Fire in the Sky
From Bill Cooke of NASA's Meteoroid Environment Office: "The Canadian CMOR radar is reporting a major Draconid outburst, commencing at 16 UT on Oct. 8th. Radar rates are at 1000 meteors per hour. This is greater than last year's outburst, and 5x the 2005 level." Northern sky watchers, especially in Europe where night is falling, should be alert for shooting stars. Also, you can tune into Space Weather Radio to hear live Draconid radar echoes. [sky map]
A meteor shower spawned by the remains of a comet will be at its best tonight, but whether the "shooting star" display will peak as amazing celestial fireworks or a cosmic fizzle remains to be seen. The annual Draconid meteor shower will peak overnight tonight (Oct. 7 and 8) in the first of two substantial fall meteor displays in October. Astronomer Tony Phillips of the night sky observing website Spaceweather.com said the Draconids are "notoriously unpredictable," but worthy of a look by observers with dark, clear skies tonight.
© Jesper Grønne
This long-exposure image taken by Jesper Grønne in Denmark shows many Draconid meteors streaking out of the sky, October 2011.
This long-exposure image taken by Jesper Grønne in Denmark shows many Draconid meteors streaking out of the sky, October 2011.
© YouTube user 2012FromAbove
Possible fireball over Italy 2nd October 2012
Possible fireball over Italy 2nd October 2012
Music by: 2o12BEAT - Searching the Sky
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Maybe this is not a meteor (too slow) nor a fireball (seems two balls to me anyway). Maybe some kind of high flying plane ? It will be a very hard descent for a human body.
I can't even imagine the speed and the compression you have to take...
It is falling for sure. But WTF is that ??
No official meteor reports have been released about it.
Someone have ideas?
It looks great anyway !!!
© Unknown
The observation of a significant Draconid meteor shower -- which radiates from the constellation Draco in the northern sky -- has become a frustrating pursuit for many skywatchers because they have to rely on luck to see one, the museum said.
Known for its unpredictability, the annual celestial event can produce from dozens to thousands of shooting stars per hour, said museum researcher Chang Kuei-lan.
Chang said that's because the Draconids' parent comet, the 21P/Giacobini-Zinner, leaves uneven debris behind its orbit. That uneven debris forms the shooting meteors seen from Earth.
Al Qaeda have supposedly evolved from sophisticated multiple hijackings inside highly controlled airspace to... arson
"One should note that setting fires to forests in the countries of the European Union is a new tendency in al-Qaeda's strategy of a 'thousand cuts'," Alexander Bortnikov said, according to state news agency RIA Novosti, at a meeting of heads of security agencies.
"This method allows (al-Qaeda) to inflict significant economic and moral damage without serious preliminary preparations, technical equipment or significant expenses."
In linking al-Qaeda to the deadly wildfires, Mr Bortnikov pointed to calls to launch a "forest jihad" by various extremist websites which he said also publish detailed instructions about how and where to best carry out arson.
Comment: "Forest jihad"? They have got to be kidding! This nonsense from the Russians appears to be evidence that they too are in on the cover-up to blame forest fires caused by meteorites on the increasingly useful "al-Qaeda".
Reign of Fire: Meteorites, Wildfires, Planetary Chaos and the Sixth Extinction
Daytime fireballs spark ground fires in Okanagan Valley, British Columbia
Fireball starts wildfire in Reno, Nevada
Meteorites impact ground in Tuscany, April 1 2012
Meteorite starts fire in Itatiba, Brazil following separate Fireball incident in neighbouring Campinas days earlier
Police in Manchester Township, NJ are investigating a mysterious boom that shook block after block in the Ocean County community Thursday night. Residents say it felt and sounded like an explosion.
"It was so loud that my windows were rattling" said Jayne Yereance. "I really thought the house next door blew up. That's how bad it was."
Residents say there have been similar incidents since the summer. Police are trying to determine if they're connected, but investigators don't yet know where the sounds are coming from or who is responsible.
There's been no damage and no one's been hurt, but many people are on edge.
"I really wish they would knock it off so we can stop jumping out of our skin" Marissa Bartles said.
The Lakehurst military base is nearby, but authorities don't think that's the source of the booms. Military officials tell NBC10 there were no explosions on the base Thursday night.
"It was so loud that my windows were rattling" said Jayne Yereance. "I really thought the house next door blew up. That's how bad it was."
Residents say there have been similar incidents since the summer. Police are trying to determine if they're connected, but investigators don't yet know where the sounds are coming from or who is responsible.
There's been no damage and no one's been hurt, but many people are on edge.
"I really wish they would knock it off so we can stop jumping out of our skin" Marissa Bartles said.
The Lakehurst military base is nearby, but authorities don't think that's the source of the booms. Military officials tell NBC10 there were no explosions on the base Thursday night.
© NASA
The International Space Station
The International Space Station
Mission Control Center spokeswoman Nadyezhda Zavyalova said the Russian Zvevda module will fire booster rockets to carry out the operation Thursday at 07:22am. Moscow time (0322 GMT).
The space station performs evasive manoeuvres when the likelihood of a collision exceeds one in 10,000.
NASA estimates that more than 21,000 fragments of orbital debris larger than 10 centimetres (3.9 inches) are stuck in earth's orbit, and experts worry that orbiting junk is becoming a growing problem for the space industry.
There are six astronauts - three Russians, two Americans and one from Japan - on-board the orbiting laboratory.
Meanwhile, a giant supply ship burned up over the South Pacific early on Wednesday in a self-destruct operation after a six-month mission to the International Space Station, the European Space Agency (ESA) said.
Comment: 'Space debris' is, of course, cover for increased fireball flux due to Earth passing through higher concentrations of cometary debris. Like man-made global warming, chemtrails, and HAARP, 'space debris' is the ready-(man-)made answer to something which man has absolutely no technological control over.
Back in June, ISS was already hit by an object:International Space Station damaged by meteor
For the first time ever, a meteor has grazed in and out of Earth's atmosphere, slowing enough to become a temporary satellite that lasted a full orbit.
By evening on September 21st, an earlier storm had moved eastward and left skies over the British Isles beautifully clear.
Martin Goff, an officer with the Greater Manchester [England] Police, was making his rounds when he spotted a dazzling meteor at 22:55 p.m. (21:55 Universal Time). "I immediately pulled the van over to better see the fireball," he recounts. "Although not an experienced astronomical observer I was able to log relevant information such as altitude and azimuth relative to the straight road I was on and to trees and streetlights nearby." He estimates it was about as bright as a full moon and remained visible for 35 to 40 seconds, fragmenting for at least the last half of that. "I was just flabbergasted to have seen it!"
He was hardly alone in his amazement. Friday-night crowds were out and about when the bolide appeared, delighting and amazing untold thousands as it broke into dozens of pieces as it glided east to east across the sky. Dirk Ross, who tracks bright meteors and meteorite finds worldwide, logged 564 eyewitness reports from England, Scotland, Ireland, France, Belgium, The Netherlands, and Norway.
A few hours later, Ross received another burst of 126 sightings. But these weren't from Europe - instead, a fireball had appeared over southeastern Canada and the U.S. Northeast. What at first seemed the unlikely arrival of two dramatic bolides in a single night is now known to be something much more historic and scientifically profound.
© Damien Stenson Photography
Lucky skygazer Damien Stenson was photographing O'Briens Tower at Ireland's Cliffs of Moher when a brilliant, fragmenting bolide passed behind. Stenson used LEDs to illuminate the tower in this 30-second exposure. Click on the image for a larger version.
Lucky skygazer Damien Stenson was photographing O'Briens Tower at Ireland's Cliffs of Moher when a brilliant, fragmenting bolide passed behind. Stenson used LEDs to illuminate the tower in this 30-second exposure. Click on the image for a larger version.
Martin Goff, an officer with the Greater Manchester [England] Police, was making his rounds when he spotted a dazzling meteor at 22:55 p.m. (21:55 Universal Time). "I immediately pulled the van over to better see the fireball," he recounts. "Although not an experienced astronomical observer I was able to log relevant information such as altitude and azimuth relative to the straight road I was on and to trees and streetlights nearby." He estimates it was about as bright as a full moon and remained visible for 35 to 40 seconds, fragmenting for at least the last half of that. "I was just flabbergasted to have seen it!"
He was hardly alone in his amazement. Friday-night crowds were out and about when the bolide appeared, delighting and amazing untold thousands as it broke into dozens of pieces as it glided east to east across the sky. Dirk Ross, who tracks bright meteors and meteorite finds worldwide, logged 564 eyewitness reports from England, Scotland, Ireland, France, Belgium, The Netherlands, and Norway.
A few hours later, Ross received another burst of 126 sightings. But these weren't from Europe - instead, a fireball had appeared over southeastern Canada and the U.S. Northeast. What at first seemed the unlikely arrival of two dramatic bolides in a single night is now known to be something much more historic and scientifically profound.
© Reuters
Table Mountain looms over Cape Town's Waterfront district.
Table Mountain looms over Cape Town's Waterfront district.
Cape Town had its own "it's a bird! It's a plane!" moment when multiple reports that a helicopter had crashed off the coast of Blouberg on Friday night saw rescuers across the spectrum mobilised, only to turn up... nothing.
Reports included suggestions of "something flying through the air that looked like a shooting star or rocket", complete with green light and in one case, a flash of flame, which suddenly disappeared.
By yesterday morning not a scrap of wreckage had turned up, however. And NSRI spokesman Craig Lambinon reported that what the witnesses were likely to have seen was in fact "meteorite fall".
He said it had come to light that an Airlink pilot reported seeing "what he believed to be a meteorite fall across the western part of the Western Cape, at the same time as the crash sightings".
"The pilot had just reached cruising altitude in an Airlink passenger plane after taking off from Durban's airport, heading towards Cape Town."
Lambinon added that more witnesses at the Cape Town International Airport also reported seeing what was believed to be a meteorite fly across the West Coast skyline.
© NASA
A meteor photographed from the ISS on 13 August 2011.
A meteor photographed from the ISS on 13 August 2011.
In a statement released to reporters, NASA officials noted that the space station's path will not put the massive orbiting module in the path of two large chunks of space debris.
"Additional tracking Wednesday night of both the Cosmos satellite debris and the Indian rocket body debris resulted in a high degree of confidence that neither object would pose any possibility of a conjunction with the International Space Station and a debris avoidance maneuver scheduled for Thursday morning was cancelled by the flight control team at Mission Control," NASA officials said in an update Thursday.
Mission Control says there is a high degree of confidence neither object will come too close to the space station. The worrisome debris contained fragments of an Indian rocket. NASA issued an alert late Thursday, warning that the space debris could pose a risk to the ISS. Three astronauts - NASA's Sunita Williams, Russia's Yuri Malenchenko and Japan's Akihiko Hoshide - are currently working aboard the space station.
Comment: 'Space debris' is, of course, cover for increased fireball flux due to Earth passing through higher concentrations of cometary debris. Like man-made global warming, chemtrails and HAARP, 'space debris' is the ready-(man-)made answer to something which man has absolutely no technological control over.
Reading between the lines of the above story, it appears that they were tracking two or more incoming meteors or cometary fragments (MoCFs), anticipated that a possible dodge would be required for the ISS, then canceled the operation once the MoCFs passed by. The ISS wasn't so lucky in June when it was hit by a smaller object:
International Space Station damaged by meteor
Comment: Meteors and fireballs have been reported to move extremely slowly down through the ages - they can even appear to change directions during their passage through atmospheric layers. The twin tail has also been noted before:
17 May 2012: Fireball filmed over Peru