The loud booms heard in Grand Island Tuesday night and this morning are believed to be starling control measures or the acts of curious youth. Milt Moravek, program manager of the Central Platte Natural Resources District, said the NRD began shooting off propane cannons last Friday night for starling control.
"It just scares them away from our area," Moravek said.
The NRD has used the sound abatement method in the past to prevent the flock from roosting at the NRD headquarters office at 215 Kaufman Ave. It informed the city last week that the cannons would be shot off around dusk for about seven to 14 days.
Date: January 20, 2009
Time: Approx: 7:15 p.m.
Location of Sighting: Highway 17 north just east of Sault Saint Marie.
Number of witnesses: 2
Number of objects: 1
Shape of objects: Round.
Full Description of event/sighting: We were driving home and we saw a bright green fireball the size of a beach ball in the sky going from west to east at a high rate of speed.
I scanned your newsletter eagerly this morning looking for any other report of the comet/asteroid/meteor that was witnessed by my friend Sunday evening at sunset (I had my back turned). We were at Chase Palm Park packing up after a day of the arts and crafts show when my friend said she saw what she thought was a bottle rocket or home-made firework in the eastern sky.
A spectacular meteor spotted over Scandinavia on Saturday is likely to have landed in the Baltic Sea, south of Denmark
The meteor that streaked across the sky on Saturday night is likely to have crashed into the waters off the coast of Denmark, according to a leading astronomer.
Michael Linden-Vørnle, of the Tycho Brahe Planetarium in Copenhagen, said all evidence points to a landing site somewhere in the Baltic Sea south of the islands of Lolland and Falster.
The spectacular phenomenon lit up the skies of southern Sweden and eastern Denmark at 8:15pm on Saturday night for approximately eight seconds and prompted dozens of calls to police and emergency services from worried residents.
You can view original article in Danish, here. Translation in English by a SOTT Reader.
Comment: Readers from Germany and the Netherlands at this link have also reported seeing the meteorite, which suggests that this was a fairly large "space rock". Keep watching the skies, 2009 may well turn out to be a "smashing" year...
Peter Vinthagen Simpson The Local Sun, 18 Jan 2009 12:19 UTC
A mystical light phenomenon was observed over southern and western Sweden on Saturday evening. Experts believe that a bolid - a burning meteorite - could provide the explanation.
SOS Alarm and the Gothenburg air-rescue service were bombarded with telephone calls from mystified observers across southern and western Sweden shortly after 8pm on Saturday evening.
Witnesses reported seeing a huge flash of light stream across the night sky.
"There are a great many people who have seen it. We have received phone calls from Trelleborg to Lidköping," said Annika Vestergård at the air-rescue service to news agency TT.
Shreveport, Louisiana gets a fair number of visitors. And with recent movie activity, some might even be called stars; however, a guest from the heavens might literally have dropped in.
About 6 p.m. Thursday, people near Cross Lake saw a bright flash and heard an explosion that rattled windows and brought them out of their houses and onto their yards to look over the water. Speculation over what it could have been included a bomb and a methamphetamine laboratory hidden in the woods.
It took a while for people to arrive at the logical conclusion: It probably was a meteor.
Driving between Bathurst and Miramichi on New Year's Eve, one motorist and his passenger saw a different kind of fireworks in the sky.
Mike Gallant was on his way from Bathurst to Moncton when, at exactly 4:45 p.m., he saw a luminous teal-blue streak that lit up the darkening sky. "It looked like a meteor to me," he said. "It was clear as day to myself and my passenger."
He described the streak as being darker on the bottom and lighter in colour towards the top, although the entire object was extremely bright. "It completely brightened the sky," he said.
A fireball reportedly lit up the early morning sky south of Calgary early Monday.
The Canadian Fireball Reporting Centre received about a dozen reports of a meteorite falling to earth at about 5:45 a.m. but the hazy conditions have made it difficult to verify.
"I don't know how anyone saw it. There were a lot of clouds up there," said the University of Calgary's meteorite expert, Alan Hildebrand. "But it's possible there was a hole in the clouds that allowed them to see it. It's happened before."
Comment: Readers from Germany and the Netherlands at this link have also reported seeing the meteorite, which suggests that this was a fairly large "space rock". Keep watching the skies, 2009 may well turn out to be a "smashing" year...