Fireballs
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Fireball 4

Exploding meteor fireball causes panic in Pakistan´s mountainous north

meteor fireball explodes over Pakistan
© YouTube/Wapgee Inc (screen capture)
A suspected meteor lit up the skies above Pakistan´s mountainous north late Wednesday, officials said, with panicked residents reporting a mysterious light whizzing past and the sound of multiple, powerful blasts.

The incident occurred around 9PM, when citizens in the city of Gilgit and the surrounding Ghizer and Diamer districts saw the bright object racing through the night sky above the region´s remote, soaring mountains.

"I saw a light flash through the sky and then there were multiple blasts," Ghizer district resident Javed Iqbal told AFP Thursday.

"I felt as if something had hit the roof of my house. I rushed outside with my family members and saw everyone getting out of their homes. The blasts had shaken the whole valley," he said.

His story was echoed by others, including Shabir Mir of Gilgit, who said he saw the object "disappear into the mountains", followed seconds later by what sounded like more than one explosion.


Comet 2

New Comet: C/2017 E4 (LOVEJOY)

CBET nr. 4373, issued on 2017, March 13, announces the discovery of a comet (magnitude ~15) by Terry James Lovejoy on three CCD 8-s exposures taken five minutes apart starting on Mar. 9.684 UT with a Celestron C14 reflector operating at f/1.9 (+ QHY9 camera). The new comet has been designated C/2017 E4 (LOVEJOY).

I performed follow-up measurements of this object, while it was still on the neocp. Stacking of 10 unfiltered exposures, 30 seconds each, obtained remotely on 2017, March 10.7 from Q62 (iTelescope network) through a 0.50-m f/6.8 astrograph + CCD + focal reducer, shows that this object is a comet with a diffuse coma nearly 15 arcsec in diameter.

My confirmation image (click on it for a bigger version)
Comet Lovejoy C/2017
© Remanzacco Blogspot

Telescope

Study: Warped meteor showers hit Earth at all angles

Some meteor showers persist for weeks and months, even though Earth sweeps a big arc around the Sun during that time. The meteors arrive from a slightly different direction each day, which is a clue to why these showers last so long. In a review of ongoing meteor surveillance projects worldwide, 45 showers are identified that take this motion to extremes, visualized in spectacular animation.
Warped kappa Cygnids meteor
© SETIThe warped kappa Cygnids meteor shower peaks in mid August.
"I was most surprised by some showers that were initially seen close to the plane of the planets, but then moved up towards the pole over the course of weeks," says meteor astronomer Dr. Peter Jenniskens of the SETI Institute and NASA Ames Research Center.

Jenniskens runs the NASA sponsored project Cameras for Allsky Meteor Surveillance (CAMS) in Northern California, which aims to confirm some of the 300+ meteor showers on the International Astronomical Union (IAU) Working List that still need verification. 60 low-light video cameras film the skies over the San Francisco Bay Area and have recorded more than 300,000 meteoroid trajectories since beginning observations in 2010.

The observations show that meteor showers do not stay in one place. For example, the well-known Perseids get their name from the constellation of Perseus from which they radiate at their peak in mid-August. But the camera networks first detect the shower on July 1 in Cassiopeia. And the Perseids are tracked until September 3, when the meteors radiate from the neighboring constellation Camelopardalis.

Fireball 2

Meteor fireball recorded over Southern Germany

meteor fireball over Southern Germany
© YouTube/OGVT - Observatoire géophysique, Val Terbi (screen capture)
#Meteor over Southern #Germany recorded in #Montsevelier #ValTerbi #Jura on 03/11/2017, 00:57:43 UTC


Comment: A meteor was recorded from the same observatory four hours earlier over the Canton Ticino region of Southern Switzerland.


Fireball

SOTT Focus: SOTT Earth Changes Summary - February 2017: Extreme Weather, Planetary Upheaval, Meteor Fireballs

Fireball Illinois
Februrary 2017 continued on as January started. Massive flooding in California due to "atmospheric rivers" dumping large amounts of rain on coastal areas and snow on the Sierra Nevada. The snow melt from this caused further flooding in Nevada. Eastern Canada also experienced record snowfall, as did Iran, Kazakhstan, Afghanistan and Japan.

Wildfires broke out in Eastern Australia and New Zealand while record rainfall inundated Western Australia. Major flooding also hit several South American nations including Chile, Peru and Colombia.

There are at least 30 active volcanoes around the world right now, including a really impressive one in Guatemala. Massive earth cracks opened in Pakistan and Italy.

These are just some of the chaotic events we present in this month's Sott 'Earth Changes' video compilation.


Comet 2

New Comet: C/2017 E1 (Borisov)

CBET nr. 4369, issued on 2017, March 04, announces the discovery of a comet (magnitude ~17) by Gennadii Vladimirovich Borisov on three unfiltered 120-s exposures obtained on Mar. 1.10 UT with a 0.4-m f/2.3 astrograph at the "Mobil Astronomical Robotics Genon" Observatory (MARGO) near Nauchnij. The new comet has been designated C/2017 E1 (Borisov).

I performed follow-up measurements of this object, while it was still on the neocp. Stacking of 20 unfiltered exposures, 30 seconds each, obtained remotely on 2017, March 1.5 from H06 (iTelescope network) through a 0.43-m f/6.8 reflector + CCD + f/4.5 focal reducer, shows that this object is a comet with a diffuse coma nearly 30 arcsec in diameter.

My confirmation image (click on it for a bigger version)
Comet Borisov
© Remanzacco Blog
M.P.E.C. 2017-E42 assigns the following preliminary parabolic orbital elements to comet C/2017 E1: T 2017 Apr. 9.8; e= 1.0; Peri. = 151.90; q = 0.90; Incl.= 14.54

Fireball 4

Bright green, fragmenting meteor fireball reported over northern UK

meteor fireball map northern UK
© Google/AMS (screen capture)
The American Meteor Society (AMS) has received 24 reports about a fireball seen over England and Scotland on Wednesday, March 1st 2017 around 18:54 UT.

Responding to a request by the UK Meteor Network for information, some tweets include:


Fireball

Loud boom and reports of fireball sighting over Texas

Meteor over Abilene
© KTXS 12 ABC
Abilene - Many people reported to KTXS that they saw a fireball moving across the sky Sunday evening just before 9 p.m. Most of the reports came from an area from Abilene to Snyder.

People in the Snyder region also reported hearing a boom like that of a transformer failing or a sonic boom that a jet might create.

Based on the reports, it appears that something fell from the sky and got close enough to the ground that the sonic boom it created was audible to people on the ground in parts of our area. However, we have not received any reports of anything crashing to the ground.

The object could have been man-made space debris like a piece from a spent rocket. But we have not heard of any of these reentries from NASA or our military. More likely it was a piece of "rock" wandering around in our solar system that fell into our atmosphere.

As the object falls deeper into our atmosphere friction with air molecules increases and heats the object. This creates the streak of light in the sky. Most of the time the falling object burns up before hitting the ground.Since the falling object is likely traveling at several thousand miles per hour, it creates a sonic boom. If it is close enough to the ground, we may hear it.

Checking for a possible noise maker, the USGS earthquake site indicates no measured earthquakes in the state of Texas Sunday or Sunday evening.


Comment: Footage of the meteor was also captured by a police officer in Weatherford, Texas.




Fireball 4

Meteor fireball sighted over South Island, New Zealand

Otago Meteor
© Photo Twitter (@iangriffin)Clear skies around the country allowed for sightings of what may have been a meteor (not pictured) last night.
Reports of a bright light shooting across the skies last night have come in from around the country, including Dunedin.

ODT Online submitter Peter Simkins relates looking out of his window in Broad Bay towards Port Chalmers and seeing a ''yellow streak of light plummeting to earth''.

Other sightings have come in from in Blenheim, Porirua, Lake Ferry, Martinborough and New Plymouth.

Some people posted on social media about seeing the sky light up, while others described the light as being green in colour. Fairfax is this morning reporting that it may have been may be a Russian cargo rocket re-entering the earth's atmosphere.

One woman posted on Facebook that she saw the light in Lower Hutt.

"Yup saw it clearly in Lower Hutt. It was huge and the tail colorful."

The Herald was unable to contact an expert to comment on the sighting tonight, but a person at the University of Canterbury's Mt John Observatory said descriptions provided indicated people had seen a meteor.

According to Nasa, small chunks of rock and debris in space are called meteoroids.

They become meteors, or shooting stars, when they fall through a planet's atmosphere; leaving a bright trail as they are heated to incandescence by the friction of the atmosphere. Pieces that survive the journey and hit the ground are called meteorites.

Fireball 4

Asteroid 2017 DG16 to fly by Earth at 0.34 LD - 5th known NEA to flyby Earth within 1 lunar distance since January 8, 2017

asteroid dg16
© Minor Planet CenterThe green line indicates the object's apparent motion relative to the Earth, and the bright green marks are the object's location at approximately one hour intervals. The Moon's orbit is grey. The blue arrow points in the direction of Earth's motion and the yellow arrow points toward the Sun.
A newly discovered asteroid named 2017 DG16 will flyby Earth at a very close distance of 0.34 LD (130 560 km / 81 126 miles) from the surface of our planet at 21:08 UTC on February 23, 2017. This is the fifth known near-Earth asteroid to flyby Earth within 1 lunar distance since January 8, 2017.

2017 DG16 was first observed by Mt. Lemmon Survey on February 21. The estimated size of this asteroid is between 2 and 8 m (6.5 - 26.2 feet). It will flyby Earth at a speed (relative to the Earth) of 6.91 km/s.

This object belongs to the Apollo group of asteroids, Earth-crossing asteroids that have an orbital semi-major axis greater than that of the Earth (> 1 AU) but perihelion distances less than the Earth's aphelion distance (q < 1.017 AU).