Fire in the SkyS


Fireball 5

Suspected meteor explosion reported in Cuba, 13 February 2013

An object fell from the sky over central Cuba on Thursday night and turned into a fireball "bigger than the sun" before it exploded, a Cuban TV channel reported Friday, citing eyewitnesses.

Some residents in the central province of Cienfuegos were quoted as saying that at around 8 p.m. local time Thursday (0100 GMT Friday) they saw a bright spot in the sky comparable to a bus in size.

The object then turned into a fireball "bigger than the sun," said the witnesses, adding that several minutes later they heard a loud explosion.

One resident told the TV station that his house shook slightly in the blast.

Cuban experts have been dispatched to the area to look for possible remains of the meteor-like object, said the report.

It remains unknown whether the reported phenomenon in Cuba is related to Friday's meteor strike in central Russia, which set off a shockwave that shattered windows and left some 1,000 people injured.

Source: Xinhua

Comment: This was actually reported to have happened on Wednesday night (13th of February 2013).


Fireball 4

Yet another fireball lights up the skies, this time over Northern California, 15 February 2013

Russian Meteor Still
© AFP/Powered By NewslookThis video still image shows the smoke trail created by the meteor that exploded over the Chelyabinsk region of Russia on Feb. 15, 2013.
It's really starting to look like the sky is falling.

According to media reports, a fireball streaked through the skies above California's Bay Area Friday evening (Feb. 15), just hours after another bright meteor exploded over the Russian city of Chelyabinsk and a 150-foot-wide (45 meters) asteroid gave Earth a historically close shave.

The Bay Area fireball blazed up around 7:45 p.m. local time Friday (10:45 p.m. EST; 0345 GMT Saturday), NBC Bay Area reported. The meteor apparently had a bluish tinge and was visible over a wide swath of the region, from Fairfield north of San Francisco Bay down to Gilroy, which is south of San Jose.

There were no immediate reports of injuries, which distinguished the California fireball from its Russian counterpart. The Chelyabinsk blast generated a powerful shock wave that damaged hundreds of buildings and wounded more than 1,000 people.

Comment: "Truly improbable cosmic coincidences"... or something else?

Fireball reports are increasing all the time:

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© SOTT.netSource data available here: www.amsmeteors.org/fireball_event/2012/



Fireball 4

Two asteroids in one day: Coincidence? NASA addresses the Russian meteor explosion


A small asteroid entered Earth's atmosphere early Friday, February 15, 2013 over Chelyabinsk, Russia at about 9:20 am local Russian time. Initial estimates, according to Bill Cooke, lead for the Meteoroid Environments Office at NASA's Marshall Space Flight Center, is that the asteroid was about 15 meters (50 feet) in diameter, with a weight of 7,000 metric tons. It hit the atmosphere at a shallow angle of about 20 degrees, at a speed of about 65,000 km/h (40,000 mph).

It traveled through the atmosphere for about 30 seconds before breaking apart and producing violent airburst 'explosion' about 20-14 km (12-15 miles) above Earth's surface, producing an energy shockwave equivalent to a 300 kilotons explosion. That energy propagated down through the atmosphere, atmosphere, stuck the city below - the Chelyabinsk region has a population of about 1 million - and windows were broken, walls collapsed and there were other reports of minor damage throughout the city.

The official impact time was 7:20:26 p.m. PST, or 10:20:26 p.m. EST on Feb. 14 (3:20:26 UTC on Feb. 15).

Fireball 2

Meteor blast in Russia biggest in 100 years

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© Russian Emergency MinistryWhat appears to be a meteor trail over eastern Russia is seen in this image released Feb. 15, 2013, by the Russian Emergency Ministry. The meteor fall included a massive blast, according to Russian reports.
The dramatic fireball that exploded over Russia today (Feb. 15) was apparently the biggest such blast in more than a century, scientists say.

The object that caused the Russian fireball, which damaged hundreds of buildings and wounded perhaps 1,000 people in the Chelyabinsk region, was originally probably about 50 feet (15 meters) in diameter and weighed roughly 7,000 tons, said Peter Brown, director of the Center for Planetary Science and Exploration at the University of Western Ontario in Canada.

From multiple sensors using multiple technologies, a best initial estimate of the total energy of the event is about 300 kilotons of TNT-equivalent, Brown said, though he stressed that the number could change as scientists learn more.

"This could easily be in error by a factor of two," he told SPACE.com. "I am confident, however, that it is in excess of 100 kilotons, making it the largest recorded event since the 1908 Tunguska explosion." [Photos of Russia's Meteor Fireball Blast]

In that 1908 event, a 130-foot-wide (40 m) object exploded over the Podkamennaya Tunguska River in Siberia, flattening about 825 square miles (2,137 square km) of forest.

In a cosmic coincidence, the most recent Russian fireball exploded just hours before the 150-foot-wide (45 m) asteroid 2012 DA14 was set to cruise within 17,200 miles (27,000 km) of Earth today, marking the closest approach of such a large space rock that scientists had predicted ahead of time. The two events today are unrelated, NASA researchers say.

Red Flag

NASA invents explanation for recent fireball cluster: It's 'fireball season'

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© EUMETSATThe meteor which exploded over the Urals of central Russia was seen by Meteosat-9, at the edge of the satellite view. Hundreds of people were reportedly injured as the meteor's massive sonic boom caused widespread damage. Image taken Feb. 15, 2013, 3:15 UTC.
Astronomer Ian Holliday studied photographic records of roughly a thousand fireballs from the 1970s and 80s, finding what looked like a fireball stream crossing Earth's orbit during February, late summer and fall. Halliday's results are somewhat controversial, but the phenomenon appears real.

The meteor which exploded over the Urals of central Russia was seen by Meteosat-9, at the edge of the satellite view. Hundreds of people were reportedly injured as the meteor's massive sonic boom caused widespread damage.

It's fireball season on Earth, and it is starkly clear for residents in eastern Russia where a bright fireball exploded in the atmosphere early today (Feb. 15).


Comment: The only sense in which it is 'Fireball Season' is that these next few months and years are going to see a whole lot more fireballs than usual.


For reasons scientists don't quite understand, there appears to be an increase in the number of bright meteors visible blazing through the night sky during the month of February. The notion hit home today when a meteor exploded over Russia's Ural Mountains, injuring more than 900 people and damaging thousands of buildings, according to press reports. (Another space rock, the asteroid 2012DA14, is on course to pass very close to Earth Friday evening, but will not hit the planet.)


Comment: It is not just February that has seen a large increase in fireballs - they have been increasing in frequency in all seasons in recent years!

Celestial Intentions: Comets and the Horns of Moses is a must-read to understand just what the heck is going on here.


Fireball 3

Fireball photographed over Somerset, England, 6 February 2013

Is it a bird? Is it a plane? Or was it, similar to the meteorite that hit Chelyabinsk this morning, a space rock breaking up in the atmosphere?

Its origins are a genuine mystery.

Mystery Object
© Annie HendersonA close up of the mysterious object in the sky.

Captured over the Avalon Marshes nature reserve at Shapwick Heath last Wednesday, these pictures of a curious light in the sky have many people baffled.

The pictures were snapped at the bird sanctuary by Annie Henderson who lives on the Somerset Levels.

Unlike the usual blobs of light, which can be explained away as the contrails of distant jet aircraft, Chinese sky lanterns, weather balloons or passing satellites, the distant light appears to be burning up with flaming gases shooting off its form.

Fireball 3

Fireball leaves behind long smoky trail as it crosses South Africa, 13 February 2013

13 February 2013 - George Coutouvidis, Prince Albert, Western Cape, South Africa 9:45:00
4 seconds duration. South - north direction. Bright orange head with a long smoky trail. It was as bright as the moon.
13 February 2013 - Will H., Oudtshoorn, South Africa 21:25 GMT
10-15 seconds duration. South, southeast to the north. I was facing East. Bright blue and white colour. As bright as the Moon, it looked like a shooting star, but lasted for ages and moved at great speed with a trail covering a much bigger distance than normal shooting stars.

Fireball 5

Asteroids rock! (Except when they hit you)

More than 1,000 people were injured Friday, when the largest meteor to strike the Earth in two generations disintegrated above the Russian city of Chelyabinsk, raining burning bits of rock that shattered windows and caused a panic.

Before disintegrating into thousands of meteorites, the meteor that Russians watched blazing across the sky in a burst of bright light, probably weighed around 7,700 tons and was about 49 feet across, NASA estimated.
Russian Meteor_5
© ITAR-TASS/NewscomA zinc factory was damaged when meteorites struck the Russian City of Chelyabinsk.
Scientists call such collisions between the Earth and space rocks "impact events." While meteor showers are a common occurrence, really big impact events are rare. The bigger the rock - like the 6-mile wide meteor that killed off the dinosaurs - the less likely a collision.

Comet 2

SOTT Focus: Celestial Intentions: Comets and the Horns of Moses

[Editor's Note: With the truly alarming increase in the number of meteorites/cometary fragments entering our atmosphere over the past 10 years, and the startling meteorite detonation over Russia this morning, it is long past time that every single person on this planet informed themselves about the clear and present threat to all life on earth posed by these celestial 'visitors'. To this end, Laura Knight-Jadczyk has recently published the first in a new series of books that presents clear evidence that, not only has human history been regularly punctuated (or 'punctured') by 'rains of fire from the heavens,' we may be overdue for another round of cosmic catastrophe.

Below we present a relevant excerpt from this first new volume: Comets and the Horns of Moses (available from all Amazon web sites).]





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As I read through the piles of books on the archaeology, history (assumed and reasonably reconstructed from data), and especially the input from the sciences such as astronomy, geology and genetics that should accurately parallel the archaeology and history, but usually doesn't for all the reasons we've discussed so far, in order to collect the material for this series of volumes, the one thing that became increasingly apparent was that, over and over and over again this planet has been bombarded by various types of impacts, the most common being the overhead comet fragment air burst of the Tunguska type. These events have repeatedly brought cultures, nations, even civilizations, to their knees. Dark Ages are inevitably the result, and then, when human society begins to recover, myths are created, religions are born, or re-born with twists and distortions, and always and ever, the facts of the previous era of destruction are covered up in veils of metaphor and allegory.

Why? What sort of madness is this?

It is actually very simple. Historically, when a people begin to perceive atmospheric, geological, climatic disruption and all the ills that these bring on a society, including famine, plague and pestilence, they individually and collectively look to their leaders to fix things. That is where the concept of the Divine King came from to begin with: the king was supposed to be able to intercede for his people with the gods. If the king was unsuccessful with his intercession, a solution had to be found. Sacrifices were made, rituals were performed, and of course, if that didn't work, if the gods remained angry, then the king had to die. This is possibly due to a similar brain switch that drives people to seek whatever relieves the stress on their brain: if the gods are angry, find a scape-goat. And when it is the nation that is threatened, the most obvious guilty person or persons are those in charge, the king and his elite. What's more, they know their vulnerability to this reaction instinctively.

Then again, given that human history appears to be defined by a succession of more or less corrupt ruling elites, and if we are to assume that such corruption (and its spread throughout society) is the mechanism by which a civilization attracts cosmic catastrophe, blaming and deposing the elite is a good solution. The problem, however, is that the underlying mechanism is not understood by the people, which means that they lack the knowledge that, if they are to prevent further destruction, they must, at all costs, prevent the establishment of any future corrupt elite.

Fireball 5

Was Siberian meteor blast a warning of things to come?


The 10-meter-diameter chunk of rock that exploded over western Siberia yesterday had nothing to do with the 45-meter asteroid whizzing close by Earth today, scientists say. But it does provide a more dramatic reminder of the incessant rain of cosmic debris that the planet endures.