Fire in the SkyS


Meteor

Kenya: Meteor Sighted Before Crashing in Kilimambogo

Cherlyn Gardner Strong
Paranormal Old Pueblo
Sun, 17 Jul 2011 20:06 UTC
Image
© UnknownIllustration only
Residents of the towns of Kilimambogo and Tala in Kenya spotted an object in the sky on Saturday. Those who did not see the object, heard it, as it crashed to the ground.

Residents of the nearby towns of Yatta, Kakuzi and Kangundo reported hearing an explosion around 10am, which they said was comparable to a plane crash or bomb explosion.

Eyewitnesses stated that the object was spinning on impact when it landed in a cornfield.

Police and military officers quickly responded to the scene and found an extremely hot object, weighing in at approximately 11 pounds. They eventually took the object for expert analysis.

The object was a smooth black rock, which area officials believe to be a meteor from outer space.

There were no reported injuries from the impact of the extraterrestrial rock.
Read More...
Meteor

Shoemaker Impact Structure, Western Australia


Earth Observatory, NASA
Sun, 17 Jul 2011 19:41 UTC
Shoemaker Impact Structure
© Earth Observatory, NASA

The Shoemaker (formerly Teague) Impact Structure - located in Western Australia in a drainage basin south of the Waldburg Range - presents an other-worldly appearance in this astronaut photograph. The Shoemaker impact site is approximately 30 kilometers (19 miles) in diameter and clearly defined by concentric ring structures formed in sedimentary rocks (brown to dark brown, image center). The rocks were deformed by the impact event approximately 1.63 billion years ago (as reported by the Earth Impact Database). Other age-dating analyses of granitic rocks at the core of the structure call this age into question (Pirajno et al. 2003).

Several saline and ephemeral lakes - Nabberu, Teague, Shoemaker, and numerous smaller ponds - occupy the land surface between the ring structures. Differences in color result from both water depth and from suspended sediments, with some bright salt crusts visible around the edges of smaller ponds (image center). A Landsat 7 view of the Shoemaker structure illustrates the extent of these ephemeral lakes, or playas, in the region.

The Teague Impact Structure was renamed Shoemaker in honor of Dr. Eugene M. Shoemaker (1928-1997), a pioneer in impact crater studies and planetary geology, as well as the founder of the Astrogeology Branch of the U.S. Geological Survey.
Read More...
Wolf

100 years ago, a meteorite (possibly) vaporized a dog in Egypt

Cyriaque Lamar
IO9
Tue, 28 Jun 2011 00:38 UTC
Image
© Unknown
Here's a bizarre milestone. On June 28, 1911, a meteorite fell over the outskirts of Alexandria, Egypt. The meteorite broke into several smaller rocks, one of which may have reduced a dog to a burnt smear.

On that fateful morning a century ago, the Nakhla meteorite broke over the village of Abu Hummus, and 40 of these fragments were recovered for research.

Although the 1.3-billion-year-old rock is famous in astrogeological circles for its Martian origins, the Nakhla rock also has the lurid (and perhaps unearned) reputation as a dog-smusher. Explains The Smithsonian:
W.F. Hume, minister of the Geological Survey of Egypt, began taking eyewitness statements, and two months later published his report, "The First Meteorite Record in Egypt."

One of those statements, from a farmer who claimed to have seen a fragment fall on a dog, gave rise to the popular myth that Nakhla, as the meteorite would be named, was "the dog killing meteorite," an unsubstantiated claim, but the dramatic account is irresistible: "The fearful column which appeared in the sky at Denshal was substantial. The terrific noise it emitted was an explosion which made it erupt several fragments of volcanic materials. These curious fragments, falling to earth, buried themselves into the sand to the depth of about one metre. One of them fell on a dog...leaving it like ashes in a moment."
Read More...
Sun

Another Coronal Hole Spewing Solar Wind Our Way - Due July 19th


Space Weather
Fri, 15 Jul 2011 09:11 UTC
A dark gap in the sun's atmosphere--a "coronal hole"--is spewing solar wind toward Earth. Estimated time of arrival: July 19th. This morning, UV-filtered telescopes onboard NASA's Solar Dynamics Obervatory photographed the opening:
Image
© SDO/AIAA composite of EUV images at three wavelengths: 211 Å, 193 Å, and 171 Å.

Coronal holes are places where the sun's magnetic field opens up and allows hot gas to escape. A million mile-per-hour stream of solar wind flowing from this hole could spark polar geomagnetic storms when it arrives early next week. High-latitude sky watchers should be prepared for auroras.
Read More...
Sun

Mystery From the Sun: Huge Solar Storm Still Puzzles 11 Years Later

Clara Moskowitz
SPACE.com
Wed, 13 Jul 2011 15:32 UTC
Eleven years ago this week, one of the worst storms on record raged on the sun, churning huge amounts of plasma around the solar surface and spewing massive loads of particles into space and toward Earth.

The July 14, 2000, event, called the Bastille Day Solar Storm, was a turning point for scientists' understanding of weather on the sun.

Image
© NASA/TRACEOne million degree hot solar plasma travels along magnetic loops in the sun's atmosphere during the Bastille Day solar storm of 2000.
"It was one of the most highly observed events of that time," said Phil Chamberlin, a scientist at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md., who is a deputy project scientist for NASA's Solar Dynamics Observatory, a sun-studying satellite that launched in February 2010. "It led to a lot of the requirements for the solar missions of today, like SDO."
Read More...
Attention

Mystery Flash of X-rays Reveals Plasma Blobs as Big as Planets Exploding on Sun


The Daily Galaxy
Wed, 13 Jul 2011 13:35 UTC

On June 7, 2011, Earth-orbiting satellites detected a flash of X-rays coming from the western edge of the solar disk. Registering only "M" (for medium) on the Richter scale of solar flares, the blast at first appeared to be a minor eruption until researchers studied the video images.

"We'd never seen anything like it," says Alex Young, a solar physicist at the Goddard Space Flight Center. "Half of the sun appeared to be blowing itself to bits."

NASA has just released new high-resolution videos of the event recorded by the Solar Dynamics Observatory (SDO). "In terms of raw power, this really was just a medium-sized eruption," says Young, "but it had a uniquely dramatic appearance caused by all the inky-dark material. We don't usually see that."

This 13 MB extreme ultraviolet movie of the explosion shows a 'solar tsunami' wave billowing away from the blast site. Solar physicist Angelos Vourlidas of the Naval Research Lab in Washington DC calls it a case of "dark fireworks. The blast was triggered by an unstable magnetic filament near the sun's surface," he explains. "That filament was loaded down with plasma, which exploded in a spray of dark blobs and streamers."
Read More...
Sun

Recent Sun Activity: Plasma Fountains, Sun-Grazing Comet

Nancy Atkinson
Universe Today
Tue, 12 Jul 2011 13:55 UTC

Interesting activity captured on the Sun early today (July 12, 2011) showing an active region on the Sun's Eastern limb. Plasma was hurled very high above the stellar surface, but didn't have the needed escape velocity and most of the plasma "rained" back down in a fountain. The video shows the activity in different wavelengths.

See below for more views, including the first time a sun-grazing comet was seen disintegrating over the Sun's surface.

The Sun
© Cesar Cantu from Monterrey, Mexico, and the Chilidog Observatory. The Sun on July 11, 2011.
This great ground-based look at the Sun is from July 11, 2011. "A sun a little more active than the past few days, although with much mist in the city, making it impossible to get photos of larger increases," said Cesar Cantu from Monterrey, Mexico, with his Chilidog Observatory. See more at his website, Astronomía Y Astrofotografía.
Read More...
Meteor

Best of the Web: Interview with Russian astronomer Leonid Elenin - The discoverer of Comet Elenin

Translation by SOTT
NTV.ru
Wed, 11 May 2011 04:06 UTC
Image
© NTVLeonid Elenin
The following video is a full interview in the Russian language on NTV with the discoverer of Comet C/2010 X1 aka 'Elenin', astronomer Leonid Elenin. Below is the translation of the original interview's transcript available on the Russian TV website.


Comment: Indeed, the hysteria and lies surrounding comet Elenin are ridiculous, and could be dismissed as more "loony talk" if only the similar circus generated around comet Hale-Bopp 15 years ago hadn't led to tragic consequences. See Heaven's Gate mass suicide to understand where those pied pipers in the alt. community are leading the vulnerable.

It's an unfortunate fact that many people do have impressionable minds, easily influenced by paranoid fables bordering on the criminal. Some of them are also part of deliberately orchestrated COINTELPRO campaigns, which are intended to further muddy the waters. Read Elenin, Nibiru, Planet-X - Time for a Sanity Check article for some clarity on this mess.

Read More...
Sun

Incoming Coronal Mass Ejection From Sunspot 1247


Space Weather
Sun, 10 Jul 2011 23:18 UTC
A coronal mass ejection (CME) that billowed away from sunspot 1247 on July 9th could hit Earth's magnetic field on July 12th. Because the CME was not squarely Earth-directed and is not traveling at great speed, only minor geomagnetic storming is expected when the cloud arrives. Nevertheless, high-latitude sky watchers should be alert for auroras.

The explosion that launched the CME was recorded by NASA's Solar Dynamics Observatory (SDO):


The movie is a composite of several extreme ultraviolet (EUV) wavelengths, invisible to the human eye but apparent to SDO's bank of EUV telescopes. Different colors trace different temperatures of solar plasma, mostly in the range 1 to 2 million K (blue to yellow); these data are invaluable to researchers working to understand the physics of solar explosions. Launched little more than a year ago, SDO is only beginning its investigations. One conclusion, however, is already clear: solar activity is beautiful.
Read More...
Meteor

New Zealand - Meteorite Puts on Pre-Dawn Light Show


The Gisborne Herald, NZ
Sun, 10 Jul 2011 19:26 UTC
Image
© UnknownIllustration only
Anyone up early on Saturday morning would have witnessed a rare event from outer space.

Neil Hart and his 10-year-old son Jayden left in the dark to go pig-hunting around 5.50am at Matawai.

As they were heading towards Ormond, they saw in the direction of Patutahi an extremely bright meteorite that lit up the early morning sky and all the hills around them.

Mr Hart's wife said the four of them in the car watched as it cut horizontally across the sky.

"It was quite spectacular - you could make out the rock with the sparks coming off it, it was very, very clear."

When the hunting group arrived at Matawai, the people they were meeting said they had heard a boom.
Read More...