Fire in the SkyS


Meteor

Another fireball blazes across southern Finland


Sott.net
Tue, 23 Feb 2010 11:10 UTC
Image
© Esko LyytinenThe fireball of Kärkölä was captured by several meteorite seeking cameras.
The bright shooting star that was seen in the sky of southern Finland on Friday 19 February at 00.05 AM could have dropped a 100 gram meteorite in Kärkölä, in Southern-Häme.

The fireball that was seen shortly after midnight in the sky over southern Finland could have dropped a spacerock along the Riihimäki-Lahti train track. The fireball was observed in Kuru and was captured by six meteorite-observing cameras.

The bright part of the trail in the sky has been determined to be around 100 meters in length based on the video footage of the fireball.

The mathematician and meteor researcher Esko Lyytinen estimates that the fireball dropped a rather small meteorite, weighing maybe ca 100 grams.
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Meteor

Fireball flying over Finland

MPfinOBS
YouTube
Sun, 10 Jan 2010 21:51 UTC
My meteorcamera captured this awesome fireball in Finland Rajamäki. Camera is pointed to at NW and has approx 85 degrees wide field of wiew.

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Meteor

Blazing fireball turns London sky from night to day

Jane Sims
London Free Press
Sat, 20 Feb 2010 23:00 UTC
For a few seconds tonight, the sky in south London lit up - all from a peanut-sized object hitting the atmosphere.

It was a meteor.

Members of the London chapter of the Royal Astronomical Society of Canada confirmed what many others saw just after the supper hour.

A bright light that began as orange, then turning white sailed from the northwest towards the southeast.

One observer believed the light trailed over the sky for as long as five seconds.

Dave McCarter, the chapter president simply wished he had seen it.

"They're fairly frequent," he said. "If you're out looking up the likelihood, you're going to see some of these nice meteors.

Comment: Interesting that at other times in other countries the national press trivialises sightings of fireballs in the sky by reassuring readers just how rare they are, but here the emphasis has flipped to place the sighting within the context of them happening "all the time!"

Nothing to see here folks, it's just another space rock (which we'll guesstimate was the size of a peanut to reinforce the notion that it was utterly insignificant) that turned night into day over yet another major population center!

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Meteor

Fireball over Germany 04 Feb 2010

Da Setza II
Neue Szene Augsburg
Thu, 04 Feb 2010 12:40 UTC
Bavaria, Southern Germany - A night shift worker in west Augsburg, observed an object which might have been a meteorite fall from the sky at 3:04 A.M. local time (CET) and burn itself out before it hit the ground. The appearance, angle and velocity of the phenomenon rule out the possibility that the flaming object could have been man-made leaving out fireworks as an explanation.

The actual size of the object and its distance was not determinable from the observation point of Katzenstadel. Nor was any sound audible from that distance.

Image
© Meteomedia / Mark VornhusenGais
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Meteor

Shetland Islands: Auroras and a fireball


SpaceWeather
Wed, 17 Feb 2010 17:38 UTC
This week, the brightest auroras of the year have been surging around the Arctic Circle. Never one to waste a photo-op, English astrophotographer Pete Lawrence boarded a "Northern Lights flight" on Feb. 15th, and this is what he saw 37,000 ft over the Shetland Islands:

Image
© Pete LawrenceEnglish astrophotographer Pete Lawrence boarded a "Northern Lights flight" on Feb. 15th, and this is what he saw 37,000 ft over the Shetland Islands
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Meteor

New Chemical Diversity Discovered in Old Meteorite

Brandon Keim
Wired
Tue, 16 Feb 2010 13:04 UTC
Meteorite
© Meteorites AustraliaA piece of the Murchison meteorite.
A new analysis of an ancient meteorite that fell to Earth in 1969 reveals millions of complex compounds, underscoring the richness of our galaxy's primordial soup.

More than 200 pounds of the meteorite were recovered from its crash site in Murchison, Australia in 1969. Subsequent analysis classified it as a carbonaceous chondrite: a rock that formed in the early solar system's mix of gas and dust, floating for billions of years until finding our planet.
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Meteor

Cover-up underway following meteor strike in Hidalgo, Mexico


Inexplicata
Fri, 12 Feb 2010 11:28 UTC
Image
© Inexplicata
Inexplicata recieved a message yesterday morning from Contributing Editor Ana Luisa Cid regading the collision of an unexplained object in the state of Hidalgo (central Mexico) -- initial excitement over an "extraterrestrial" event was replaced with more conservative comments about "Soviet-era space junk", "meteorites" and even "an explosion in a local mine".

News items received today read thus:
Meteorite allegedly left a hole 30 meters in diameter and caused houses and buildings to shake in five municipalities of Hidalgo and Puebla.

At 18:30 hours on Wednesday, [February 10, 2010] a light accompanied by a powerful rport caused homes and buildings to shake throughout five municipalities in [the states of] Puebla and Hidalgo. The event was attributed to a meteorite impact.
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Meteor

Ibaraki, Japan: Meteor Lights Sky


Latest Worldwide Meteor/Meteorite News
Sun, 14 Feb 2010 10:59 UTC
Ibaraki Prefecture, Japan Meteor Lights Sky!

I just received a report of a fireball sighting over Ibaraki Prefecture, Japan seen at approximately 8:28pm;
"... (we) were driving near our apartment, and we saw a bright flash of light in the sky ahead of us. We are not sure what was it, but it is possible that it was a bolide. It looked like a very bright falling star.

Time: around 20:28 Japan local time
Place of observation: on Route 296, Shimotsuma City, Ibaraki Pref.
Latitude: ca. 36°10'30"N
Longitude: ca. 139°59'30"E

We were heading south-southeast on Route 296, and the light fell sightly eastwards,
low in the sky."
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Meteor

Meteorite Hits Mexico


Newsolio
Thu, 11 Feb 2010 12:25 UTC
Meteorite
© Newsolio
A meteorite has smashed into the ground in Mexico, leaving a 30 meter (100 feet) wide crater, reports said.

The meteorite impact was in the Ahuazotepec Municipality in Central Mexico between the cities of Puebla and Hidalgo.

The precise impact area of the meteorite was in a relatively unpopulated area and hit around 6.30pm local time, Mexican media said.

The Ahuazotepec, Mexico meteorite impact was so massive it broke windows in homes many kilometers from the epicenter and people reported buildings swaying and mass confusion. Other reports said the Mexico meteorite impact partially damaged a road and a bridge.
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Meteor

Meteorites Common in Central Alberta

Anthony Kovats
Quebec Media Inc. Agency
Thu, 11 Feb 2010 02:23 UTC
We are never alone. As mankind continues to plod its way into the stars, it's sometimes easy to forget that heavenly bodies, which blaze across the night's sky only to hammer into the earth, constantly visit us.

These visitors are meteors, the stuff of legend, fear and even faith among ancient peoples.

And those violent visits still speak to us today, not through mysticism or legend, but through science. After all, we are dealing with an extraterrestria - an untold billion-year-old chunk of rock that has been hurtling through untold reaches of space.

Amateur astronomer and author Anthony Whyte says that the exploration of space begins in our own backyard. It's an epic mystery that can fill in the missing pieces of our past and tell how the landscape was, and is, forever changed by each impact.

His new book, The Meteorites of Alberta, is a journey that delves into the history of this province and the explorers who are still peeling away the legends to find the facts.

"The more I read about this, the more and more interesting tales I discovered. I said '... it's a shame this stuff isn't more widely known."
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