Fireballs
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Fireball 5

Asteroid shaves Earth, more on the way

Duncan Alfreds
News24.com
Mon, 27 Jan 2014 09:40 UTC
Vesta
© Nasa/APAsteroid Vesta resembles a planet, data from Nasa has showed.
Cape Town - An asteroid dashed close by the Earth on Sunday, but experts were watching it to ensure that it stayed on the predicted course.

On Sunday, the Nasa Jet Propulsion Laboratory watched as an asteroid, dubbed 2014 BP8, whizzed by the planet at 9.3km/s (kilometres per second).

The asteroid is between 11m and 24m in diameter and passed 1.4 million kilometres, or just under four lunar distances from the Earth.

According to the JPL, Tuesday will bring the closest approach of 2014 BM25 which is travelling at 6.8km/s and between 6m and 14m in diameter.

It will pass even closer than 2014 BP8, at 2.7 lunar distances, and followed by the bigger 19m 2014 BK25, at 11.9km/s on the same day.
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Fireball 2

Roanoke, Texas couple find meteorites from Friday's meteor fireball

Marie Saavedra
wfaa.com
Sun, 26 Jan 2014 09:59 UTC
Image
© WFAAWayne and Darla Janca of Roanoke believe they discovered fragments of a meteor that fell to earth near their home on January 24, 2014


It started as the search for a needle in an interplanetary haystack.

Could Wayne and Darla Janca of Roanoke find what came flying through the sky on Friday night?

They and untold others saw the meteor on their drive home from dinner in Southlake. Some even captured the glowing meteor on video as it shot through the atmosphere.

"We both looked at each other and said, 'That looks like it hit pretty close to home," said Darla Janca.

After a good night's sleep, Wayne and his wife followed their hunch.

"The next day we went out and were looking in the dirt, seeing if we can find anything," Wayne said. "Right before we gave up, I looked down at my foot and there it was! It looked like liquid metal melted into the ground."

The discovery was made in Roanoke, not far from the Jancas' home. But what they dug up may have traveled millions of miles to get here.

Comment: See also: Meteor fireball seen by many above Oklahoma and Texas, 24 January 2014 (VIDEO)

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Fireball 2

Meteor fireball seen by many above Oklahoma and Texas, 24 January 2014 (VIDEO)


KFOR-TV
Fri, 24 Jan 2014 05:10 UTC
Image
Did you see a flash across the Friday night sky? NewsChannel 4 had reports of a meteor being seen from people in Oklahoma City and Tulsa. Many folks are talking about seeing it in Texas and Arkansas.

Let us know if you saw anything and share you pictures or video.

Check out this video posted earlier this evening claiming to be of it:


Comment: See also:

30 Dec 2013: Mysterious loud boom rattles, rolls most of Texas City

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Fireball

A sound of cosmic thunder: Earth-Impacting asteroid heard by nuke detectors

Phil Plait
Slate.com
Thu, 23 Jan 2014 07:45 UTC
Asteroid burning atmosphere
© Dieter Spannknebel/Getty images/NASAArtist impression of an asteroid burning up in Earth's atmosphere
On the second day of 2014, a small asteroid blew up high in Earth's atmosphere. It was relatively harmless - the rock was only a couple of meters across, far too small to hit the ground or do any real damage - and it disintegrated over the Atlantic Ocean anyway.

What's cool is that now we know for sure this is the case: Infrasound detectors designed to listen for nuclear bomb detonations actually heard the explosion from the impact and were able to pinpoint the location of the event to a few hundred kilometers east off the coast of Venezuela.

NASA put together a nice informative video explaining it.
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Comet

Mainstream science slowly catching on: a comet may have caused the winter of 536 to last for 10 years

Carolyn Cox
GeekoSystem
Wed, 22 Jan 2014 14:01 UTC
Game of thrones
Winter is coming....
Oh, that's why it's called the Dark Ages

General consensus is that the Dark Ages were the worst of all the ages. Unicorns went extinct, you were either a witch or had the plague, and oh yeah, winter lasted for ten years once.

A recent article in New Scientist is giving some scientific validity to the big chill recounted in ancient medieval texts such as this one:
"And it came about during this year that a most dread portent took place. For the sun gave forth its light without brightness, like the moon, during this whole year, and it seemed exceedingly like the sun in eclipse, for the beams it shed were not clear nor such as it is accustomed to shed" - Procopius (Wars, 4.14.5)

Comment: Back in 2004 another team of scientists came to this conclusion and gave even more information:
The surprising result of the new work is just how small a comet is needed to cause such dramatic effects. The scientists calculate that a comet not much more than half a kilometre across could cause a global nuclear winter effect. This is significantly smaller than was previously thought.

Dr. Ward-Thompson said: "One of the exciting aspects of this work is that we have re-classified the size of comet that represents a global threat. This work shows that even a comet of only half a kilometre in size could have global consequences. Previously nothing less than a kilometre across was counted as a global threat. If such an event happened again today, then once again a large fraction of the earth's population could face starvation."

The comet impact caused crop failures and wide-spread starvation among the sixth century population. The timing coincides with the Justinian Plague, widely believed to be the first appearance of the Black Death in Europe. It is possible that the plague was so rampant and took hold so quickly because the population was already weakened by starvation.


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Fireball 3

Fiery object spotted in sky over Dillon, Montana

Jordan Moore
KTVM
Wed, 22 Jan 2014 19:05 UTC

A Dillon resident snapped a photo of a fireball in the sky just before 8:00 a.m Tuesday morning. Ruth Jackson of Dillon spoke to NBC Montana over the phone and says she had no idea what she was looking at, so she pulled over to take a photo.

"We were driving east on Helena St. in Dillon and the sun hadn't come up yet but there was this bright thing in the sky and I said to my husband, "What is that?" said Jackson.

She was a passenger in the car along with her husband and two granddaughters. They were on their way to drop the girls off at school when they stopped to take the picture.

"I am always looking for something to take a picture of, but this was just awesome," said Jackson.

We showed the photos to the MSU Space Grant Consortium and met with Director Angela Des Jardins. She weighed in and tells us what they appear to be at first glance.
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Fireball 5

Huge meteor lights up night sky in Ukraine, 21 November 2013 (VIDEO)

Mount Castel
YouTube
Thu, 21 Nov 2013 01:10 UTC
Image
At 3:50am, a meteor is seen streaking across the night sky. The meteor broke up in the atmosphere.

A meteorite lights up the sky near Mount Castel, as bright as day, if only for a second.

A second piece of footage has surfaced, albeit with a wrong date, captured at Simferopol, Ukraine.

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Fireball 5

Bright fireball captured on video as it lights up night sky over Puerto Rico, 18 January 2014


lunarmeteoritehunters.blogspot.com
Mon, 20 Jan 2014 05:53 UTC
Image
A brilliant fireball was seen yesterday from Puerto Rico and was observed from all around the Caribbean Island. "It was so bright that the intense light saturated our sky cameras", reports Eddie Irizarry from Sociedad de Astronomia del Caribe. Irizarry says the huge meteor can be seen illuminating his backyard and personal observatory at the end of a video. Images also show a smoke trail left behind by the small space rock, which took several seconds to dissipate.

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Fireball 5

Another mysterious boom heard Sunday over parts of Central Virginia

Nick Dutton
WTVR
Sun, 19 Jan 2014 21:13 UTC
Loud Boom
© WTVR
Colonial Heights - CBS 6 News received a number of reports Sunday afternoon about another loud boom heard in parts of Central Virginia.

Ky's mum posted on the CBS 6 Facebook page that she heard the blast just after 4 p.m. at her home near the Colonial Heights-Chester line.

"This time it shook the house!" she wrote.

Ruth J Perry also posted on the CBS 6 Facebook page that she heard a "loud, explosion-type sound" on Chesterfield County's southside.

Diana Penn, who said this is the third boom she has heard this month, said the latest one at 4:10 p.m. was the closest one she has felt.

In fact, Penn said the first two blasts were from the southwest. She said Sunday's boom sounded closer - as if it was from the southeast and did not have the telltale rumble sound afterward,.
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Fireball 4

Bright green fireball caught on video from UK and Holland, 18 January 2014


lunarmeteoritehunters.blogspot.com
Sun, 19 Jan 2014 09:36 UTC
Image
© LunarMeteoriteHunter / Google EarthUK / Holland / Belgium Fireball Meteor/s, approx. 20:20 GMT, 18 January 2014
Initial Meteor Sighting Reports

18 January 2014 - Jim, Almere, The Netherlands 21:32 GMT
1, 2 seconds top to bottom. Quick drop, rainbow trail, bright flash. Exceptionally bright black trail in the sky after 3 minutes. White colour, impressive.
18 January 2014 - Tim North, Shields, UK 20:18 approx
2 seconds duration. Facing east, track Northwest to Southeast over sea, to right of Moon. Barium green, small amount white. Slightly brighter than the moon. No fragmentation, just one discontinuity. Have CCTV video available.
18 January 2014 - James Cambuslang, Lanarkshire, UK 20:00 UTC approx
2 seconds duration. Seen to the east of my location, falling to Earth in southerly direction. Green trail, twice as bright as Sirius.

All 43 meteor sighting reports can be seen here.
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