Fire in the SkyS


Meteor

Australia: Experts baffled by orange UFO

What glows orange, scours the skyline and leaves a black plume of smoke?

Annette Van Zetten is not exactly sure what she saw shooting across the Tweed skyline on Wednesday evening, but it certainly grabbed her attention as well as the police and rescue authorities.

The Kingscliff woman was home entertaining friends about 5.30pm when she saw a bright orange object, seemingly not far from her Pacific Street home.

Fearing a plane was in trouble, Mrs Van Zetten's friend, Greg Swaney, called police, who immediately began searching the area with the aid of a crew from the RACQ CareFlight helicopter.

Mrs Van Zetten said she was sitting on her back deck when she spotted the unidentified flying object.

Telescope

Mystery remains after a massive fireball smashed into southeastern Peru

After a massive fireball smashed into southeastern Peru last fall, scientists dismissed a shot-down spy satellite as the cause. But many questions remain about the unusual crater it left behind. Andrew Westoll reports

When the Pentagon announced last Monday that it had successfully shot down a wayward U.S. spy satellite, political-conspiracy theorists went wild. Officials called the cosmic potshot a matter of international security - the bus-sized satellite, too big to burn up on re-entry, was carrying more than 500 kilograms of toxic hydrazine gas - but America-watchers worldwide wondered aloud whether the satellite story was a pretext for the U.S. military to flex its space-racing muscles.

For me, though, the event reminded me not of the Star Wars debate, but instead whisked me back to a tiny farming village in southeastern Peru I had visited last November.

Telescope

Arctic meteor: Another 'event of the century'

Murray Balsom was trying to launch a weather balloon when a huge fireball burst across the sky over his small Arctic village of Resolute. "This was humungous," he said of the gaseous light show he witnessed 10 days ago.

meteor
©Unknown
A Geminid meteor streaks across the sky against a field of star trails in this 1 1/2-minute exposure early Dec. 14, 2006, near Willow Beach, Arizona.

Better Earth

Flashback Planetary Defense: Preventing a World of Trouble

Our mission, should we choose to accept it: (1) Make up to six billion people understand the danger that faces this world. (2) Make them care enough. (3) Keep them caring long enough for it to matter. (4) Give them what they need to stop what's coming.

- Larry Niven, February 20, 2004 (from a presentation at the 2004 Planetary Defense Conference, sponsored by the American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics)

Attention

Ice "meteor" nearly killed our kids

TEACHERS and pupils at a Birmingham school will this week be analysing fragments of "meteor" ice which crashed into a playing field, narrowly missing stunned pupils.

It ploughed into the field at Yardleys Secondary School, in Tyseley, yesterday.

The ice is believed to be a megacryo-meteor - the name given to abnormally large chunks of ice which fall from a clear sky.

Pieces of the ice have now been stored in a freezer at the specialist science college in Reddings Lane for possible further analysis.

Star

What was that fireball that lit up the sky?

Bright flash spotted at about 5:30 a.m. as far west as Tillamook, as far east as Idaho


Telescope

Meteor Over Portland Caught on Tape

People across Oregon and southwest Washington spotted a fireball in the sky Tuesday morning.

Most reports of the fireball sighting came just after 5:30 a.m. A man who called 911 said "it lit up the whole sky" in the Milwaukie area.

FOX 12 meteorologist Drew Jackson said the object was likely the size of a basketball. He said that the object probably broke apart before hitting land.

Portland Meteor
©KOIN
Meteor over Portland

Video (courtesy KGW)
Video (courtesy CNN)

Comment: Amazing the flash created by a "basketball" sized meteor. Imagine the blast made by something larger. Imagine the impact of several larger meteors arriving in close succession.....




Attention

Meteor streaks across Montana skies

The Associated Press is reporting that the meteor that streaked across Montana early Tuesday morning landed in eastern Washington.

A Federal Aviation Administration spokesman in Seattle says a Horizon Airlines pilot say the meteorite hit at around 6:45 a.m. near State Route 26 and Lind-Hatton Road in the southeast corner of Adams County. (click here for map)

There have been no reports of damage and sheriff's dispatchers say they aren't aware of any meteorite landing in the area.

Attention

Meteor sighted in Clark County, region

Early risers across Clark County saw a meteor, described as blue or green in color, that hit the ground in Eastern Washington around 5:45 a.m. today.

The meteor was traveling from west to east, according to witness reports. The Associated Press reported the sighting was confirmed by the Federal Aviation Administration in the Seattle area, and was reported from Portland to Seattle and east to Spokane and Boise.

Attention

Meteor seen across wide swath of Pacific Northwest

SPOKANE - A meteor was seen across a wide area of the Pacific Northwest early today.

A Federal Aviation Administration duty officer in Seattle confirms that the streaking light in the sky was a meteor.