Fireballs
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Meteor

Bright flash, mysterious boom caught on home surveillance camera in New Jersey

Alexis Tarrazi
Patch
Thu, 02 Nov 2017 18:56 UTC
Flash, mystery boom in NJ
© YouTube/Alex Tarrazi
A home video captured a bright flash followed by a loud boom heard across the township Wednesday night. What do you think it was?

A Bridgewater resident's home video surveillance captured a bright flash followed by a loud boom heard across the township Wednesday night.

The video was taken from a home on Poplar Street in the Bradley Gardens section of the township by Philip Vicari.

"Take notice to the flash of light," Vicari told Patch. "That wasn't my camera and my flood light was off."


Comment: According to Meteorites Australia, sounds associated with meteorite falls (as reported by observers) can include crackling sounds like gunshots and cannon-like explosions.

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Comet 2

Newly discovered Comet Heinze (C/2017 T1) to zip past Earth in January

Bob King
Sky and Telescope
Wed, 01 Nov 2017 17:32 UTC
Just discovered, Comet Heinze (C/2017 T) will zoom by Earth in January and may just show up in your binoculars.

Comet Heinze (C/2017 T1)
© Mike OlasonComet Heinze (C/2017 T1) was only a tiny, 17th-magnitude patch of fuzz with a short, fan-shaped tail on October 22nd.
Ah, 2017. A year busy with binocular-bright comets has been on the quiet side lately. But the recent discovery of Comet Heinze (C/2017 T1) by the University of Hawaiʻi's Ari Heinze gives comet watchers hope for a bright and fuzzy start to the new year.

Heinze searches for near-Earth asteroids with the Asteroid Terrestrial-impact Last Alert System (ATLAS) project, and came across the comet in images taken on October 2nd. The survey uses two telescopes, one at Mauna Loa Observatory on Hawaiʻi Island, and a second on the summit of Haleakala on Maui, about 100 miles to the northwest. Among other benefits, two widely-spaced "eyes" allow for distance determination using parallax, which also helps in calculating a new object's orbit.
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Fireball 5

Earth-grazing meteor fireball with radio reflections caught over New Mexico

Vincent Perlerin
American Meteor Society
Mon, 30 Oct 2017 16:17 UTC
Earth-grazing meteor over New Mexico
© AMSEarthgrazer Fireball with Radio Reflections – Oct 25 2017 – New Mexico Thomas Ashcraft (Radio – Channel A 76.309 MHz CW – Channel B 54.309 MHz CW).
On October 25th 3:42am MDT (09:42 UT), amateur radio astronomer Thomas Ashcraft caught an Earth-grazer Fireball over his personal observatory "Heliotown" in Lamy, New Mexico. Earth-grazing fireballs are bright meteors that enter Earth's atmosphere at a very shallow angle and skim along the top of the atmosphere. Some actually re-enter space.

Ashcraft combines all-sky video camera observations with a forward-scatter radar array that is tuned to the plasma and ionization produced by meteors (Channel A 76.309 MHz CW - Channel B 54.309 MHz CW).

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Camera

Two photographers,100 miles apart, capture same bright meteor fireball as it flies over Arizona

Deborah Byrd
EarthSky
Mon, 23 Oct 2017 17:56 UTC
Fireball over Gold Canyon, AZ
© Joanne WestTaurid fireball over Gold Canyon, AZ
As the Orionids were peaking this past weekend, at least two members of the EarthSky community caught bright meteors in the long-lasting Taurid shower. The two meteor photos on this page appear to show the same bright meteor, although these photographers were separated by about 100 miles. Joanne West, whose image is above, said she caught her fireball at 10:27 p.m. on October 21 and wrote:
Had camera aimed at eastern sky in dark desert area near Superstition Mountains in Gold Canyon. I had been making 20-second exposures continually for about 30 minutes. Grace was with me as my camera shutter happened to be open when this fireball came out of the sky from the Taurus constellation.

Nikon D750, 20mm Nikon lens. Processed the raw file to adjust the foreground brightness and darken the highlights of the meteor.
Thanks, Joanne! Meanwhile, some 100 miles (about 150 km) to the south, Eliot Herman in Tucson, Arizona also caught a bright Taurid fireball at 10:27 p.m. on the evening of October 21 ...
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Fireball 5

Burning meteor fireball passes over Brecon Beacons, South Wales

Laura Dale
Story Trender
Mon, 23 Oct 2017 15:37 UTC
Meteor fireball over South Wales
© Chris Pomeroy
This dramatic fireball appears to tear the night sky apart and bring daylight shining through.

The extremely bright meteor was captured racing past Earth during the Orionids Meteor shower.

In the foreground a quiet country lane winds over the Brecon Beacons National Park.

The photograph was taken by RAF personnel Chris Pomeroy, from Pontypridd in South Wales, just after midnight on October 21.

Chris, 34, said: "I was photographing the Orionids Meteor shower. The camera was set up and I was taking random exposures hoping to capture a meteor.

"During one exposure I captured what seemed at the time, to the naked eye, to be an extremely bright shooting star that lasted only for about a second.
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Fireball 2

Meteor fireball seen over Bellingham Bay, Washington

Robert Mittendorf
The Bellingham Herald
Thu, 26 Oct 2017 14:31 UTC
meteor
File image
Firefighters searched Bellingham Bay and the surrounding shoreline Tuesday night after least two Whatcom County residents called 911, reporting they had seen an aircraft engulfed in flames crash into Bellingham Bay.

What people likely saw was a fireball, officials said — but one more properly called a meteor. Several Whatcom County residents saw it, too, but they recognized the blazing streak as a shooting star at 7:38 p.m. Tuesday.

"It was green, very bright, and super fast heading north," said Bridgett Bullard of Blaine. "I saw it while I was getting onto I-5 northbound at Bakerview. My sister saw it and she was on Grandview in Birch Bay."

Others were convinced they had seen an aircraft hit the water. Fire crews and other units were sent to investigate, including the fireboat Salish Star.

"Report of a plane seen going down in the area, Kwina Road and Haxton, in the water," a dispatcher said, according to emergency radio traffic archived online.
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Fireball 2

Meteor fireball lights up the sky in Port Lincoln, South Australia; massive bangs heard

Elizabeth Henson
news.com.au
Fri, 27 Oct 2017 14:18 UTC
The fireball that travelled across the Eyre Peninsula on Thursday night.
© Desert Fireball Network, Curtin UniversityThe fireball that travelled across the Eyre Peninsula on Thursday night.
A meteor research centre has captured an image of a fireball that lit up the sky over the Eyre Peninsula and reportedly caused the ground and buildings to shake at Port Lincoln.

The bright blue meteor shot across the sky just after 11pm and was spotted by people as far away as Adelaide.

Port Lincoln resident Lila Watson was driving home when she saw what she initially thought was a shooting star.

"It just got bigger and bigger and it was just this big flash across the sky and there were sparks coming off it," she told The Advertiser.

"It just lit the sky up and I saw it go southeast.

"I pulled up home and I heard two massive bangs, maybe a second apart, and then the sky lit up again."

"It definitely shook the ground - I just felt the whole earth shake twice."
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Fireball 2

Meteorite slams into businessman's roof in Paarl, South Africa

Marvin Charles
IOL
Wed, 25 Oct 2017 09:26 UTC
There is apparently a one in four billion chance of a meteorite hitting a building, but it happened to business owner Fagrie Allie
© Henk KrugerThere is apparently a one in four billion chance of a meteorite hitting a building, but it happened to business owner Fagrie Allie
He heard a loud thump and thought it was an intruder trying to steal from his furniture shop. Never in his wildest dreams did he think the "intruder" was from a galaxy far away.

Fagrie Allie, who owns a furniture store in Paarl, was closing his shop when "I heard a loud thump along with a shattering sound and at first I thought It was an intruder but I saw the store was empty and I thought maybe one of the pieces of furniture had fallen over but I saw nothing".

He then saw dust particles coming from the ceiling but didn't take note at first.

"It bothered me because it was a really loud bang. I got into the ceiling and when I looked up at the roof sheets I saw a hole in the roof sheet itself. I came back down and found small pieces of rock lying on the floor," Allie said.
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Comet 2

First-known interstellar comet spotted by astronomers

Kelly Beatty
Sky & Telescope
Wed, 25 Oct 2017 20:53 UTC
Telescopes only picked it up a week ago, but it's likely been traveling through interstellar space for millions of years.
Comet PanSTARRS (C/2017 U1)
© NASA/JPL/HorizonsComet PanSTARRS (C/2017 U1) raced within about 0.25 astronomical unit of the Sun in early September and is now relatively close to Earth. Based on its extreme orbit, astronomers believe it arrived here from interstellar space.
For centuries, skywatchers have chronicled the comings and goings of thousands of comets. Every one of them has come from someplace in our own solar system, either the Kuiper Belt beyond Neptune or the much more distant Oort Cloud at the fringes of the Sun's realm.

But an object swept up just a week ago by observers using the PanSTARRS 1 telescope atop Haleakala on Maui has an extreme orbit - it's on a hyperbolic trajectory that doesn't appear to be bound to the Sun. Preliminary findings, published earlier today by the International Astronomical Union's Minor Planet Center (MPC), suggest that we are witnessing a comet that escaped from another star.

"If further observations confirm the unusual nature of this orbit," notes Gareth Williams, the MPC's associate director, "this object may be the first clear case of an interstellar comet."
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Fireball 4

Unidentified object, possibly a meteorite, crashes down near St. John's, Canada

Ryan Cooke
CBC News Canada
Mon, 23 Oct 2017 21:46 UTC
Meteorite
© CBC News CanadaA security camera on the waterfront in St. John's captured this shot of a light falling from the sky near the South Side Hills, across the harbour.
Andrew Wilkins was eating dinner at a downtown St. John's pub, looking out over the city's iconic harbour, when a flash of green light caught his attention.

"The whole sky just lit up," he said. "It was coming in on a 45 degree angle, coming down to the right."

Wilkins stopped eating and stared as the moving ball of light crashed down on the opposite side of the harbour, towards the largely uninhabited Southside Hills area.

He paused to determine if he could hear a crash, but the noisy chatter of the busy pub prevented him from hearing any sound the flash of light may have made.

"It was like a big green ball of fire, is what it looked like. At first I thought, 'Wow, geez, that's a really bright firework,' but fireworks don't shoot downwards."
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