New Delhi - Civil Aviation authorities are baffled by reports from at least 10 aircraft overflying India that they had seen a "ball of fire" in the air, about 300 nautical miles south west of Delhi, which is somewhere over Gujarat.
Sources have told The Sunday Express that all reports came in almost simultaneously, around 1.45 am this morning, and the matter is being investigated.
The description used by pilots, according to their reports, was that it appeared like a "ball of fire, orange in colour and scattered". One pilot, in fact, said it looked like a "meteor shower".
At first, alarmed officials checked whether any aircraft had gone missing or if there was any other disaster in the area. But all this was ruled out by afternoon.
A Chilean jetliner approaching New Zealand came within 20 seconds of being hit by blazing objects hurtling down to Earth, New Zealand aviation officials say.
US space officials said today it was most likely a close encounter with a disintegrating meteor, denying assertions from New Zealand officials that the LAN Chile plane narrowly missed being blasted by Russian space debris that was returning to Earth ahead of schedule.
The world's press was quick to spread the news that pieces of space junk from a falling Russian satellite narrowly missed hitting a LAN Chile jetliner over the Pacific Ocean on Tuesday night. But several experts are now questioning the likelihood of the claims.
According to media reports, the LAN Airbus A340 was traveling between Santiago and Auckland, New Zealand. The pilot notified air traffic controllers at the Auckland Flight Center after seeing flaming, incandescent fragments of the satellite flying through the sky eight kilometers in front of the aircraft. He described seeing pieces of debris lighting up as they re-entered the earth's atmosphere.
According to a plane spotter, who was tuning into a high frequency radio broadcast at the time, the pilot "reported that the rumbling noise from the space debris could be heard over the noise of the aircraft." The plane spotter also heard air traffic control in Auckland warning the pilot of an Aerolineas Argentinas flight, traveling in the opposite direction ten degrees further south. The pilot chose to carry on rather than turn back to New Zealand.
TV3Thu, 29 Mar 2007 04:26 UTC
NASA says the flaming objects which came close to hitting an airliner heading to New Zealand could be meteors, and not Russian space junk.
The objects fell ahead of and behind a Chilean airliner flying over the Pacific between Santiago and Auckland on Tuesday night.
A chief NASA scientist checked with the Russians, who say they fired rockets on their space junk after the airline reported the near-miss.
Comment: Can we call 'em or what?
NASA has discounted claims Russian space junk was responsible for a near-miss over the Pacific.
The pilot of a Chilean jet bound for Auckland reported seeing fiery debris falling near his plane on Tuesday night.
There is speculation it was an unmanned Russian cargo craft returning to Earth after resupplying the International Space Station.
John Masanauskas
Herald SunWed, 28 Mar 2007 13:07 UTC
A jetliner flying across the Pacific has had a close encounter with space junk from a Russian satellite.
The captain of a LAN Chile Airbus A340 flying to Auckland was shocked to see the flaming debris less than 10km from his craft.
New Zealand air traffic control authorities said the space junk posed a major safety risk and would be investigated.
(shortened Babelfish translation)
Mannheim - a large meteor on Monday evening in the clear sky between South Germany and Lower Saxony triggered "UFO" alarm in some observers
|
| ©Volksfreund
|
| A similar meteor recorded over Munich in 2006
|
It's not every day you see a meteor streaking across the sky. For some Torontonians, the sight of a green fireball on Sunday night was a surprisingly big event. Some were scared. Some were enchanted. Some braced for impact and some called the cops. However, as Constable Laurie Perks of the York Regional Police curtly puts it, space debris "is not a police matter. It's an outer-space matter."
The meteor, of a particularly bright type known as a bolide or fireball, prompted many locals to flights of fancy. "I wasn't sure if I was seeing stuff," admits Mike Mazeika, who saw the meteor from a ninth-floor apartment in North York. "It was so big and it lasted so long." He describes the green- and orange-tinged fireball as being "bigger than a plane," maybe "the size of a building" and adds that the sight of it literally froze him in his tracks.
Comment: The Globe and Mail is considered to be 'Canada's newspaper of record', so when it is forced to acknowledge a meteor display, you know things are getting exciting up there in the heavens. Of course, that the meteor went over Toronto helps. The sighting wasn't limited to the boondocks where it doesn't count as national news.
KITCHENER, Ontario - Was it a planet? A plane? A meteorite? Little green men?
Whatever it was, residents across Waterloo Region saw something unusual in the night's sky yesterday. Around 8 p.m., the calls started coming into police stations, describing a fiery display streaking across the horizon.
Some, worried they were witnessing a falling airplane, phoned authorities, who set off on a search and rescue that turned up nothing. Local airports reported no downed planes last night.
Strange lights in the night sky have prompted readers of the Somerset
County Gazette to question the existence of UFOs.
At about 10pm on Monday night, sightings of a strange glow in the sky was reported by Fay Boyd of Kingston St Mary, Richard Fowle of Cheddon Road in Taunton, and his son Edward.
|
| ©Richard Fowle
|
| A Gazette reader comments: "This fascinating occurrence could be the rare phenomenon known as the Zodiacal Light, a ghostly cone of illumination caused by the reflection of the Sun's light from millions of tiny particles in the plane of the Earth's, and Venus' orbits. It's visible just after twilight, a vast faint triangular glow rising from Venus upward into the constellation of Aries. If it is the Zodiacal Light it'll be visible until about March 20 towards the west."
|
Comment: Can we call 'em or what?