For the past two years, Aaron Olmsted has had a dash camera mounted in his car. He says he has it because he drives a quick car and the camera comes in handy in certain situations.

But early Friday morning was the first time his camera ever captured a fireball streak across the sky in Bastrop. Olmsted and his wife were driving back to their Bastrop home from the Austin airport around midnight when they noticed the bright light.

"We both spotted it," says Olmstead. "My wife was driving, and I was in the passenger seat and we both saw it and we were both amazed."

The couple said they're not sure if anyone else saw what they saw because it was late and there weren't that many people driving on State Highway 71 in Bastrop at the time.

Residents of Tashkent saw a meteorite in the sky above the city.

Hundreds of people across the district last night got a perfect view of an extraterrestrial visitor, as a meteor briefly entered the atmosphere and exploded in a ball of green light.

"It was like a shooting star then it sort of exploded and fireballed itself a bit further, then it was gone. It was as moving so fast, but so so pretty," one witness reported to The Gisborne Herald.

Other witnesses said it resembled a "green fireball", and one said it was the size of "six houses".

Scores of others also reported the sighting to weatherwatch.co.nz.

"Biggest brightest comet we've ever seen in all our 56 years. Quick and flashy. Seen in awe from Otoko near Matawai," one report said.

Sightings of the meteor were recorded from 7.15pm onwards, and were noted across New Zealand.

Met Service meteorologist Lisa Murray confirmed there were no unusual atmospheric conditions at the time.

"There was plenty of clear sky, so it would have been perfect viewing, with a temperature of 12 degrees and very light winds."

A bright meteor fireball was captured by an Exoss camera located in São Sebastião / São Paulo, Brazil on 13th May 2017. The second video below shows a slow moving meteor recorded from Bramon (Brazilian Meteor Observation Network) station ARA1 / RJ on the same day.

This is the story of the biggest Indian Impact you've never heard of.

It's also a wet job that exposes the squishy grey matter of the mainstream mindset.

So don your rubber gloves.

And lock the door because this posting contains some very strong images that shouldn't be shared in polite company nor displayed within the confines of a complacent academic ivory tower.

Ready?

Another binocular comet? You better believe it. Comet Johnson takes center stage at nightfall this month and next.

Nothing against Giacobini, Kresak, Mrkos, and Pajdusakova, but this is one comet name I can pronounce with confidence. Even better, it's been humming along very well, thank you, while waiting for its turn at center stage.

At magnitude +8.5, Comet Johnson (C/2015 V2) is already bright enough to join the ranks of this year's band of binocular comets: NEOWISE (C/2016 U1), 45P/Honda-Mrkos-Pajdusakova, 2P/Encke, 41P/Tuttle-Giacobini-Kresak, Lovejoy (C/2017 E4), and PanSTARRS (C/2015 ER61). Comet watchers appreciate the bonanza; we've been happily toting out scopes and binoculars to follow the progress of each in its turn.

As the Moon toddles east and wanes, dark skies return as soon as May 12th. The timing couldn't be better, with Comet Johnson making a steep dive through the constellation of Boötes high in the southeastern sky at nightfall while also reaching peak brightness.

I last caught sight of the comet shortly just before dawn on May 6th. In 10×50 binoculars, Johnson was a faint, patchy glow in Canes Venatici. The view in my 15-inch reflector was more satisfying. At 76×, Johnson displayed a moderately condensed coma about 8′ across with a ¾° long broad, diffuse tail pointing northwest. Upping the magnification to 286×, I could see a tiny, almost stellar nucleus of magnitude +13.5 at coma center. Studying a comet's nucleus is a strange experience. At low magnification, it might appear fairly bright, but the more you magnify, the smaller and fainter the nucleus (pseudo-nucleus actually, since the true nucleus is hidden by reflective dust) becomes until you're staring at just a faint pinprick of light at the heart of a dusty maelstrom.

Planetary environmental chaos continued unabated this April.

After Peru was inundated in March, Columbia was next in line for massive rainfall and flooding which provoked deadly landslides in the city of Mocoa. Major flooding and landslides also hit India, Indonesia, the USA and China, while

Wildfires once again struck the US state of Florida while very late snow saw many European nations blanketed, with many crops destroyed.

Meteor/fireballs were also spotted from one end of the planet to the other and a comet made a special appearance.


Or watch on Sott.net's Vimeo Channel

Scientists have discovered what they believe is one of the biggest impact craters in the world near the Falklands Islands. They say the crater appears to date to between 270 and 250 million years ago, which, if confirmed, would link it to the world's biggest mass extinction event, where 96 percent of life on Earth was wiped out.

The presence of a massive crater in the Falklands was first proposed by Michael Rampino, a professor in New York University, in 1992 after he noticed similarities with the Chicxulub crater in Mexico—the asteroid that created this crater is thought to have played a major role in the extinction of the dinosaurs 66 million years ago.

But after a brief report at the Falklands site, very little research was carried out. Now, a team of scientists—including Rampino—have returned to the area to perform an "exhaustive search for additional new geophysical information" that would indicate the presence of an impact crater.

Their findings, published in the journal Terra Nova, suggest the huge circular depression just northwest of the islands is indeed the result of the massive impact of an asteroid or meteorite. The basin, which is now buried under sediments, measures over 150 miles in diameter.

Le Figaro says French investigators have ruled out theory that bomb was responsible for disaster last May that killed 66 people

French investigators have found no traces of explosives on the bodies of French victims of Egyptair flight MS804 that crashed into the Mediterranean last year en route from Paris to Cairo, a newspaper has reported.

Le Figaro's report, which a source with knowledge of the matter confirmed to Reuters, contradicts Egyptian investigators who said in December that traces of explosives were found in the remains of victims of the flight.

The impact of ancient meteorites sparked volcanic eruptions, a team led by Trinity College Dublin geochemists says in a report.

The team studied rocks in a massive crater in Sudbury, Ontario, where a deep basin was formed 1.85 billion years ago by a bolide, a meteor which exploded in the atmosphere.

Small volcanic fragments of the crash remain, each shaped like a crab claw. Their shape indicates they were formed when gas bubbles expanded in molten rock and then suddenly exploded.

The researchers findings indicate that the composition of the volcanic fragments changed over time. Immediately after the impact, volcanism, or the phenomenon of eruption of molten rock, is directly related to melting of the earth's crust. Over time, though, it was fed by magma, underground molten rock, coming from deeper levels within the earth.

"This is an important finding, because it means that the magma sourcing the volcanoes was changing with time," Balz Kamber, a professor of geology and mineralogy at Trinity, said in a press release. "The reason for the excitement is that the effect of large impacts on the early earth could be more serious than previously considered. The intense bombardment of the early earth had destructive effects on the planet's surface but it may also have brought up material from the planet's interior, which shaped the overall structure of the planet."