Fireballs
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Fireball

Meteor fireball seen in Lehigh Valley, Pennsylvania

Meteor observed by camera in Douglassville,
© PETER DETERLINEMeteor observed by camera in Douglassville, Berks County, around 6:13 am EST on Thursday, March 28, 2019. Witnesses across the East Coast described seeing a fireball in the sky that morning, including to people in Philadelphia.
Reports of a substantial fireball came in to the American Meteor Society from Lehigh Valley residents Thursday.

"It was very large! Much bigger than any type of shooting star I have seen. The flames around it were evident!" one report from Bethlehem read.

The reports to the American Meteor Society put the fireball's appearance as around 6:15 a.m. EDT. Sunrise on Thursday was 6:46 a.m.

The nonprofit society lists dozens of reports of this fireball as pending on its website, amsmeteors.org.


Fireball 3

Bright meteor fireball observed over Santa Catarina, Brazil

Meteor fireball over Santa Catarina, Brazil on March 24, 2019.
© V. Antonio GeraldoMeteor fireball over Santa Catarina, Brazil on March 24, 2019.
The American Meteor Society (AMS) has 34 reports about a meteor fireball seen over Rio Grande do Sul and Santa Catarina on Sunday, March 24th 2019 around 21:39 UT.

A video has been uploaded on the AMS Website. AMS Event: 1245-2019, Report 163602 (1245m-2019) Credit:V. Antonio Geraldo.


Fireball 2

Streaking fireball, believed to be meteorite, spotted over Gadsden County, Florida

fireball
Workers at a Gadsden County business spotted a fireball streaking through the sky early Friday morning.

A security camera at Roberts Sand Company in Quincy captured video of the apparent meteorite.

"It came across the sky and you could see the fire trail behind it," said operations manager Dwyane Fox.

Fox told WCTV's Katie Kaplan that something flashing and bright had caught his eye it about 7:10 a.m.

"I looked up at it and you could see the fireball coming down and parts coming off of it and a little bit of black smoke coming off," he said.


Fireball 2

Meteor fireball spotted over parts of New York State [VIDEO]

Did you see it?
Did you see it?
The American Meteor Society is reporting that a meteor was spotted over parts of New York, Connecticut, New Jersey, and Pennsylvania Tuesday morning at around 2:35 a.m.



As of now, there are eighty seven reports on the AMS website about the fireball, which can be seen streaking across the sky in the video above.

Fireball 3

Best of the Web: HUGE meteor exploded over Russia's Far East in December last year - Blast was 10 times more powerful than Hiroshima

Fireball over Kamchatka peninsula in December went largely unnoticed at the time
meteor baring strait
© MODIS-Terra / Cropped by Giorgio Savini ‏@UCLOAstroSphinxThe atmospheric explosion (bottom right) and debris trail left by the exploding meteor over the Bering Strait in December 2018
A meteor explosion over the Bering Sea late last year unleashed 10 times as much energy as the atomic bomb that destroyed Hiroshima, scientists have revealed.

The fireball tore across the sky off Russia's Kamchatka peninsula on 18 December and released energy equivalent to 173 kilotons of TNT. It was the largest air blast since another meteor hurtled into the atmosphere over Chelyabinsk, in Russia's south-west, six years ago, and the second largest in the past 30 years.

Unlike the Chelyabinsk meteor, which was captured on CCTV, mobile phones and car dashboard cameras, the December arrival from outer space went largely unnoticed at the time because it exploded in such a remote location.


Comment: Raindrops keep falling on our heads...




Fireball 4

Meteor fireball falls in Russia's territory

Meteor over Krasnoyarsk Territory
© REUTERS/Ilya NaymushinA truck drives along the M54 federal highway on the bank of the Us river in the Western Sayan mountains in Krasnoyarsk region, Russia, November 4, 2016.
An eyewitness filmed a glowing falling object on his car DVR in the night sky, near the village of Tura in the north of Russia's Krasnoyarsk Territory.

Earlier, the Yenisei TV channel published a dashcam video, which showed a falling luminous body. It is reported that the incident occurred on Friday evening near the village of Tura.

Info

YDB team publishes evidence from Chile for global climate cataclysm

YDB World Map
© Cosmic Tusk
The main objective of this study was to test the YDB impact hypothesis by analyzing a wide range of data from the Pilauco site in southern Chile. The following conclusions show that our data and interpretations are consistent with the YDB impact hypothesis and we found no evidence that refutes the hypothesis.

(1) At Pilauco, ~12,800-year-old peaks in high-temperature Pt-rich and native-Fe spherules are comparable to similar impact-related evidence found at more than 50 YDB sites in North America, Europe, and western Asia. It appears that the YDB layer at Pilauco is coeval with similar layers found at these sites on several continents and is also possibly related to the proposed YDB impact event.

(2) Identification of the YDB layer at Pilauco greatly expands the proposed YDB proxy feld ~6,000 km farther south of the closest well-studied YDB site in Venezuela, and ~12,000 km south of the northernmost YDB site in Canada, a distance equaling ~30% of Earth's circumference.

(3) Cr-rich spherules are found in the YDB layer at Pilauco, but not found at the ~50 other sites on four continents, suggesting that one or more local impacts/airbursts occurred in the Cr-rich basaltic terrain
circa Pilauco.

Fireball 2

Search begins for meteorite that fell on desert in Abu Dhabi, UAE - UPDATE: Second meteor fireball spotted in ONE week

UAE meteor fireball
© Abu Dhabi Astronomy CentreThe meteorite came through the Earth's atmosphere as a fireball.
Astronomers are searching for the remains of a fireball that fell from the sky into the Abu Dhabi desert.

The meteorite is believed to have landed south of Al Wathba after being captured on camera by Abu Dhabi's Astronomy Centre.

Meteorites can contain grains of stardust older than our solar system and hold information about its formation and the geological history of the Earth, Moon and stars.

But it will not be easy to find the remains of last Tuesday's fireball, thought to be a meteorite of one to three centimetres in diameter and weighing between two and 10 grams.

Abu Dhabi astronomers narrowed down the landing site to a desert area of about 15 square kilometres in the south-east of the emirate.


Comment:

Update: The Khaleej Times on 13th March reports:
Another bright fireball, the second in a week, was spotted in UAE skies late Tuesday night (March 12) at around 11:50pm, local time.

This is actually the second fireball to be spotted in the UAE skies in one week, after the first one appeared on Tuesday night, March 5, at exactly 7:40:11, according to a senior official.

Eng Mohammed Shawkat, Director of the International Astronomy Centre Abu Dhabi, told Khaleej Times that investigations and calculations are underway to identify the route, altitude, speed, and expected location of the new meteor.

"The Centre has received many calls from eye witnesses who affirmed that they did see that bright fireball in the UAE sky late on Tuesday night."

This is actually the third meteor to be spotted in the UAE skies since the Centre was founded in 2016, he pointed out.

"The first super bright fireball was recorded on October 1, 2016, the second on March 5, and this is the third on March 12."

The new meteor, as was the case with last week's fireball, has been recorded by a special network of astronomical cameras, he added.

"These sophisticated cameras have been installed by the International Astronomy Centre at different parts of the country, and these are managed in collaboration with the US space agency NASA."

The network consists of several stations, each having 16 astronomical cameras pointed at the sky at all times, he elaborated.

"These automatically record any meteor(s) that appears in the sky, sending high definition clips to the station they are connected to, which are instantly transferred to the main center in Abu Dhabi."

Possible parts of burnt meteor located

Meanwhile, a team of experts from the Centre have managed to locate possible parts of the burnt meteor that fell in the UAE desert last week, Eng Shawkat exclusively told Khaleej Times.

"A team of four groups have been dispatched to the expected site of the meteor that fell on Tuesday."

Each and every group, equipped with special scan and search gadgets, was assigned to excessively search a particular area, he added.

"The 3.5-hour-long search, from 2:30pm to 6pm, ended in finding two possible samples; the first was a dark rock, while the second was a rock mixed with rusted iron."

On the spot tests showed some magnetic traits of the second sample, he explained.

"The experts at the centre immediately contacted NASA and shared the pictures of the samples collected."

The second sample of rust iron rock is mostly of an old meteor, he underlined.

"However, the Centre experts are to move to the second stage - and lab test the sample to identify its content and nature."

The first super bright fireball has been video recorded by two astronomical cameras; one fitted at the Ramah station, and one at the Al Wajan station, Eng Shawkat stated.

"Based on these calculations, the meteor was found to have been orbiting at a distance of 384 million km off the sun."

"The meteor was travelling at a speed of 67,000 kmph when it entered the Earth's atmosphere."

The object started burning at an altitude of 93km from the Earth's surface between UAE's Al Qooa and Umm Al Zamul areas, he pointed out.

"It then flew to the northwest when the fire came to an end at an altitude of 35km close to Razeen area."

Eng Shwkat added that the meteor might not have entirely got burnt. "Parts of the meteor, mostly 2 to 10gm, have most likely reached the UAE desert, close to the Arabian Nights Village Resort."



Fireball 5

Impressive meteor fireball reported over SW France

SW France meteor AMS observers map
© AMS (screen capture)AMS observers map - Event 1061-2019
The American Meteor Society (AMS) received 64 reports about a meteor fireball seen over Catalunya, Nouvelle-Aquitaine and Occitanie on Wednesday, March 6th 2019 around 20:58 UT.

Many of these reports describe an impressive phenomenon according to actu.fr. A resident of Lot-et-Garonne explains having observed a "meteoroid", "brilliant" , "sparkling" and so "close" that she had the impression that it was going to crash around her house .

"This is the first time I see a phenomenon as long and as big, I thought a plane on fire," said a resident from Tarn-et-Garonne. Another one even reported "a big boom" on the side of Tarbes.

On Twitter too, people wondered what they saw.


Comet

Colossal asteroid will approach Earth on Friday, but we'll be fine

Giant asteroid
NASA is always keeping an eye on space rocks that get anywhere near Earth, and 2019 has been a relatively calm year in terms of close passes. A recently discovered asteroid is going to make a not-super-close pass of Earth later this week, and while it doesn't pose much of a threat to our planet it's worth mentioning simply because of its size.

The rock, known as 2019 DN, is slated to arrive at its closest point to Earth this coming Friday, March 8th. At its nearest distance the asteroid will still be around 13 lunar distances away. One lunar distance is equal to the space between the Earth and our Moon, so it's clear the asteroid has little chance of disrupting Earth during its flyby, and that's a very good thing considering its size.