Fire in the SkyS


Meteor

US: Fireball UFO photographed in Illinois

Image
© Brandon Tudor / Beacon-NewsThe fireball UFO photographed by Tudor
Oswego, Illinois resident Brandon Tudor photographed a fireball UFO in the sky on Sunday evening. Tudor described the object as a ball of fire falling towards Earth. According to the Beacon-News, the witness stated that the object changed direction as it fell. Tudor also claims that he saw "two jets fly into view and circle the area" after the UFO disappeared. He took four pictures of the UFO on his iPhone before the object vanished.

Sun

Powerful X1.5 Class Solar Flare

March 9th ended with a powerful solar flare. Earth-orbiting satellites detected an X1.5-class explosion from behemoth sunspot 1166 around 2323 UT. A movie from NASA's Solar Dynamics Observatory shows a bright flash of UV radiation plus some material being hurled away from the blast site:


A first look at coronagraph images from NASA's STEREO-B spacecraft suggests that the explosion did propel a coronal mass ejection (CME) toward Earth. This conclusion is preliminary, however, so check back later for updates.

After four years without any X-flares, the sun has produced two of the powerful blasts in less than one month: Feb. 15th and March 9th. This continues the recent trend of increasing solar activity, and shows that Solar Cycle 24 is heating up. NOAA forecasters estimate a 5% chance of more X-flares during the next 24 hours.

Meteor

Fireball Over Italy - 8th March

A fireball reported over Italy. A still below from the video.

Image
A flash video of the fireball can be viewed here.

Sun

Stunning Views of the Sun...and Discovery?!

Amateur astrophotographer Alan Friedman has done it again. Adding to an already impressive collection of outer space images, he just published two more magnificent photos of the sun. First, here's a view of a gassy prominence flaring off the sun like a cloud:

Image
© Alan FriedmanThis section of the solar disk was imaged at the Winter Star Party on West Summerland Key in Florida, in the midst of 30 mph winds. The massive detached solar prominence was visible for hours. Skies were quite steady, despite the wind.
To add some perspective on the sheer magnitude of what Friedman is documenting, look at the dark spot below the prominence. That spot is roughly twice the size of the Earth.

Using the same specialized equipment he used in October 2010 to produce the last set of breathtaking images, Friedman looks at the deep red end of the light spectrum to capture the emissions given off by hydrogen gas in the sun's atmosphere.

He also came away with a historic glimpse of Discovery as it was docked to the International Space Station, during the space shuttle's final mission.

Friedman said he captured the event, lasting just a fifth of a second, after making an 1,800-mile drive from Buffalo, N.Y., to the Winter Star Party in West Summerland Key, Fla.

Question

Ohio, US: Newark Police Puzzled By Mystery 'Boom'

Image
© Unknown

Police were investigating the cause of a mysterious noise on Monday after multiple people reported hearing it and feeling it.

Residents living in the area of Idlewilde and Weiant avenues called police on Sunday afternoon to report what sounded and felt like a loud explosion.

Meteor

'Mushroom-shaped light and loud boom' rocks remote Siberia

Image

Meteor

SOTT Focus: Spectacular Russian rocket launch - more evidence of comet dust loading our atmosphere

Image
Earlier today SOTT posted this video of a rocket launch cum 'UFO spiral'. The person who uploaded it to YouTube managed to convince him or herself that the spectacular display was the result of UFOs "taking over control of the rocket" once it reached a certain altitude. Well I've since located other videos of the launch minus the misleading text and the "blinking lights" (which appear to have been added later for effect, if not for outright disinformation purposes). Here is a YouTube video entitled 'Launch of the Soyuz 2 rocket carrying Glonass-K satellite':


No blinking lights surrounding the rocket and no text to tell you it's aliens from another planet taking remote control of it either.

Meteor

Drip, drip disclosure! NASA Scientist Claims Evidence of Alien Life on Meteorite

Image
© Journal of Cosmology / Riccardo Guerrero / Richard B. HooverA photograph taken through a scanning electron microscope of a CI1 meteorite (right) is similar in size and overall structure to the giant bacterium Titanospirillum velox (left), an organism found here on planet Earth, a NASA scientist said.
We are not alone in the universe -- and alien life forms may have a lot more in common with life on Earth than we had previously thought.

That's the stunning conclusion one NASA scientist has come to, releasing his groundbreaking revelations in a new study in the March edition of the Journal of Cosmology.

Dr. Richard B. Hoover, an astrobiologist with NASA's Marshall Space Flight Center, has traveled to remote areas in Antarctica, Siberia, and Alaska, amongst others, for over ten years now, collecting and studying meteorites. He gave FoxNews.com early access to the out-of-this-world research, published late Friday evening in the March edition of the Journal of Cosmology. In it, Hoover describes the latest findings in his study of an extremely rare class of meteorites, called CI1 carbonaceous chondrites -- only nine such meteorites are known to exist on Earth.

Though it may be hard to swallow, Hoover is convinced that his findings reveal fossil evidence of bacterial life within such meteorites, the remains of living organisms from their parent bodies -- comets, moons and other astral bodies. By extension, the findings suggest we are not alone in the universe, he said.

Meteor

In Case You Thought We Were Safe: Earth Under Threat From Dark Comets

Comets could be the most significant impact hazard to Earth, with sky surveys underestimating the number that are potentially devastating by a factor of between 10 and 100, British astrophysicists say.

Astronomers may be missing these so-called 'dark comets' because their icy and reflective surfaces have become hidden under an obscuring layer of dust.


Comment: We recommend reading the works of James McCanney, especially his Plasma Theory of Comets, to understand that comets are not "dirty snowballs" after all.


Image
© NASAUnrecognised risk: Earth may lie in the path of many thousands of unseen 'dark' comets.
Near Earth objects (NEOs) are comets or asteroids that have been nudged into a possible collision path with the Earth. The international program to discover NEOs; Spaceguard, which includes NASA's NEO program, has identified around 6,000 NEOs so far, most of which are asteroids.

Meteor

Beautiful Time-Lapse of Milky Way over Lake Tahoe