Fire in the Sky
Twitter went into meltdown this evening as hundreds of people reported seeing a comet or meteor shower over the north of England.
Flashing lights apparently flew across the night sky at just before 11pm, sending people across the region into a frenzy.
Llinos Thomas, a 30-year-old dentist and Boyfriend Matt Brennen, a 26-year-old engineer, were among those who witnessed the events.
Mr Thomas said: "We were on the A55 from Chester towards North Wales and we thought we saw a firework.
"It was a massive cluster of lights in the sky, but travelling really quickly West and that's when we realised it was a meteor shower.
"It was travelling at really high speed for ten seconds and died out and faded away.
Twitter is all abuzz with sightings of a huge fireball meteor that streaked across the skies Friday night at approximately 22:00 UTC. There are reports from Northern Ireland, Scotland, and Central England.
I'm going to link a bunch of videos so you can check out the event from multiple angles, but I want to make a completely unscientific judgement: it kind of looks like a re-entering spacecraft. Take a look at what the Jules Verne spacecraft looked like when it came back into the Earth's atmosphere. See how it broke up into all those pieces? And don't let anyone fool you with this picture. It was taken about 3 years ago in the Netherlands.
Phil made a similar observation, but he's still on the fence. We'll have to wait for someone official to tell us what it was.
Did you see it? Did you get a video?
I'll give you an update as soon as I know anything else.
Here are some videos. Fair warning, there's a lot of bad language in almost all the videos. I can't blame them, I'd probably be swearing too. Just keep that in mind as you watch with your kids.
Mark Boslough's super computer generated, comet airburst simulation is a must see.In it we see the exploding comet detonating high in the atmosphere, and becoming a supersonic down draft of thermal impact plasma hotter than the surface of the sun. But watch the sequence closely. And pay particular attention to the post impact updraft at the center of the flow. And to the directions of flow of the airburst vortex at the surface, as the impact plume develops at the center of the vortex. You might want to replay it a few times.
The old way of imagining of those things was to think of it as a point explosion high in the atmosphere. And it's still popular in the press to pretend the atmosphere dissipates the blast. As you can see, it doesn't. Using super computers has allowed them to retain the downward momentum. So we can see the impact vortex hit the ground as a supersonic blast hotter than the surface of the sun. It would be naive to a fault to think such energies can be dissipated without significant planetary scarring, or ablative geomorphology.
The old way of imagining of those things was to think of it as a point explosion high in the atmosphere. And it's still popular in the press to pretend the atmosphere dissipates the blast. As you can see, it doesn't. Using super computers has allowed them to retain the downward momentum. So we can see the impact vortex hit the ground as a supersonic blast hotter than the surface of the sun. It would be naive to a fault to think such energies can be dissipated without significant planetary scarring, or ablative geomorphology.
© Trish Van Housen
Photo taken near Phoenix, Arizona of the trail left behind by an incoming meteor/comet fragment that exploded above southwestern US on September 13th 2012.
Photo taken near Phoenix, Arizona of the trail left behind by an incoming meteor/comet fragment that exploded above southwestern US on September 13th 2012.
Folks contacted law enforcement in northern New Mexico and southern Colorado to report "a crash". A sheriff's deputy in northern New Mexico said he witnessed "an explosion" and part of the object breaking apart from the main body. No one reported a trail moving from the ground upwards, just a very fast-moving dot in the sky that produced a very bright trail mid-atmosphere, indicating that nothing was launched from the ground.
Damage control quickly went into operation, with Associated Press reporting that:
The "explosion" was a normal separation of the first and second stages of the unarmed Juno ballistic missile that was fired at 6:30 a.m. MT from Fort Wingate near Gallup, N.M., said Drew Hamilton, a spokesman for the U.S. Army's White Sands Missile Range. The expended first stage landed in a designated area of U.S. Forest Service land.
© Jennifer Zielinski
Investigators examine the spot where a meteorite slammed into the valley and caused the Peachland fire on Tuesday Sept. 11.
Investigators examine the spot where a meteorite slammed into the valley and caused the Peachland fire on Tuesday Sept. 11.
The cause of the fire burning in the hills above Peachland is as yet unknown, but some say it could have been the result of a meteor shower in the Okanagan.
Several residents report seeing fiery streaks in the sky around the same time as the Trepanier Creek Wildfire that started near Trepanier Linear Park Sunday afternoon.
"I was driving north up Highway 97 when I saw a really, really bright light coming straight down, off to the right over the lake," said Philip Hare of Kelowna. "It was so close I felt like I could touch it, then it was gone. Then I heard about the fire and thought that was way too coincidental for me."
Hare reported the sighting at 3 p.m., the fire started around the same time.
"It was a flash of bright white, blue hot with flames."
Asteroid 2012 QG42
The asteroid will pass by at a safe distance of about 7.5 times the Earth-moon distance. The moon is, on average, about 238,000 miles from Earth. Asteroid 2012 QG42 is, however, listed as a "potentially hazardous asteroid" by the Minor Planet Center at Cambridge, Mass., meaning it may pose a threat in the future.
At least two online observatories are tracking the asteroid's pass by Earth. The Virtual Telescope Project run by astronomer Gianluca Masi in Italy began providing a live video stream today at 6 p.m. EDT (22:00 UTC). You can see that video stream here.
2 NEO's flying past Earth Sept. 13-14, 2012
A mysterious formation in the Valley sky that shined bright Thursday morning had hundreds of viewers emailing and calling ABC15. The formation was seen shining bright around 5:30 a.m. and eventually disappeared.
SEE MORE PHOTOS ON ABC15.COM
© Steve Miley
"This was taken at around 5:40 am this morning. It started at the top right and then fell to the left. Maybe a meteor?"
"This was taken at around 5:40 am this morning. It started at the top right and then fell to the left. Maybe a meteor?"
Translation by lunarmeteoritehunters.blogspot.com
We analyzed a bolide from space that was embedded in a house in Comayagua. Although there was damage where the stone entered, it did not hit anyone.
The missile crashed into a family home in Donaire Valley and has attracted interest from experts in the department of astronomy at the National Autonomous University of Honduras (UNAH).
The fragment, based on a preliminary analysis, is considered to be a meteorite.
Around the world, amateur astronomers have been scanning the cloudtops of Jupiter for signs of debris from an explosion witnessed by Dan Peterson and George Hall on Sept. 10th. So far the cloud layer is blank. "Several observers have now obtained excellent images on the second and third rotations after the fireball, and there is nothing new nor distinctive at the impact site," reports John H. Rogers, director of the Jupiter Section of the British Astronomical Association:
The fireball was probably caused by a small asteroid or comet hitting Jupiter. Apparently, the giant planet swallowed the impactor whole.
Comment: Comparing this image with the image of the impact site, it appears NASA is downplaying the size of whatever hit Jupiter.
© George Hall
What a moment: Jupiter was struck by an asteroid yesterday, as confirmed by this image and a separate eye-witness
- Jupiter was hit during the day yesterday - but it apparently went unobserved from Earth
- ...except for one astronomer, Dan Petersen, who saw the flash with his own eyes
- When Petersen reported the sighting on a web forum, amateur astronomer George Hall checked his overnight footage
As the people of Earth carried out their lives unawares, it seems our gas giant neighbour took a forceful blow to the side at about 11.35am GMT yesterday.
Amateur astronomer George Hall, from Dallas, captured the flash on video at 5:35am CET - but he only went to check his footage after hearing online that another astronomer, watching the planet with his own eyes, saw the huge explosion bloom out of Jupiter in the blink of an eye.
Now astronomers are waiting for the planet to swing back round - to see if Jupiter has been scarred by the impact.
If it has, a black smudge is likely to appear on the 'clouds' of the planet, a distinctive mark to go alongside the Red Spot - Jupiter's giant storm.
Comment: Just ten days earlier, another meteorite appears to have hit the ground in Honduras: 20th August 2012, Honduras Investigates Alleged Meteorite Crash