Fire in the SkyS


Fireball

Fireball spotted in the skies of southern Italy - February 19, 2013


Unexplained Things Are Out There
Tue, 19 Feb 2013 00:00 UTC
Image
© Nicola Cambareri/CataniaPhoto of the Fireball that lit up southern Italy on February 19th 2013
A few minutes ago, at 19:18, a bright fireball was spotted in the skies of southern Italy. The first reports Strait from Messina reported a fireball on the Ionian Sea , with director from north to south, greenish and very bright magnitude.

We are awaiting further reports that allow us to understand the scope of the sighting.

After what happened in Russia, where a real asteroid 17 meters caused 1,500 wounded, This term is much more common.

A fireball , or meteor meteoroid scientifically defined, is a piece of rock the size of a small stone, which enters our atmosphere at very high speeds, which in certain circumstances may be more than the 260,000 km / h. The vision of these bodies is characterized by a ball of fire falling from the sky quickly, leaving behind a trail of light lasting a few seconds, and that only in very rare cases assumes a hazard similar to what happened in the region of Chelyabinsk.

Can take various colors from white to red, green to orange. In certain circumstances may even explode, creating spectacular light flashes (called flares) and / or change color, creating a memorable show for lucky observers. These phenomena fact can not be predicted, and being often have unpredictable occasional observers entirely. There are also very rare circumstances where the cars also produce a roar caused by the explosion, like distant thunder.
Read More...
Question

Is this another daytime fireball streaking over Rio de Janeiro?


YouTube
Tue, 19 Feb 2013 12:54 UTC
Posted on YouTube by Jaspion Santana:

Read More...
Fireball 3

'Orange and red fireballs' light up night sky in Florida


Daily Mail, UK
Mon, 18 Feb 2013 00:00 UTC
  • The bright flare was likely a sporadic meteor, the Coast Guard said
  • One resident caught the rare sight on video
Residents in south Florida spotted something in the horizon that they described 'as orange or red fireballs in the sky,' according to officials.

Amanda Mayer, of the West Palm Beach area, told reporters that she noticed the bright flare in the night sky on Sunday and thought it was somebody flashing a light.

Mayer said she hit the record button on her camera just in time to capture the rare sight.
Image
© NBC6What's that? Residents in South Florida spotted something in the horizon that they described 'as orange or red fireballs in the sky'
Image
© NBC6
Image
© NBC6
Read More...
Fireball

Is this a daytime meteor falling over Saudi Arabia?


First Post
Mon, 18 Feb 2013 20:51 UTC
A daytime meteor fireball falls over Saudi Arabia, causing a sonic boom and chaos on the streets...


Comment: There's been a dramatic increase of fireballs around the planet in the last few days. For more information about what might be coming down the pike in the near future read: Comets and the Horns of Moses by Laura Knight-Jadczyk

Read More...
Info

Strange EM effects of Chelyabinsk meteor explosion: Why did some glass shatter, but remain intact elsewhere?

Shane McGlaun
Slash Gear
Mon, 18 Feb 2013 15:43 UTC
It's strange enough that so many people were able to capture video of the meteorite that streaked over Russia on Friday exploding over populated areas causing injury and large amounts of damage. We knew as of Friday that the meteorite had exploded with enough force to knock glass windows out of many buildings in the cold Siberian portion of Russia.
Meteor Damage
© SlashGear
Today we have more reports of damage caused by the meteor explosion and they are as bizarre as some of the damage reports from tornadoes we've heard over the years. For instance, in the city of Chelyabinsk, Russia some high-rise buildings had the glass blown out of every window on the top floor while other buildings had only the glass from the bottom floor destroyed. Even that's not the most bizarre report of damage caused by meteor.

Comment: There may be more to the author's tornado analogy than he realizes: both meteors and tornadoes produce - or are themselves the product of - electrical phenomena. Yes, an incoming space rock is just that, but when it interacts with the atmosphere it becomes something far larger: a massive plasma field that can produce all kinds of strange - and often lethal - effects over a wide area. Tornadoes, meanwhile, are an extreme form of 'charge-rebalancing' between lower layers of the atmosphere and the ground, which is why 'strange things happen' during them.

Read More...
Fireball 3

Bright fireball flares up over Florida, 17 February 2013


lunarmeteoritehunters.blogspot.com
Mon, 18 Feb 2013 05:40 UTC
Image
© LunarMeteorite*Hunter / Google EarthFlorida Meteor 17 FEB 2013
17 February 2013 - Alexander Valdes, Miramar, Florida @ 19:20 EST
About 3-4 seconds duration. I was facing east on Miramar PKWY at traffic light on Flamingo. A bluish and then bright green colour. No sound. I was inside my car. It was very bright, similar to a firework display. I did not see any fragmentation. It fizzled out before I could take a picture.
17 February 2013 - Karina Harfouche, Boca Raton, Florida @ 18:55 EST
5 seconds duration. Left to right, I was facing north. It looked like a ball on fire, about half the size of the moon. It was as bright as the sun, a very bright yellow/orange colour. I was driving from Miami to Boca Raton and saw this fireball going straight down towards the east. After 5 seconds it lit-off and disappeared.
17 February 2013 - Jank Foster, Palm Harbor, Florida @ 7:20pm
4 seconds duration. North to south direction. It was a bright yellow fireball.

Comment: There have been at least 15 significant fireball events so far in February 2013...

Read More...
Meteor

Flashback NASA sez: Asteroid 2012 DA14 - strike in 2013 is overhyped


Mother Nature Network
Wed, 07 Mar 2012 12:24 UTC
Despite feverish speculation from doomsayers, the near-Earth asteroid 2012 DA14 won't slam into our planet next year, NASA researchers say.

The asteroid, which astronomers estimate to be about 150 feet (45 meters) across, will give Earth an uncomfortably close shave on Feb. 15, 2013, coming nearer to our planet than the satellites we've lofted to geostationary orbit. But 2012 DA14 poses no real impact danger on that pass, according to NASA scientists.
Image
© NASA/JPL Near-Earth Object Program OfficeIn this oblique view, the path of near-Earth asteroid 2012 DA14 is seen passing close to Earth on Feb. 15, 2013.
"Its orbit about the sun can bring it no closer to the Earth's surface than 3.2 Earth radii on February 15, 2013," researchers with the Near-Earth Object Program Office, at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif., wrote in an update on March 6.

One Earth radius is roughly 3,963 miles (6,378 kilometers) at the equator. So by this reckoning, the nearest 2012 DA14 can get to us next year is 12,680 miles (20,406 km).
Read More...
Fireball 3

'Meteor shower' lights up night sky across Florida: Coast Guard

Juan Ortega
NBC Miami
Sun, 17 Feb 2013 19:30 UTC
South Floridians who happened to be looking in the right place at the right time Sunday night saw one spectacular light show - possibly a meteor shower.

The Coast Guard began getting flooded with phone calls about 7:30 p.m., with reports of folks seeing flare-like objects from Jacksonville to Key West, according to Coast Guard Petty Officer 3rd Class Sabrina Laberdesque. People called in, describing the flares "as orange or red fireballs in the sky," Laberdesque said.

The display was limited to the sky: No injuries were reported, Laberdesque said.

The Coast Guard found that the flares were disappearing in an instant. The Coast Guard sent out a helicopter to check out a report of a flare near the MacArthur Causeway, but found nothing there, Laberdesque said.
Read More...
Fireball 3

Russian meteor blast 'heard' around the world

Becky Oskin
OurAmazingPlanet
Sun, 17 Feb 2013 08:25 UTC
Russian Meteor
© isoundhunterThe Russian meteor blast send infrasound, or low-frequency sound waves, through the atmosphere.
The shock wave from Friday's (Feb. 15) meteor explosion above Russia sent subsonic waves through the atmosphere halfway around the world.

Up to 11 sensors in Greenland, Africa, Russia's Kamchatka Peninsula and other far-flung regions detected the Russian meteor blast's infrasound, or low-frequency sound waves. The sensors are part of the global network of 60 infrasound stations maintained by the Comprehensive Nuclear Test Ban Treaty Organization (CTBTO).

Infrasound's long wavelengths (about 20 to 0.01 Hertz) can travel far distances in the atmosphere, at frequencies humans can't hear. Elephants, whales and even pigeons use infrasound for communication and navigation, scientists have discovered.

The CTBTO relies on Infrasound arrays to help determine the location and size of atmospheric explosions. Man-made explosions, such as bombs, produce a different infrasound pattern than natural fireballs like shattering meteors.
Read More...
Fireball

What we know about the Russian meteor event on Feb 15, 2013

Heidi Hammel
The Planetary Society
Sun, 17 Feb 2013 10:00 UTC
We have the technology to provide warning about these potential disasters

What we know (subject to change as more information comes in): At 9:20 a.m. local time in Russia, videos show an impactor coming in from the North. Asteroid 2012 DA14 is approaching Earth from the South. These two events are not related. The body is estimated to have been 15 meters across and weighed roughly 8 tons 8000 tons. The resulting airburst would have the equivalent yield of a 1-10 megaton 500 kiloton explosion. Note that these are very rough and extremely preliminary estimates.


Comment: The problem isn't a lack of technology; the problem is that our leaders have chosen to ignore the problem.

From Letters From The Edge:
Awareness of the possibility of large impact events on Earth, although long present among a handful of the most imaginative thinkers, has come of age in this century as a result of studies of Arizona's Meteor Crater and the Tunguska fireball of June 30, 1908, in Siberia, spacecraft observations of cratering on Earth and other rocky bodies, and astronomical surveys of the near-Earth asteroid and comet populations. Appreciation of the effects of large impacts has developed in response to these studies and to the unclassified literature on the effects of large nuclear weapons. [...]

The most intensively studied impact phenomenon, impact cratering, is of limited importance, due to the rarity and large mean time between events for crater-forming impacts. Almost all events causing property damage and lethality are due to bodies less than 100 meters in diameter, almost all of which, except for the very largest and strongest, are fated to explode in the atmosphere. ... Since explosions greater than 1 gigaton TNT are rare on this short of a time scale, we are forced to conclude that the complex behavior of smaller bodies is closely relevant to the threat actually experienced by contemporary civilization. [...]

The large majority of lethal events (not of the number of fatalities) are caused by bodies that are so small, so faint, and so numerous that the cost of the effort required to find, track, predict, and intercept them exceeds the cost of the damage incurred by ignoring them.

(John S. Lewis, Professor of Planetary Sciences at the Lunar and Planetary Laboratory, Co-director of the NASA/University of Arizona Space Engineering Research Center, and Commissioner of the Arizona State Space Commission in: Comet and Asteroid Impact Hazards on a Populated Earth, 2000; Academic Press)


Read More...