Fire in the SkyS


Meteor

NASA to Host News Conference On Near-Earth Asteroid Search Findings

Image
© NASA
NASA will hold a news conference at 1 p.m. EDT on Thurs., Sept. 29, to reveal near-Earth asteroid findings and implications for future research. The briefing will take place in the NASA Headquarters James E. Webb Auditorium, located at 300 E St. SW in Washington.

NASA's Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer (WISE) mission, launched in December 2009, captured millions of images of galaxies and objects in space. During the news conference, panelists will discuss results from an enhancement of WISE called Near-Earth Object WISE (NEOWISE) that hunted for asteroids.

The panelists are:
  • Lindley Johnson, NEO program executive, NASA Headquarters, Washington
  • Amy Mainzer, NEOWISE principal investigator, NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif.
  • Tim Spahr, director, Minor Planet Center, Smithsonian Astrophysical Observatory, Cambridge, Mass.
  • Lucy McFadden, scientist, NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center, Greenbelt, Md.
Reporters unable to attend may ask questions from participating NASA centers or by telephone. To participate by phone, reporters must contact Dwayne Brown at 202-358-1726 or dwayne.c.brown@nasa.gov by 10 a.m. EDT on Sept. 29.

Question

Footage from Japan shows falling object possibly UARS Satellite


Telescope

Meteor? Strange Falling Object Reported Across Gulf Coast

People all across the Gulf Coast reported seeing a large, perhaps green object streaking through the skies about 7:20 p.m. Sunday.

So far, there's no official word on exactly what the object was. NorthEscambia.com and other media outlets received sighting reports from around the area - Atmore, Walnut Hill, Cantonment, Mobile and Pensacola. WKRG TV reports that their meteorologist Johnathan Owens saw the object, which he described on his Facebook page as likely a small piece of an asteroid or a large meteor - and obviously completely burned up in the atmosphere".

Did you see the object? Did you happen to get a picture? Email news@northescambia.com and let us know.

Question

US: Texas Residents Report Something Fell From Sky, Then Fire

San Leon - An object falling from the sky could be to blame for a Saturday grass fire.

"When the call came in to the dispatcher, the person said that something fell from the sky and started the fire," Jeff Pittman, chief of the San Leon Fire Department, said.

The chief said an investigation will be conducted to determine the cause of the blaze at 18th Street and Broadway.

Meteor

Argentina: One woman killed and six injured as meteorite smashes into Buenos Aires

Meteorite in Argentina
Mystery explosion and Esteban Echeverría, "a ball of fire fell from heaven"

One woman died and six others were injured in the incident. A neighbor said the outbreak was caused by a burning object that fell from the sky and completely destroyed a house and several cars. "It was a tremor," he said. Are the causes of the accident.

The incident occurred minutes before 2 am, in a building located on the intersection of Luis Vernet and Los Andes, a town of Monte Grande, of Esteban Echeverría. The causes of the explosion are still unknown, but locals say they witnessed the fact that "a ball of fire fell from heaven." "He began to feel much smell like gunpowder," recalled one person who lives in the area told C5N. "There is no explanation for what happened," said Cayetano, a local resident, told Radio 10, then adding, "a neighbor ran because he saw a fireball falling blue." The commander of the local fire department, Guillermo Pérez, remarked that still do not know the cause of the incident, but acknowledged that the first version is aimed at an "object that fell from heaven." "I heard that version, but I can not say at first. Must be bound to expertise to really see what happened, "he said in a statement to Radio 10. Perez confirmed that two trade houses and" were completely destroyed. "In fact, a woman who was trapped under the rubble lost life while six others were rescued and were taken for care at a local hospital, told C5N firefighters who work on site.

Sun

Solar Static From Active Sunspot 1302

Active sunspot 1302 has turned the sun into a shortwave radio transmitter. Shock waves rippling from the sunspot's exploding magnetic canopy excite plasma oscillations in the sun's atmosphere. The result is bursts of static that may be heard in the loudspeakers of shortwave radios on Earth. Amateur radio astronomer Thomas Ashcraft recorded this sample from his backyard observatory in New Mexico on Sept. 24th:

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© Wes GreenmanDynamic spectrum: The horizontal axis is time (h:m:s), the vertical axis is frequency (MHz).
"Saturday was a super-strong solar day with near continuous flaring and radio sweeps," says Ashcraft. "The sound file (above) corresponds to an M3 flare at 1918 UTC. It was the strongest radio sweep of the observing day."

Sun

Strong Solar Activity Present

Having already unleashed two X-flares since Sept. 22nd, sunspot AR1302 appears ready for more. The active region has a complex "beta-gamma-delta" magnetic field that harbors energy for strong M- and X-class eruptions. Flares from AR1302 will become increasingly geoeffective as the sunspot turns toward Earth in the days ahead.

Marko Posavec of Koprivnica, Croatia, photographed the behemoth sunspot between flares on Sept. 24th:

Image
© Marko Posavec of Koprivnica, CroatiaPhoto details: Olympus E-510, Sigma 50-500mm lens (at 500mm), 1/640 sec. exposure, f/18, ISO 100
"Sunspot complex 1302 is incredibly easy to spot at sunrise or sunset," says Posavec. "Be careful, though. Even the low-hanging sun is bright enough to damage your eyes if you look at it through optics of any kind." Safe solar filters may be found in the SpaceWeather Store.

Satellite

Second giant chunk of space junk heading for Earth

A defunct German space telescope is set to collide with Earth less than five weeks after a satellite the size of a bus hits the planet.

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© Max Planck Institute for Extraterrestrial PhysicsIncoming!
The 2.4-ton Röntgensatellit, or ROSAT, has been spinning aimlessly through space for 12 years after it was switched off in 1999 after its guidance system broke.

With its orbit bringing it inexorably closer to Earth, the authorities initially thought it would burn up entirely on re-entry.

However, it is now believed that pieces of space junk weighing up to 400kg could smash into the planet's surface as early as the end of October.

Sun

Saturday X-Flare

Behemoth sunspot 1302 unleashed another strong flare on Saturday morning--an X1.9-category blast at 0940 UT. NASA's Solar Dynamics Observatory recorded the extreme ultraviolet flash:


The movie also shows a shadowy shock wave racing away from the blast site. This is a sign that the blast produced a coronal mass ejection (CME). The CME isn't heading directly toward Earth, but it might deliver a glancing blow to our planet's magnetic field 2 to 3 days hence. Stay tuned for further analysis.

UPDATE: Sunspot 1302 followed today's X2-flare with an M7-flare nearly as strong (movie). So far none of the blasts has been Earth-directed, but this could change as the sunspot turns toward our planet in the days ahead. The sunspot is growing and shows no immediate signs of quieting down.

Satellite

NASA searches for burned up satellite debris

UARS Satellite
© Rex Features1991 NASA file photo shows the Upper Atmosphere Research Satellite (UARS) in the grasp of the RMS (Remote Manipulator System) during deployment. NASA officials scrambled Saturday to locate any remains of a bus-sized satellite -- the biggest piece of US space junk to plummet to earth in 30 years -- that disintegrated upon on re-entry into the Earth's atmosphere
NASA officials scrambled Saturday to locate any remains of a bus-sized satellite -- the biggest piece of US space junk to plummet to earth in 30 years -- that disintegrated upon on re-entry into the Earth's atmosphere.

NASA has said there is only a "very remote" risk to the public from any of the fragments of the 6.3 tonne Upper Atmosphere Research Satellite (UARS) that may have survived the journey back into the atmosphere.

The satellite fell back to Earth between 11:23 pm Friday and 1:09 am Saturday (0323-0509 GMT Saturday), but the precise re-entry time and location "are not yet known with certainty," NASA said.

The tumbling motion of the satellite has made it difficult to narrow down where it landed, with the ocean considered likely and the exact number of pieces of debris it broke into is still unknown.

The Joint Space Operations Center at Vandenberg Air Force Base in California said the satellite penetrated the atmosphere over the Pacific Ocean, but the landing site was still not confirmed.