Fire in the SkyS


Question

US: Mysterious booms questioned

Stop. Hey, what's that sound?

Several Arkansas City area residents reported hearing explosion-type sounds or sonic booms recently. But authorities can't seem to pinpoint the source of the sounds.

Elmer Morris, a World War II veteran, today said he heard the booms two or three times on Monday and several more times Tuesday. The booms were heard during daylight hours, he said.

Morris said the sounds are very similar to sonic booms he heard while in the military and on the West Coast.

Meteor

US: Sonic boom-like noise heard by many last night

A sonic boom like sound heard by many late last night is something that has happened before, according to State Police. They tell us that is what it probably is. They tell us there was nothing reported to them last night as far as an explosion or anything suspicious. Delaware's Dover Air Force Base has no information regarding any aircraft from their base that the noise may have been related to.

Meteor

Earthquake follows Nebraska fireball

"At 9 p.m. Central Time on Dec. 16th, a very bright meteor lit up the completely overcast sky like lightning in southeast Nebraska," reports Trooper Jerry Chab of the Nebraska State Patrol. "It flashed for approximately 2 seconds and was followed by ground shaking, which prompted many calls by the public to law enforcement in a three county wide area." The USGS says there was a magnitude 3.5 earthquake near Auburn, Nebraska, at 8:53 pm Wednesday night, about the same time and place as the fireball. Coincidence? Readers in Nebraska with photos or eyewitness accounts are encouraged to submit a report.

Meteor

Alleged Meteorite Fall Causes Alarm in Santiago, Chile

Meteor in Santiago, Chile
© UnknownMeteor in Santiago, Chile?
A long white trail that appeared to be the fall of a meteorite was seen in the morning over the mountains.

However, after several inquiries the meteorite hypothesis was dismissed against the hipothesis of a meteorological effect.

According to sources of the Bureau of Aeronautics, it was an aircraft that was headed for Argentina and that, by the effects of temperature difference and contact of the turbine with the cooler air, generated a bright trail that remained in the sky.

Esteban Hermosilla captured this phenomenon in the morning when droving to work from Lo Barnechea to Huechuraba.

"I was going down the Costanera highway and you could clearly see the marked trail, so I took a picture with my cellphone. I didn't know what it was, I was astonished, I thought it was a plane but it was very strange"said Esteban Hermosilla.

Meteor

Canada: Apparent Meteor Zips Through Sky

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A trail of gold. That's what a Langham women said an apparent meteor left behind when it zipped across the Saskatchewan night sky. Laurie Suiker says she was driving home just before 6:00 Friday evening on Highway 16, near Lutheran Road, when she saw a flash of light. She initially thought it was a shooting star.

"I watched it trail for a tiny bit and then it went, poof !" said Suiker. "And there was this beautiful golden shower. It wasn't huge. It was way up there, but it was pretty beautiful."

Suiker described the flash for her husband, Chris, and compared it to the meteor sighting in November of 2008 near the Alberta/Saskatchewan border (Flash pictured right).

Comment: A comment posted by a reader to the original article stated:
Saw something appearing...

On December 13th, 2009 LeRyck (not verified) says:

I am from Quebec city. Saturday evening, at 17:50 local time, I saw a quite big green ball streaking through the sky from East to West or possible from ENE to WSW. It was followed by a reddish tail. The whole experience did not last more than about 2 seconds. I saw it through a window. I roughly estimated its speed to 20,000 km/s.
Does anybody else have seen that?



Meteor

Huge fireball and blue/green skies seen from Minnesota to Wisconsin

Finding that the sky is blue is not unusual, unless it's 1:15 in the morning.

That's what happened early Friday when observers from western Minnesota to northern Wisconsin reported seeing a bright blue or green flash in the sky.

The National Weather Service in Grand Forks, North Dakota, logged a call at 1:25 a.m. from someone 15 miles west of Bemidji, Minnesota, who reported the sky looked green.

The weather station then heard from a sister station in Duluth, Minn., which passed along observations from law enforcement agencies in Wisconsin, where a huge fireball was seen near the town of Fifield that created temporary mid-day brightness, said Bill Barrett, a Weather Service official in Grand Forks.

Question

Air France jet hit trouble near AF447 crash site

French investigators said they are looking into problems encountered by an Air France jet last month in nearly the same spot over the Atlantic where another Air France jet mysteriously crashed in June.

Air France flight 445 was flying from Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, to Paris, France, the night of Nov. 29 when it encountered the problems, the French accident investigation agency, BEA, said in a news release this week.

Meteor

Hawaii: Colored 'fireballs' light up evening sky

Wailua - Residents are still talking about the unique light show they witnessed in the evening skies last week.

A "big ol' honking fireball" was what Steve Yoder said he saw while he was on his way to Wailua from Waimea the night of Dec. 2. A "flaming green" object lit up the eastern sky right before 9 p.m.

"I hadn't started drinking yet," he said with a laugh.

In fact, Yoder said he found it hard to believe there has not yet been an explanation for what he saw, much like the loud noise over Kalaheo reported by residents in May of this year.

"I've seen meteorites all my life," he said. But added that what he saw was much different. "It was either a gigantic asteroid or one of the biggest meteorites I have ever seen."

Meteor

Bluish-green fireball sighted over northern Germany

Several eyewitnesses reported seeing a bluish-green fireball over northern Germany on Monday night - possibly a large meteor burning up in the Earth's atmosphere, according to experts at the German Aerospace Centre (DLR).

The object was first sighted over Braunschweig around 11:40 pm, but people in Celle, Delmenhorst, Lüneburg, Grabow, Kiel and Hannover also spotted the fireball streaking across the sky. The Network for Researching Unusual Heavenly Phenomena (CENAP) said on Tuesday the object eventually broke up into brightly glowing pieces before disappearing.

Wilfried Tost from the DLR said the fireball was likely a meteor, explaining that on average one falls to Earth over Central Europe each month.

Last spring, a German meteorite researcher found the remains of another spectacular fireball on the Danish island of Lolland.

Meteor

US: "Electric" Blue Streak (Meteor?) Seen in Eastern Sky

Posted: December 2, 2009

Date of Sighting: November 29, 2009
Time of Sighting: 12:05 to 12:10 AM PST
Location of Sighting: Longview, Washington (Southwestern Washington)

Description: I saw an electric blue streak in the eastern sky. The object was about 1 & 1/2 times the size of the moon at that time. The object was about an inch to the left of the moon, which was visually about a foot above the horizon. I noticed the object when it was at about the height the moon was at this point. It descended towards the horizon in a straight line lasting 1 to 2 seconds although the tail did not really appear to be tapering. I immediately thought meteorite & half expected to hear it impact somewhere east of Longview, Washington. My impression was of a round electric blue, large object moving toward the eastern sky in very rapid stages. Was this a meteorite? I have never seen this color nor an object other than the moon of this size in the sky.