I recorded a very bright fireball (mag -13) over Colorado on June 23 at UT 08:49. The radiant of this event was within my measurement error of the radiant of the June Lyrid shower, which is suggested by the IMO as a "possible source", and seems to have been more active in the 1960s. I obtained an initial velocity of 47 km/s, which is high compared with the IMO estimate of 31 km/s (I don't know how that speed was obtained).
In any case, this is an interesting fireball that fragmented explosively at a height of 53 km. I have posted a report at [
Link, see below]; be sure to check the nice videos from two of my allsky cameras. Tom Ashcraft also caught this on his allsky camera in New Mexico, over 400 km to the south.
Be sure to view the videos- the terminal explosion is very impressive.
Chris L Peterson
Cloudbait Observatory
http://www.cloudbait.com
A bright light in the sky over Lancaster County attracted the attention of at least a few people Thursday night.
What caused the light was uncertain as of press time.
Three people called the Intelligencer Journal/Lancaster New Era shortly after 10 p.m. to report seeing the light.
About the same time, several people from Pennsylvania, Maryland, New Jersey and Connecticut posted on Twitter that they saw an object, which they described as a "fireball" or "meteor."
"Huge, huge, huge meteor just fell over White Hall, Md.," one person wrote. "Exploded in huge flash. Green tail. Yellow fireball head."
Amanda Kimmich was folding laundry on the second floor of her house on Pitney Road in Lancaster Township when she happened to look out the window and saw a bright, white flash of light in the sky.
"It was really unique," she said. "I've seen fireworks, and this seemed bigger than that. It kind of gave me goose bumps."
A ~600 gram meteorite fell about 15 meters from a ranch hand in Varre-Sai, Rio de Janeiro State, Brazil on June 19, 2010. The images show the meteorite and how it was found (though it was picked up first, and then replaced for the TV camera). The person talking to the reporter is Prof. Marcelo Souza, Professor of Physics and Astronomy at the Universidade Estadual do Norte Fluminense, in Campos. The interview will be aired on Brazilian TV today.
© Wellington Rangel (Clube de Astronomia Louis Cruls/ Instituto Federal Fluminense)/ Astronomers Without Borders
© Wellington Rangel (Clube de Astronomia Louis Cruls/ Instituto Federal Fluminense)/ Astronomers Without Borders
People said that on Monday night they saw a striking luminous phenomenon in the sky in parts of the Pinar del Río municipality of Consolacion del Sur.
One of the witnesses of this peculiar event, Dr. Efren Jose Jaimez Salgado, a researcher at the Institute of Geophysics and Astronomy (IGA) of the Ministry of Science Technology and Environment, said that while visiting the home of relatives he could see a huge bright fireball, which rapidly crossed the sky north to south of Pueblo Nuevo, located on the outskirts of the town of Consolacion.
The incident occurred around 22:40 pm when a meteoric object, apparently quite large, entered the atmosphere and crossed the night sky from side to side, leaving behind a huge bright greenish white trail.
© WAFF48News.com
Scottsboro, Alabama - On May 18th, NASA cameras at the Marshall Space Flight Center and Walker County Science Center near Chickamauga, Georgia tracked the entry of a large meteor estimated to weigh some 60 pounds over northeastern Alabama.
This meteor was first picked up at an altitude of 47 miles over northwest Huntsville, moving at a speed of 8 miles per second towards the southeast. It was last visible northeast of Gurley at an altitude of 23 miles.
The meteor was quite bright, with an intensity rivaling that of the waxing crescent Moon (in astronomical terms, it was about visual magnitude -8.3). Calculations automatically performed by the tracking software indicates that this interloper was from the main asteroid belt, moving in an orbit which takes it more than three times Earth's distance from the Sun.
© El Paso All Sky CameraEl Paso Meteor
May 26th, 2010 at 05:21:08 hrs MDT, our ELP Sentinel Allsky Camera recorded a meteor event in our west-southwest sky. Visual magnitude calculated to be -10.4 (very bright "shadowcaster").
Detonation (terminal explosion) was detected.
Here is a composite
photo of this event from
The El Paso Allsky Camera Station. Eyewitnesses to this event are encouraged to leave comments about any visual observations in the Comments section of this site.
Thank you.
© Cloudbait ObservatoryMay 16, Colorado Fireball
This bright fireball occurred at 09:56 PM MDT over central Colorado. This meteor was not associated with any known shower.
Data has been recovered from the following cameras:
The image at left is from the DMNS camera. Note the new Moon and Venus in conjunction between 290° and 300°. The peak brightness as seen from Denver was magnitude -5.
The meteor began near Eagle, Colorado. It first appeared at a height of 72 km, descended at a zenith angle of 76° and stopped burning at a height of 51 km. The meteor had an average speed of 16 km/s (36,000 mph). This is extremely slow for a meteor, and produced a six second long event. Witnesses reported seeing sparkling debris as the meteor moved.
Reports of an explosive "big boom" heard in parts of the area from Lock Haven to Williamsport, Pennsylvania around 9:30 p.m. Tuesday remain a mystery.
While some residents who contacted the Sun-Gazette on the matter have suspicions, no definitive answers on the source of the noise have been received.
"I was sitting in my living room and I heard a fairly loud but dull boom," explained Kim Owen, a Salladasburg resident.
Owen described the sound as having been "like the neighbor's car was parked on my porch, and then when they shut the door, they slammed it with some super-human strength."
"I heard the boom, and my closed, wooden front door rattled just a little bit," she said. "I didn't think much about it until a friend, who lives several blocks away, posted a note on Facebook asking if anyone had heard a loud boom."
Between the two of them, she said, they have generated 17 reports from others in the Salladasburg, Jersey Shore, Avis, Woolrich, McElhattan, Rauchtown and Williamsport areas.
Among those hearing the noise was Jen Eminhizer, also of Salladasburg, who said the noise sounded like that of a transformer explosion.
Eminhizer said she was in her home at the time and her husband went outside, but found and saw nothing unusual.
Asked what she thought it could be, Eminhizer said, "Honestly, I have no idea."
An Arizona witness driving along I-8 watched a white-blue light moving in a jagged pattern, then followed a "fireball" as it moved to ground level, according to testimony from the Mutual UFO Network (MUFON) witness reporting database.
"Just before it hit the ground, the object leveled out in a seamless motion, and it shot across the terrain... a white fireball (the light smaller now), and in a 'zipping' like motion, this object hovered and glided gracefully above the ground before disappearing behind some nearby desert terrain," the witness stated.
The following is the unedited and as yet uninvestigated report filed with MUFON. Please keep in mind that most UFO reports can be explained as something natural or manmade. If Arizona MUFON State Director Christine Dickey investigates and reports back on this case, I will release an update.
Did a meteorite fly over Cranbrook Wednesday night? Local resident Jennifer Doering is sure one did because she saw it around 9:45 p.m. and even saw it explode as it came close to earth.
Doering and her boyfriend were driving in their car when their attention was suddenly drawn to a bright light high overhead between the Highcrest Trailer court and Kootenay Orchards Elementary School.
"All of a sudden I could see this bright, bright light. It was like white lightning and it was really wide. Then it blew apart and it went more into a red, orangey colour and it appeared to land somewhere."
The pair drove around to see if they could find remnants of the exploded meteorite, which appeared to come down in the 10th Street and 14th Avenue area not too far from Parkland Middle School. But no remnants or extra-terrestrial material was found leaving Doering wondering what she really saw.
"It was as low as a helicopter would go. That's why it had to land somewhere in town."
RCMP spokesman Eric Ausman said no calls about meteorites or other unidentified flying objects were received at the detachment the night Doering saw the meteorite. Ausman said he was out walking his dog the same night not far from where Doering saw the space object, but he saw nothing unusual at all.
