Fire in the SkyS


Fireball 3

Photographer captures blazing meteor over Arizona, 21 October 2012


The Friday Flyer
Fri, 26 Oct 2012 16:49 UTC
dennis bickers
© Dennis Bickers
The 2012 Orionid meteor shower peaked early Sunday, October 21, with forecasters predicting up to 25 meteors an hour for patient stargazers. Canyon Lake photographer Dennis Bickers wasn't exactly trying to be a stargazer but he believes he got a good shot of a large meteor passing across the western sky just after sunset Sunday.

Asked whether it could have been the setting sun shining on a jet contrail, Dennis says he would have known the difference - the meteor was traveling too fast to be a jet.

The next major meteor shower to light up the night sky will be the annual Leonid meteor shower in mid-November. It will peak on November 17.

To see or purchase Dennis Bickers' pictures of Canyon Lake, visit gobickers.com.
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Fireball 5

Nevermind the disinformation: 'Rock' found in Navato, California IS a meteorite, Second one found nearby

David Perlman
San Francisco Chronicle
Thu, 25 Oct 2012 16:39 UTC
Image
© P. Jenniskens SETI Institute/NASA ARC The dent in a roof caused by a meteorite from the Oct. 17, 2012, fireball over Northern California is identified by Luis Rivera, the neighbor of Lisa Webber who found the meteorite after it struck her Novata, Calif., home.
And now there are two.

Two meteorites, that is, because the "rock" that fell on Lisa Webber's roof in Novato from last week's explosive fireball in the sky turns out to be a true meteorite after all.

Peter Jenniskens, the meteor scientist at the Seti Institute in Mountain View, said he first dismissed the one that hit Webber's house because its surface looked merely like a weathered chunk of granite and its outside wasn't black like most meteorites.

But he changed his mind, he said, because a chip from a second "rock" showed tiny specks of what looked like metal under his microscope - telltale signs of the violent collisions that typical meteors endure as they form in the asteroid belt and fall to Earth.

Now, a Sacramento man has reported finding the second meteorite in the Novato area on Monday.

Brien Cook, an amateur meteorite hunter, told The Chronicle he too had dismissed his "rock" at first. He said he stuck it in his pocket and threw it in his waste bucket at home.
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Fireball

'Largest meteorite' to fall in Poland discovered


TheNews, Poland
Thu, 25 Oct 2012 19:56 UTC
Meteorite Crater
© WikipediaA meteorite crater at the Poznan reserve.
The largest meteorite to have fallen in Poland has been discovered on the outskirts of the western city of Poznan.

Professor Wojciech Stankowski, a retired lecturer at Poznan's University of Adam Mickiewicz told the PAP news agency:

"At the beginning of this month, a meteorite of about 300 kg was found," he said.

"It is by far the largest to have been found in this part of Europe up until now," he added.

The marvel from outer space was found in the Morasko Meteorite Nature Reserve, which was established in 1976 at a site where meteorites were first discovered in 1914.

The most recent discovery was made by Magdalena Skirzewska and Lukasz Smula, two geologists from the Silesian city of Opole.

Until now, the largest meteorite discovered on Polish soil - also at Morasko Meteorite Nature Reserve - weighed 164 kg, located in 2006.

The latest find is almost twice as heavy. Nevertheless, the world's largest known meteorite - the so-called Hoba of Namibia - weighs in at over 60 tonnes.
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Play

Meteor sonic boom captured over Bonney Lake, Washington

Rich Everton
Youtube
Thu, 25 Oct 2012 17:57 UTC
I was outside walking my dog (Bonney Lake, Wa) Thursday evening 10-18-2012 when at approximatly 7:45 PM Pacific Time the cloud covered night sky flashed so brightly that it blinded me breifly. Aproximatly 20 seconds later there was a large continuous boom as you will hear in the video! The weather in the Seattle where I live was unsettled that night but in my location the was no lightning or thunderstorm prior or after the event. The loud roar was unlike any thunder I have ever heard. Here is video of one of my security cameras capturing the event. (The time showing on my security screen is actually 1:30 minutes slow)

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Fireball 2

Meteorite hunters are scouring the Bay Area looking for chunks of space debris

Laura Anthony
KGO-TV.com
Thu, 18 Oct 2012 09:19 UTC
Meteorite hunters are scouring the Bay Area looking for chunks of space debris. They can be sold for hundreds and sometimes thousands of dollars at auction.

Bob Verish is looking for pieces of meteorite in Mill Valley that would be from the meteor that blazed across Bay Area skies Thursday night. Verish drove from Battle Mountain, Nevada Thursday morning. According to his calculations, the debris from last night's car-sized meteor likely landed somewhere between Mill Valley and points north and west. "The reflection from the stones that fell seem to start here in the Mill Valley area. It definitely was flying low and dropping rocks along a path, maybe even 50 miles north of here," said Verish.

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Fireball 4

2-inch rock that hit a Novato home is a chunk of the meteor that lit up the Northern California skies


KGO-TV.com
Mon, 22 Oct 2012 08:56 UTC
NASA scientists have recovered the first chunk of the spectacular meteor seen streaking across the Bay Area sky Wednesday night. It apparently hit the roof of a house in Novato, bounced a couple of times and ended up on the ground. The homeowner says she heard a loud thud that night. Lisa Webber says she remembers because the house was quiet, she had just turned off the TV after the Giants game was in a rain delay.

She found the meteor fragment in her backyard a couple days later. Webber contacted scientists with the SETI Institute in Mountain View who have confirmed the piece of rock is indeed a small chunk of the meteor.
Image
© KGO photo
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Fireball 2

Now it's New Jersey: What was the mysterious shake rattling New Jersey? Residents feel the earth move...but it's not an earthquake

Nina Golgowski
Daily Mail
Sat, 20 Oct 2012 09:58 UTC
Image
© USGS
A mysterious ground shake through parts of southern New Jersey rattled residents around 11am this morning leaving bewildered residents still without answers. Both the U.S. Geological Survey and the National Weather Service reported no earthquake having occurred in the area and the nearby military base claiming to have had no training exercises that would have caused the tremors.

The USGS has since speculated that the shake felt by residents in southern counties for an estimated 15 seconds was from a sonic boom. The effect would be a 'thunder-like noise a person on the ground hears when an aircraft or other type of aerospace vehicle files overhead faster than the speed of sound or supersonic,' according to NASA.

Comment:

So if there was no earthquake, what caused the sonic boom? Elsewhere on the Big Blue Marble there have been almost daily reports of loud booms as well as 'earthquakes' and meteorite explosions:

Thousands report loud boom and unusual sounds in Northeastern US: USGS classifies it as earthquake, but was it really an overhead meteor explosion?

Meteor explodes above Devon, England, blast wave blows open police station doors, tremors felt across wide area

Fragmentation and Sonics! Northern California Fireball Meteor +19'42 PDT 17OCT2012 - Unrelated to the Orionids

Slow-moving blue-orange fireball reported over Lincolnshire, England

Meteor with a long gold tail blazes across Alberta, Canada, 15 October 2012

Large bright fireball with orange-green tail breaks apart over Queensland, Australia, 29 August 2012

Something wicked this way comes? Read our SOTT Focus: Meteorite Impacts Earth in Minden, Louisiana - Media and Government Cover It Up

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Fireball 5

Spectacular fireball lights up night sky over Poland, 19 October 2012 - not part of Orionids

Translation by SOTT.net
PRACowniA
Fri, 19 Oct 2012 10:14 UTC
Yet another visitor to our already crowded skies...

Our first detailed eyewitness report of this extraordinary event comes from the Astropolis.pl forum:
Observation sent in from Krakow by Vader, 19.10.2012, 11:33AM

"I saw many shooting stars yesterday, but what I saw about at around 2:20 AM CEST (approximately) cannot be forgotten. I had just come round from the back of the house and was looking in the direction of the Little Bear (Ursa Minor) and Draco (Dragon) constellations. A light-yellow meteor appeared, which sped toward the northern horizon, from the border of these constellations. Then it flew between Zeta Draconis (Nodus I) and Eta Draconis (Al Dhibain) of the Dragon, rapidly brightened to a negative magnitude and changed colour to an intense light-green. Something like those popular laser pointers.

The phenomenon ended up to the right and below the Beta Draconis (Rastaban) and Nu Draconis, where there was a very bright flash and it broke up. It actually became almost as bright as day in that moment. It's hard for me to judge the brightness, because I very rarely see this kind of phenomenon. I think it could well have been of magnitude -8. The overall time of its flight was about 3-4 seconds.

After its passage, I instinctively looked at Jupiter and noted how dark it looked in comparison. The meteor left a visible trail in the sky, which I watched for about one minute. Once I calmed down, I ran inside to get my camera and tripod, then set it up to focus on Jupiter and made a few shots in that direction (55 mm, ISO 1600, 13 sec). The first photo was taken at 2:25 and the second one at 2:38, when the trail was still slightly visible. The brightest star in these photographs is the Beta Draconis.

PS: small focal length, large cro, high ISO, hence not the best quality images."

Image
© Vader

Image
© VaderVisible trail left down by a bright fireball over Poland on 19 October 2012
Comments:

mago83, in Bialystok, northeastern Poland, wrote: "I saw the end of the passage with a fading 'tail'. In fact, the view was breathtaking."

QbaC, in Sierpc, central Poland, 125 km northwest of Warsaw, wrote: "Hey, I too had an opportunity to see it... electrifying! At around 2:20 AM, a group of us were standing at a gas station close to Sierpc, looking at the western sky when suddenly it became BRIGHT as if it was a short-circuit on a power pole. When we turned around, we could see a thick trail left in the sky below Ursa Major following the passage and fragmentation of a meteor. This trace was visible for several [between 10 and 20] seconds! The flash of light was so bright that it lit up the whole surrounding area. Even a friend who was on the bus saw the flare! I often look at the stars, but have not seen anything like that before!"

Brahi wrote: "Thankfully this thing didn't hit the Polish Fireball Network (PFN43) station in Siedlce, operated by Maciek Myszkiewicz, which recorded the fireball ;) It looks like its brightness was over -12 mag during the flash. Traces on next frames are displayed for 16 minutes. Probably a monstrous Orionid.

Image

Comment: These reports from Poland have been further verified by another eyewitness report, sent into thelatestworldwidemeteorreports.blogspot.jp:
19 October 2012 - Tomasz Monko, Skierniewice, Poland. 2:25 CET - 1 or 2 secs, NE-SW. Cyan flare, light yellow appearance, huge explosion, very high speed, very wide flare.
The spectacular fireball seen in San Francisco and beyond on Wednesday 17th October was also, contrary to most reports, not part of the Orionids. It has been pointed out that these two particular meteors clearly came from different sections of the sky than one would expect Orionids to arrive from (i.e., from the direction of the constellation Orion).

Calculating distances, trajectories and possible points of origin of such highly unusual events, happening now on a daily basis, and for which we have little to no frame of reference in modern history, in order to assess which annual or bi-annual meteor shower they formed part of, obscures the plain truth of the matter: NONE of these enormous meteor/fireball events have anything to do with the usual background noise of meteor showers, which come and go all year round and produce little flits of 'shooting stars' in the sky, not near-fatal impacts.

If the recent series of fireball events are telling us anything, it is that there is surely an enormous quantity of new cosmic debris that has turned up in our inner solar system.

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Fireball 3

Fireball seen over Washington, D.C., Maryland, and Virginia, 16 October 2012

Jason Samenow
Washington Post
Wed, 17 Oct 2012 12:24 UTC
Tuesday night, around 7 p.m., several witnesses report seeing a fireball streak across the sky in the Washington, D.C. region.

"I was walking to Alliance Francaise from the Zoo metro stop around 7 p.m. last night, and I saw a white light in the sky zip past overhead, and then go out with a small boom while still traversing the sky," emailed Victoria Hall.

Capital Weather Gang reader "snowlover31" left the following comment on the blog: "Saw a VERY large shooting star around 7:15 p.m. near Centreville High School looking northeast.. not one of your average ones either, it was orangish red in color and lasted a bit more than your average blink of an eye shooting star.."

Comment: Looks like the 'earthquake' reported elsewhere in northeastern US on Tuesday 16 October was the same event as this one. With something impacting the ground in Louisiana the night before and another spectacular fireball seen in San Francisco the night after, it sure looks like it's starting to rain fireballs!

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Fireball 5

"It was like a bomb going off" - 'Meteorite' prompts Devon and Cornwall tremor reports


BBC News
Fri, 19 Oct 2012 09:45 UTC
People across Devon and Cornwall have inundated police with calls saying they had experienced an earth tremor. Officers from the region said they received reports of people hearing loud bangs and buildings shaking from about 16:15 BST on Thursday.

Police staff in Devon's Newton Abbot station also said floors shook. The British Geological Survey said it had no evidence of a tremor, but added it could have been a sonic boom from a meteorite falling to earth.

'Spectacular' noise source

Police said the calls were "fairly widespread", coming in from Harrowbarrow in south east Cornwall, as well as the South Hams and Teignbridge areas of south Devon, the Tamar Valley and Dartmoor.

Comment: Elsewhere on the big Blue Marble these two incidents just happened in the last few days:

Thousands report loud boom and unusual sounds in Northeastern US: USGS classifies it as earthquake, but was it really an overhead meteor explosion?

Fragmentation and Sonics! Northern California Fireball Meteor +19'42 PDT 17OCT2012 - Unrelated to the Orionids

Something wicked this way comes? Read our SOTT Focus: Meteorite Impacts Earth in Minden, Louisiana - Media and Government Cover It Up

Read More...