Fire in the SkyS


Meteor

US Nebraska: Lost From Space - Where is Meteorite That Lit Up Lincoln's Night Sky?

Peter Salter
JournalStar.com
Wed, 19 Oct 2011 22:00 UTC
Image
© Courtesy imagesThese images, which were pulled from video taken at the Lincoln Airport,
show the object moving across the sky.
The fireball fell from the sky -- streaking the colors of the rainbow and trailing smoke -- at 3:24 a.m., while most of Nebraska was sleeping.

Except for Greg, a ServiceMaster employee, who saw it from Lincoln Airport's parking garage. And Aaron, a TSA employee, who saw it from the interstate. And two citizens concerned enough to call 911.

And a sheriff's deputy, who was dispatched to search for a bright spot on the dark ground near Pawnee Lake, northwest of Lincoln.

And the surveillance camera (which never sleeps) mounted in the car rental return lot north of the airport terminal.

It recorded a black sky most of the night. But at about 42 seconds past 3:24, a streak appeared in the northwest. It stretched out, flared, seemed to spawn a pair of fireballs and disappeared behind the horizon.

Then phones started ringing.
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Meteor

US: Mystery Object Reported In Sky


KETV7 Omaha
Wed, 19 Oct 2011 18:50 UTC
Omaha, Nebraska -- Many people reported seeing a bright flash of light moving across the sky early Wednesday, but it's unclear what it was exactly.

Several people from the Omaha area called KETV to report seeing the object about 3:24 a.m. A security camera at the Lincoln airport seemed to capture the mystery object moving at a fast rate above the horizon. People also called the Lancaster County Sheriff's Office after the object appeared and then disappeared in the sky.

"There was a large flash of light. The caller thought it might be a meteorite of some sort. And we got a couple of different calls on the object," Sheriff Terry Wagner said. Deputies rushed to where callers thought the object may have landed -- some six miles outside of Lincoln.

"[We] were unable to locate any debris or damage," Wagner said.

There were reports that the object was seen as far away as southwest Minnesota.

Watch security footage here.
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Meteor

US: Bright Flash Lights Up Sky


KFGO Studio
Wed, 19 Oct 2011 10:31 UTC
Truckers and at least one law officer all reported seeing a very brief but very bright flash in the sky just before 3:30 a.m. Wednesday morning. Trucker Klye Moulds was on U.S. Highway 2 east of Devils Lake, North Dakota when he saw what looked like lightning. It was colored with red, blue and green.

Another trucker near Oriska, N.D. says it was so bright he should have had sunglasses on.

A Walsh County deputy sheriff also saw the flash, which was described as a red orb.

The best guess is that the bright light was part of the Orionid meteor shower which will peak this weekend. The meteor shower occurs each October as the earth passes through a trail of dust left by Halley's comet.
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Meteor

US: California - Numerous meteors seen falling Tuesday morning?


NC Times
Tue, 18 Oct 2011 08:48 UTC
Temecula - A spray of objects racing across the sky about 6:30 a.m. Tuesday east of Temecula was photographed by Chaparral High School student Karina Reyes.

Image
© Karina Reyes
Don Yeomans of NASA's Near-Earth Object Program Office at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena said at least one of the objects could be part of the annual Orionid meteor shower ---- meteors left behind by Halley's Comet. The meteors became noticeable on Monday and should peak on Saturday morning.
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Meteor

All-Sky Camera Captures Mysterious Flashes

Nancy Atkinson
Universe Today
Wed, 19 Oct 2011 09:04 UTC
Every couple of weeks or so a strange flash appears on an all-sky camera that searches for meteors. What could it be? Take a look at the video above and maybe you can help solve the mystery.


"They are not iridium flares because they are stationary," said James Beauchamp, an amateur astronomer who hosts the meteor camera for Sandia National Labs and New Mexico State University, and who posted this video on You Tube. "And they are not geosynchronous satellites because the azimuth/elevation are too far North. They are reflective because they always happen just prior to or after sunrise/sunset. Whatever it is, it's slow and BIG."

Beauchamp says he see a flash like this about once every month or so. Some are really bright like this one, and others are just small blinks.
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Meteor

Dawn Discovers Surprise 2nd Giant South Pole Impact Basin at Strikingly Dichotomous Vesta

Ken Kremer
Universe Today
Tue, 18 Oct 2011 10:00 UTC
Scientists leading NASA's Dawn mission have discovered a 2nd giant impact basin at the south pole of the giant asteroid Vesta, which has been unveiled as a surprisingly "dichotomous" and alien world. Furthermore, the cosmic collisions that produced these two basins shuddered through the interior and created vast Vestan troughs, a Dawn scientist told Universe Today.

The newly discovered impact basin, nicknamed 'Older Basin', is actually significantly older in age compared to the initially discovered South Pole basin feature named 'Rheasilvia' - perhaps by more than a billion years. And that is just one of the many unexplained mysteries yet to be reconciled by the team as they begin to sift through the millions of bits of new data streaming back daily to Earth.

Image
© NASA/JPL-Caltech/UCLA/MPS/DLR/IDASouthern Hemisphere of Vesta; Rheasilvia and Older Basin
Colorized shaded-relief map showing identification of older 375-kilometer-wide impact basin beneath and overlapping with the more recent Rheasilvia impact structure at asteroid Vesta’s South Pole.
Scientists speculate that 'Older Basin' is on the order of 3.8 Billion years old, whereas 'Rheasilvia' might be as young as about 2.5 Billion years, but those are just tentative estimates at this time and subject to change. Measurements so far indicate Rheasilvia is composed of basaltic material.
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Meteor

Billion Tonne Comet May Have Missed Earth By A Few Hundred Kilometres in 1883


Technology Review
Tue, 18 Oct 2011 14:53 UTC
Image
© UnknownSchwassmann-Wachmann 3 comet which broke apart as it re-entered the inner Solar System in 2006
A re-analysis of historical observations suggest Earth narrowly avoided an extinction event just over a hundred years ago

On 12th and 13th August 1883, an astronomer at a small observatory in Zacatecas in Mexico made an extraordinary observation. José Bonilla counted some 450 objects, each surrounded by a kind of mist, passing across the face of the Sun.

Bonilla published his account of this event in a French journal called L'Astronomie in 1886. Unable to account for the phenomenon, the editor of the journal suggested, rather incredulously, that it must have been caused by birds, insects or dust passing front of the Bonilla's telescope. (Since then, others have adopted Bonilla's observations as the first evidence of UFOs.)

Today, Hector Manterola at the National Autonomous University of Mexico in Mexico City, and a couple of pals, give a different interpretation. They think that Bonilla must have been seeing fragments of a comet that had recently broken up. This explains the 'misty' appearance of the pieces and why they were so close together.

But there's much more that Manterola and co have deduced. They point out that nobody else on the planet seems to have seen this comet passing in front of the Sun, even though the nearest observatories in those days were just a few hundred kilometres away.

Comment: Also, the reader may be interested in Was the "First Photographed UFO" a Comet? and Comet Biela and Mrs. O'Leary's Cow

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Satellite

Dead German Satellite Will Fall to Earth This Week

Denise Chow
Space.com
Mon, 17 Oct 2011 09:55 UTC
ROSAT Satellite
© German Aerospace CenterArtist's impression of the ROSAT satellite in space.

A defunct German satellite is expected to plunge to Earth this week, but exactly when and where the satellite will fall remains a mystery.

The massive German Roentgen Satellite, or ROSAT, is expected to plummet to Earth on Saturday or Sunday (Oct. 22 or 23), though German space officials have also offered a wider re-entry window of between Oct. 21 and Oct. 25. This latest falling satellite comes about a month after a dead NASA climate satellite, called the Upper Atmosphere Research Satellite (UARS), plunged into the Pacific Ocean in late September.

The 2.4-metric ton X-ray space observatory is expected to break up as it travels through Earth's atmosphere, but some large pieces will likely make it through the intense heat of re-entry. According to German aerospace officials, approximately 1.7 metric tons of satellite debris, consisting primarily of up to 30 large glass and ceramic fragments, could survive the journey through the atmosphere and reach the Earth's surface.

"We don't expect big parts to re-enter, except the mirror and the glass and ceramic parts," Jan Woerner, head of the executive board of the Deutsches Zentrum für Luft- und Raumfahrt (DLR), Germany's space agency, told SPACE.com. "Usually during re-entry, you have rather clear burning of all the elements, but glass and ceramics may survive and may come down in bigger pieces."

Comment: So we're being warned that yet another satellite is crash to earth. What is UP that they don't want us to know about?

That ain't no satellite! Meteorite impacts Buenos Aires, Argentina

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Question

US: Maryland Residents surprised by sonic boom


Delmarva Now
Fri, 14 Oct 2011 17:29 UTC
Berlin, Maryland - According to the Worcester County Fire Marshal's Office, the loud noise heard throughout the north end of the county this morning was a sonic boom.

The noise heard from at least West Ocean City to Bishopville was a sonic boom, according to Worcester County Public Information Officer Kim Moses, but officials don't know what agency the associated aircraft was from.

Shortly after the roughly 9:30 a.m. sound, Maryland State Police said a variety of agencies sent officers out to investigate the loud sound that shook roofs but no one was able to determine the cause.


Comment: Another meteorite exploding in the atmosphere perhaps?

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Meteor

Halley's Comet to Put on Meteor Show Next Week

Joe Rao
SPACE.com
Fri, 14 Oct 2011 20:13 UTC
If you step outside before dawn during the next week or so, you might try to catch a view of some "cosmic litter" that has been left behind in space by Halley's Comet: the Orionid meteor shower.

The Orionids can best be described as a junior version of the famous Perseid meteor shower. This year's Orionids show is scheduled to reach its maximum before sunrise on the morning of Oct. 22. The meteors are known as "Orionids" because the fireballs seem to fan out from a region to the north of Orion's second brightest star, ruddy Betelgeuse.

Image
© NASA courtesy of Meteor Physics Group, University of Western OntarioA 2010 Orionid meteor, seen over Western Ontario, Canada. A waxing gibbous moon shines brightly at the left side of the image.
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