon in the stratosphere, and from the space station."


Lyrid meteors come from Comet Thatcher. Every year in late April Earth passes through a stream of debris from the old comet, which has been bringing Lyrid meteors to our planet for at least 2600 years. Specks of Thatcher's dust hit the top of atmosphere at 110,000 mph and disintegrate in a flurry of meteors. Most years, the shower produces about 15 to 20 Lyrids per hour.

This is a good year to look for Lyrids because the Moon will be new when the shower peaks. Dark skies favor sightings both from Earth and from Earth orbit.

"Even though the Lyrids are not noted for spectacular rates, the combination of a New Moon and a very favorable viewing geometry from the International Space Station (ISS) presents a unique opportunity to simultaneously image shower meteors from above and below," says Cooke.