Fire in the SkyS


Meteor

Large fireball seen in over Ohio, Pennsylvania, West Virginia and Southern Ontario

Fireball over Ohio
© Getty ImagesA meteor streaking across the Ohio skies put on quite a show for a few brief seconds Thursday evening.
Did you see it? Lots of folks across northern Ohio did. A meteor streaking across the Ohio skies put on quite a show for a few brief seconds Thursday evening.

Reports began coming in just after 10 p.m. on Thursday of a bright object streaking across the sky at about 9:55 p.m.

"It was an incredible sight. It came from the south, streaked over head quickly and then within a second disappeared over Lake Erie," Kathy from Willoughby Hills, Ohio said. She described the sight as a bright white ball with a long, green tail.

Steven from Wooster, Ohio saw it too. He said he also saw "2 or 3 pieces that came off bottom and were traveling at a slower velocity."

The shooting star was observed across portions of Ohio, Southern Ontario, Western Pennsylvania, Ohio and West Virginia.

Meteor

Large Fireball Over West Oklahoma and North Texas

This evening in the midst of Developing thunderstorms One of the flashes across the sky wasn't lightning! 1 large Bolide or Fireball came roaring to earth. Reports are coming in from Oklahoma Of sonic booms caused as the fireball streaked towards Earth.
Texas Fireball_1
© Central Texas AllSky Camera

Meteor

Bright fireball seen from Queensland, Australia

Sunshine Coast astronomer Owen Bennedick is urging anyone who saw a meteorite near Caloundra last night to contact him.

Mr Bennedick runs the Wappa Falls Observatory at Yandina.

He says he was with a group of people who saw a bright fireball in the eastern sky about 11:00pm (AEST).

"We were coming back from doing the lunar eclipse in Brisbane and on the way back ... about 11 o'clock on the southern end of the coast, a very, very large what we call a fireball or a bolloid entered the atmosphere," he said.

"It was so bright that we could see the smoke trail in behind it - very, very blue, white colour."

Mr Bennedick says it looked like the meteorite was heading towards the Caloundra area or it might have entered the water.

Meteor

Giant cosmic explosion of 774AD has left absolutely no trace - except deep within the bark of two cedar trees

It is a mystery which is truly beyond even Sherlockian scale - a cosmic explosion which left no trace behind except deep within the bark of two cedar trees.
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© Visual Unlimited/naturepi.comThe clues are in these rings: The rings capture microcosmic traces of particles in our skies - and tell us an explosion occurred
Fusa Miyake, of the Nagoya University in Japan, studied the growth rings of two trees dating back 1,200 years - and discovered that an explosion of epic proportions occurred between 774 and 775AD.

But there is no record of something happening in our skies in that period - except perhaps for one tiny, obscure account by a 13th-century historian.

The problem - and this is where we need to call in Mr Holmes of Baker Street - is that there should be a record.

If this was a supernova - a star exploding deep in space - we should either be able to spot the remains with modern telescopes, or find visual accounts in the written accounts of Chinese and European historians.

To get the technical details out of the way first: Trees capture particles from the atmosphere during photosynthesis, and one particle that gets buried within the annual growth rings is carbon-14.

Meteor

Fireball Blazes Over Paris


Meteor

Best Of the French Meteor/Fireball Database recorded between 2009-2012


Camcorder

Video of April California Daytime Fireball Surfaces


Video footage has finally surfaced of the daytime fireball that illuminated the sky over the Sierra Nevada Mountains in California back in April. NASA and the SETI Institute had asked the public to submit any amateur photos or video footage of the event, and previously a just few photos were taken of the event, even though it happened in broad daylight and created sonic booms that were heard over a wide area, back on Sunday, April 22, 2012 at 7:51 a.m. PDT. A few weeks later, Shon Bollock, who was making a time-lapse kayaking video just outside Kernville, California realized he had captured the bolide streaking through the air. This video shows the event several times, successively zooming in for a closer look. According to NASA it is the only footage of the meteor thus far.

Meteorite hunters have been successful in locating fragments of the meteor, now called the Sutter's Mill meteor since the event occurred near the area famous for where gold was discovered back in 1848, creating the California gold rush.

NASA estimated fragments could be dispersed over a 16-km (10-mile) area.

Phil Plait says the video is being studied by astronomers and meteoriticists to try to calculate the trajectory, speed, and possible orbit of the object, which is difficult with just one video, so if anyone finds they have 'accidently' taken footage of the event, contact the NASA Lunar Science Institute at the NASA Ames Research Center.

Meteor

Meteorites Add to Explosion-like Sound Mystery

Akola District
© Google Maps
Nagpur: It's official now. The fire balls seen by some people in Akola district and city on Tuesday were meteorite showers spread over an area of over 200km. They travelled in eastern direction and some fell in Katol tehsil of Nagpur district. It is the first time that meteorite shower has been recorded in Vidarbha. A GSI team will be surveying the entire area where people had witnessed fire balls and explosion like sound in a day or two for more evidence.

However, the scientific reason of the sound remains unexplained. Speculations are that the sound could be the cumulative effect of different pieces of a large number of meteorites falling over a vast area or from impact of a single larger that fell in an uninhabited area like deep forest or river beds. The scientists are also not sure of any correlation, if any, between the meteorites falling and tremors of 2.1 Richter scale recorded around the same time. They said a tremor caused by impact of a huge meteorite could not be ruled out but the two events happening together could also be a coincidence.

A team of geologists led by the deputy director general (DDG) of the Geological Survey of India (GSI) Central region in city Binod Kumar has collected small meteorite pieces from different locations in and around Katol town on Wednesday evening. "We got a phone call from Katol at around 5pm on Wednesday about some stone like objects fallen at different places. I rushed to the spot with four geologists and collected the pieces. All the pieces are meteorites," said Kumar.

Meteor

Fireball filmed over Peru

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Arequipa, Peru - On May 17, Thursday, someone shot video of a strange object that looks like a fireball.

The strange fireball was seen in the sky in Arequipa, Peru and caused great surprise for onlookers wondering what it was.

Strange enough, this isn't the first incident with fireballs or meteoroids in Peru.

In September 2007, more than 600 were reported sick after a meteoroid landed.

And in August 2011 a suspected meteor streaked across the sky over the city of Cusco in Peru.

Just click on the video to see the alleged fireball footage.


Meteor

Fireball appears north west of Perth, Australia

The skies in the north west were alight on Saturday night.

We've had a couple of reports of giant orange things dropping from the sky.

You can check out some of the reports on our facebook page.

Ralph Martin is the Acting Government Astronomer at the Perth Observatory...

Listen to the audio file of this radio broadcast here.