Fire in the SkyS


Meteor

Best of the Web: Very close shave! NEO to come within 12,000 km of Earth today, February 4!

Giovanni Sostero & Ernesto Guido
remanzacco.blogspot.com
Fri, 04 Feb 2011 10:56 UTC
The newly discovered object, officially designated 2011 CQ1, will make a close Earth approach today February 04, 2011 around 19:40UT at ~0.03(LD)/0.00008(AU) or 11855 km.

2011 CQ1 has been discovered by R. A. Kowalski few hours ago in the course of the "Catalina Sky Survey" with a 0.68-m Schmidt + CCD. The object was moving at roughly 6 "/min and it was of magnitude ~19. According to its absolute magnitude H=32 this is a very small object, in the order of 2-3 meters.

Just few hours after his discovery, we have been able to follow-up this object using remotely a 0.35-m f/3.8 reflector + CCD of "Tzec Maun Observatory" in New Mexico. At the moment of our images (on February 04.46), "2011 CQ1" was moving at 23"/min and its magnitude was ~18.

Comment: Readers are encouraged to watch this video to understand the seriousness of the asteroid threat.

Asteroid Discovery From 1980 - 2010

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Meteor

NASA Finds 20 New Comets, 33,000-Plus Asteroids


ibtimes
Wed, 02 Feb 2011 09:21 UTC
NASA said its Near-Earth Object WISE (NEOWISE) mission has discovered 20 comets and more than 33,000 asteroids in the main belt between Mars and Jupiter, in addition to 134 near-Earth objects (NEOs).
new asteroids discovered
© NASA/JPL-Caltech/WISE TeamNASA said its Near-Earth Object WISE (NEOWISE) mission has discovered 20 comets, more than 33,000 asteroids in the main belt between Mars and Jupiter, in addition to 134 near-Earth objects
NEOs are asteroids and comets with orbits that come within 28 million miles of Earth's path around the sun. A comet is an icy small Solar System body that when close enough to the Sun displays a visible coma - a thin, fuzzy, temporary atmosphere - and sometimes also a tail. Asteroids are actually small solar system bodies orbiting around the sun.

NASA's NEOWISE is an enhancement of the $320 million Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer (WISE) mission that was launched in Dec. 2009. WISE scanned the entire celestial sky in infrared light about 1.5 times and captured more than 2.7 million images of objects in space, ranging from faraway galaxies to asteroids and comets close to Earth.
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Meteor

Photo captured of meteor over Harvard Square-January 29th 2011


Wicked Local Cambridge
Sun, 30 Jan 2011 16:07 UTC
meteor, jan,29,2011
© Brad Kelly

Cambridge - A Somerville photographer said he captured a photo of a meteor streaking across the sky over Harvard Square Saturday night.

Brad Kelly was walking from his home in Somerville to Harvard Square to catch a movie. He was late for the movie, so he ended up walking around Harvard Square, snapping photos to waste some time. At around 8:30 p.m., he found himself in front of the Cambridge Savings Bank building, snapping a few photos. And that's when he captured the meteor.

Kelly shared a photo of the original photo -- taken with a Nikon D300 -- with Wicked Local Cambridge. For photo geeks, Kelly said, it was an 8-second exposure at aperture f8 on a tripod with a 20mm prime lens.
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Meteor

'Cometa Aster': Once a myth, now an object of study


European Space Agency
Mon, 23 Feb 2004 16:01 UTC
Image
© Unknown
The comet, which moves in an elliptical orbit around the Sun, will at rendezvous be some 675 million kilometres from the Sun, near the point in its orbit farthest from the Sun. The meeting point was not chosen at random: at this point the comet is still barely active, it is still in fact a frozen lump of ice and interplanetary dust, in all probability the matter from which our solar system emerged four and a half billion years ago. Rosetta's job is to find out more about these strange bodies that travel through our solar system. As it moves on, the comet will begin to change. As it approaches the Sun, it will - like all comets - become active: in the warmth of the Sun's rays, the ices evaporate, tearing small dust particles from the surface. This produces the comet head (the coma) and tail during solar flyby skims several metres of matter off the comet's surface. In the case of a small comet like Churyumov-Gerasimenko, the shrinkage is a good 1% each time round." As it flies past the Sun every 6.6 years it can look forward to a short future, especially on a cosmic timescale.

Comment: Astrophysicist James McCanney has, for several decades now, been attempting to inform (and warn) anyone who will listen about the true nature of our solar system and the way in which the planets and the sun (and any stray bodies that enter our solar system) interact with each other. Basically, McCanney makes the case for an 'electrical' interaction between the planets, with the sun as a massive electrical 'storehouse' that can be 'discharged' by new celestial bodies entering the solar system. To put it even more basically: large cometary bodies that do 'fly-bys' of the earth can, depending on the alignment of the earth, sun, the 'new-comer' and any number of the other planets, charge our ionosphere and cause serious 'electrical' disruption of the earth environment, including an ultimate reversal of the earth's magnetic pole.

For a more detailed analysis of McCanney's theories see the following two articles:

Comet Elenin is Coming!
Pole Shift? Look to the Skies!

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Meteor

Best of the Web: Apocalypse Forever: The Root of Islam Was a Very Dark Year

Mark Twain
Faith Freedom
Mon, 31 Jan 2011 16:25 UTC
Image
© Unknown
Human history is a mosaic of economics, scientific progress, individual initiative, and random chance. The world goes to war because one man is assassinated. Kingdoms change hands because someone invented a longer spear or a faster arrow. But the environment has long been overlooked as an influence on history. Human interaction with the environment, instead, has been the domain of anthropologists studying hunter-gatherers. Yet, rather than our usual supernatural history with prophetic explanations, history can be explained logically in natural terms. The environment not only plays a role in our history, but it is also a crucial role.

Most of us learned in school that the Dark Ages began in the vacuum left by the Roman Empire, whose fall resulted from over-reaching ambition, corruption, and human frailty. Comparatively few records remain from that time, especially from the sixth-century, which is considered both the low point and the official beginning of the Dark Ages.

It's not until recently that some scholars have begun to think something very unusual happened around that time, that perhaps the apocalyptic writings of sixth century historians are pointing to something more concrete than political and economic hardship. Their most important clue came not from musty old libraries, but from the forests.

Trees live a very long time, their memories are accurate, and they hold a grudge forever. Deprive them of good sunlight for a season and they'll complain about it hundreds of years later. And the trees, it turns out, have much to complain about.
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Meteor

US: Meteor Sighting Reported Over Cambridge


The Boston Channel
Mon, 31 Jan 2011 10:47 UTC
Meteor
© Brad Kelly / Wicked LocalA Somerville photographer captured a photo of an apparent meteor streaking across the sky over Harvard Square Saturday night.
Cambridge, Massachusetts -- A Somerville photographer captured a photo of what he believes was a meteor streaking across the sky over Harvard Square Saturday night, our news partner Wicked Local/Cambridge reported.

Brad Kelly said he was late for a movie he wanted to see, so he ended up walking around Harvard Square, snapping photos to pass the time.

At around 8:30 p.m., he said he found himself in front of the Cambridge Savings Bank building, and that's when he captured the picture.
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Meteor

US: Woman Films Object Shooting Across Sky

TJ Aulds
The Daily News, Texas
Fri, 28 Jan 2011 12:16 UTC
Susan Stacy knows what a plane looks like when it streaks across the Gulf of Mexico at sunset. But she has no idea what she captured on video from her front porch in Terramar Beach on the island's West End last month and again Friday night.

Watch the video below and tell us what you think? Plane, meteor or UFO?

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Chalkboard

Threat of Near-Earth Asteroid Prompts Deflection Theory

William Atkins
iTWire
Sat, 29 Jan 2011 11:39 UTC
Image
© unknownPhoto of Apophis
A New York professor has an idea that may help to deflect any asteroid that is on a head-on collision with Earth. He is testing his idea, which includes a solar sail, sunlight, and a warmed up asteroid, with the help of NASA.

Dr. Gregory L. Matloff is an associate professor of physics at New York City College of Technology (City Tech).

He is working with NASA on an idea of heating up an asteroid with the use of a solar sail (which produces a concentrated stream of sunlight) so that a jet stream could be created on the asteroid to alter its course away from Earth.

Earth is always in jeopardy of being hit by an asteroid and other space objects. Small ones - meteorites - hit Earth all of the time and still smaller ones - meteors - enter Earth's atmosphere but burn up before reaching the ground. However, larger ones still out in space - meteoroids and even larger ones called asteroids -- are of concern to astronomers because of their potential to do great harm to our planet if they should collide with us.
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Meteor

Another Fireball in Irish Skies


RTÉ News
Fri, 28 Jan 2011 07:10 UTC
Irish Fireball
© RTÉ NewsAstronomy - Public appeal for fireball sightings.

A fireball has blazed across Irish skies for the second time in ten days.

Astronomy Ireland says a piece of an asteroid or comet entered the Earth's atmosphere over Ireland and blew apart between 6am and 7am.

The organisation says it has already received a number of reports of the event and is appealing to the public to report any sightings here.

'Large fireballs can explode with the power of an atomic bomb when they burst tens of kilometres above our heads,' said David Moore, Chairman of Astronomy Ireland.

'Fragments that survive the fall to the ground can fetch a keen meteorite hunter hundreds - if not thousands - of Euro, if sold'.

Astronomy Ireland says a fireball also appeared in the moonlit sky on 18 January.
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Question

US: 'Boom' Heard Across Southeast Oklahoma


Koco.com
Thu, 27 Jan 2011 11:35 UTC
Oklahoma City - A loud 'boom' was heard by Oklahomans on Thursday morning, but officials confirmed that it was not an earthquake.

Eyewitness News 5 began reporting a possible earthquake around 10:30 a.m. The United States Geological Survey said no such earthquake had occurred.

The last earthquake in Oklahoma was at 9:53 a.m. on Jan. 19. It was a magnitude of 2.8, according to the USGS.

Eyewitness News 5 will update this story as more details become available.
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