Fireballs
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Meteor

Mysterious house-shaking booms reported in Louisville, Kentucky

Mystery boom stock
It's louder than fireworks, a transformer explosion or even a train. "This is five times as loud as that," said Theresa Smith of Lyndon.

"The sounds I hear have nothing to do with trains. More like muffled dynamite," former CSX engineer Scott Gaw weighed in.

People living in Lyndon, St. Matthews, Hurstbourne, Graymoor Devondale, Woodlawn Park and surrounding neighborhoods have been discussing mysterious, recurring booms for months. The booms have sparked several active conversations on the Nextdoor App as well as Facebook groups. No one seems to know the source of what they're hearing, but they agree, it's loud-sometimes loud enough to shake a house.

In January, Barbara Martin says she was watching the football playoffs at a friend's house in Jeffersontown near the Gene Snyder when two loud booms shook the house.

Fireball

Meteor fireball spotted over Sugarland, Texas

Fireball over Sugarland, TX
© ABC13
Have we made first contact? A bizarre sight in the Sugar Land area has some thinking aliens.

A viewer sent us the video above from his dashcam. If you look closely, you'll see what looks to be a fireball falling from the sky.


He captured the moment while driving along Industrial Boulevard Cross near Highway 90 on Tuesday just before 7 p.m.

What do you think? Is the truth out there?

Fireball 2

Mysterious fireball spotted over Cornwall, UK

file
It was described as big and very bright with red flames coming from it

A large and mysterious fireball with 'lots of flames coming from it' was spotted in the skies over Cornwall.

According to reports, the unidentified object looked like a meteor and was really slow and big.

It was reported over Crackington Haven at about 10.30pm and the Kernow Weather Team (KWT) received another report of the sighting over West Cornwall at about 10.15pm.

The KWT took to their Facebook page to appeal for more information.

Its post reads: "Strange sighting over West Cornwall, February 14, 2019, 10.15pm ish.

Fireball 2

Meteor fireball caught on doorbell camera in Anchorage

Meteor of Doorbell Camera
© KTUU
Anchorage - An Anchorage man's doorbell camera captured what appears to be a meteor streaking across the sky Wednesday morning.

Kip Minnery, who lives in Turnagain, says he wishes he could have seen the event live himself, but thought it was cool that his security camera caught it as it happened.

A number of southcentral residents reported on social media seeing a bright light move across the sky Wednesday morning. People from Anchorage to Big Lake and Palmer reported seeing either a blue or green-looking light.

Fireball 2

Dashcam captures meteor fireball flying over northern Spain

Firebal over northern Spain
© YouTube/fabian ciobanu
YouTube user 'fabian ciobanu' uploaded footage from his dashcam of a fireball flying over El Astillero, Spain on February 12th:


Fireball 4

Meteor fireball blazes over Florida night sky - UPDATE

Florida meteor fireball
© YouTube/AMS/J. Saunders (screen capture)
A number of Space Coast residents from Titusville to Palm Bay took to social media to describe seeing an apparent meteor streak across the skies Tuesday morning, creating an otherworldly burst of green as it passed over.

The 45th Weather Squadron has since confirmed with Florida Today that it was a meteor passing through the night sky early Tuesday morning, 12th February, reports J.D. Gallup.

On Facebook, some residents also reported hearing a loud rumble.

Jacob Kelley, 35, said he had just arrived home when he spotted an animal running across his property. He said he walked through the door to check his surveillance video when he spotted the flash.

A video has been uploaded on the American Meteor Society Website. AMS Event: 711-2019, Report 160939 (711a-2019) Credit:J. Saunders:


Comment:

Update: Florida Today reports on 14th February:
The meteor that streaked across the skies of Central Florida on Tuesday was a "large fireball" that likely exploded over the Atlantic Ocean with the energy of a tenth of a kiloton - or the explosive force equal to that of 100 tons of TNT, according to a sky watcher group.

"We're still processing the data, but it was large, maybe a foot across," said Dwayne Free, director of the Spalding Allsky Camera Network which provides data to NASA's Planetary Defense Office's Asteroid Threat Assessment Project in California.
Other videos of the event have been uploaded to YouTube:






Fireball 5

'Aurora-like airglow' in the sky as meteor passes over central Wales, UK

Fireball over central Wales
© Sean WeeklyA meteor enters the earth's atmosphere over the snowy hills of the Elan Valley in Powys while ethereal green 'airglow' spreads across the sky.
This breathtaking picture captures an ethereal green 'airglow' spreading across the night sky at the precise moment a meteor flashes towards Earth.

The stunning scene unfolded over the snowy hills of the Elan Valley in Powys, reflected in the Graig Coch reservoir.

The aurora-like airglow - where energy from the sun reacts with chemicals in the planet's atmosphere - appeared in front of a brilliantly clear Milky Way.

And just when it seemed the nocturnal scene could not get any more majestic, the meteoroid hurtled into view.

Professional photographer Sean Weekly caught the scene while out in the valley on a Saturday night.

Fireball 5

Bright meteor fireball soars over Venezuela

Meteor over Venezuela
© Natalia Sánchez
Netizens took to Twitter after what it seems to be a bright meteorite soared through the sky over Venezuela and could be seen over Valencia, Victoria and Caracas.

Several videos circulated on Twitter, picturing a bright object flying in the night sky over Venezuela. The users alleged that that might have been a meteorite.


Comment: Meteor fireball activity around the world has increased recently including: Meteor EXPLODES, shatters windows in Pinar del Río, Cuba - after streaking over Florida Keys

Other videos have been uploaded of this event over Venezuela:






Fireball

Hunt on for meteor fireball seen across Victoria, Australia

The Grampians.
The Grampians.
The hunt is on for a meteor - and video footage showing its path - that was seen across Victoria on Friday and which could have landed east of the Grampians.

Stawell resident Andrea Cooper told the Mail-Times she and others in the Ledcourt, Halls Gap and Grampians areas heard a rumble and sonic boom at about 3.50pm. Apparently it was the entry area of the meteor that went over Melbourne also today.

The boom shook cars and buildings and was also felt up on the mountains.

Resident Jade Taylor said "seen one low in south of Warracknabeal heading in an easterly direction. Very pretty,".

Residents also reported seeing streaks of light over Bendigo, Drysdale and Melbourne.



Fireball

Rare Atira asteroid spotted orbiting the Sun

Venus transiting the Sun.
© NASA/SDO/AIAVenus transiting the Sun.
We've been gazing out at the Solar System for a very long time, and by now we know, more or less, where things go. Sun, planets, asteroid belt, more planets, then millions more asteroids (we're not really sure how many). Maybe another planet. OK, so it's a little tricky.

But a new discovery has hinted that maybe there could be more asteroids in the "Sun, planets" section. Perhaps even loads more.

It's called 2019 AQ3 - an asteroid whose tight elliptical orbit is nearly always closer to the Sun than Venus, and even dips closer than Mercury. It takes just 165 days to orbit the Sun - the shortest year ever seen in a Solar System asteroid. (A Venusian year is 225 days; a Mercurian year is 88.)

"We have found an extraordinary object whose orbit barely strays beyond Venus's orbit - that's a big deal," said astronomer Quanzhi Ye of the Infrared Processing and Analysis Center (IPAC) at Caltech.

"There might be many more undiscovered asteroids out there like it."

Ye first spotted the object on 4 January 2019 in data from the Zwicky Transient Facility (ZTF), an automated sky survey project run out of Caltech's Palomar Observatory. It wasn't long before its unusual nature became clear to other astronomers, and multiple telescopes were deployed to study it on January 6 and 7.

In addition, the archives of the Pan-STARRS 1 telescope at the Haleakalā Observatory in Hawai'i turned out to contain previously unnoticed evidence of the asteroid, dating back to 2015.