Fireballs
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Fireball 5

Meteor fireball seen shooting over Ottawa, Canada

Ottawa meteor
© Eugene Deery/CBCThis still, taken from a dashcam video submitted by Eugene Deery, shows what could be a meteor streaking across the sky early Monday morning.
A bright streak of light crossing the sky over Ottawa-Gatineau early Monday morning has been reported by several residents.

Mary Dallimore was driving north along the Airport Parkway just before 6 a.m. after dropping her husband off at the airport when she saw it.

"There were no cars in front of me, no cars coming at me, no cars behind me and I had a clear view of the sky. It wasn't there and then it was there. It happened so fast. I saw this bright, bright, bright light go in an arc over the city, and then it just disappeared as fast as it came," Dallimore said by phone later Monday morning.

"I've never seen anything like it. It was brilliant and I hope to see something like that again."



Info

New study: Extraterrestrial impact preceded ancient global warming event

Microtektites
© Rensselaer Polytechnic InstituteMicrotektites as first seen in a sediment sample from the onset of the Paeocene-Eocene Thermal Maximum.
A comet strike may have triggered the Paleocene-Eocene Thermal Maximum (PETM), a rapid warming of the Earth caused by an accumulation of atmospheric carbon dioxide 56 million years ago, which offers analogs to global warming today. Sorting through samples of sediment from the time period, researchers at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute discovered evidence of the strike in the form of microtektites - tiny dark glassy spheres typically formed by extraterrestrial impacts. The research will be published tomorrow in the journal Science.

"This tells us that there was an extraterrestrial impact at the time this sediment was deposited - a space rock hit the planet," said Morgan Schaller, an assistant professor of earth and environmental sciences at Rensselaer, and corresponding author of the paper.

"The coincidence of an impact with a major climate change is nothing short of remarkable." Schaller is joined in the research by Rensselaer professor Miriam Katz and graduate student Megan Fung, James Wright of Rutgers University, and Dennis Kent of Columbia University.

Schaller was searching for fossilized remains of Foraminifera, a tiny organism that produces a shell, when he first noticed a microtektite in the sediment he was examining. Although it is common for researchers to search for fossilized remains in PETM sediments, microtektites have not been previously detected. Schaller and his team theorize this is because microtektites are typically dark in color, and do not stand out on the black sorting tray researchers use to search for light-colored fossilized remains. Once Schaller noticed the first microtektite, the researchers switched to a white sorting tray, and began to find more.

At peak abundance, the research team found as many as three microtektites per gram of sediment examined. Microtektites are typically spherical, or tear-drop shaped, and are formed by an impact powerful enough to melt and vaporize the target area, casting molten ejecta into the atmosphere. Some microtektites from the samples contained "shocked quartz," definitive evidence of their impact origin, and exhibited microcraters or were sintered together, evidence of the speed at which they were traveling as they solidified and hit the ground.

Fireball 3

Increasing number of meteorite impacts recorded on the Moon

Lunar Crater
© NASA/GSFC/Arizona State UniversityA new lunar crater, formed about three years ago.
Meteorites have punched at least 222 impact craters into the Moon's surface in the past 7 years. That's 33% more than researchers expected, and suggests that future lunar astronauts may need to hunker down against incoming space rocks.

"It's just something that's happening all the time," says Emerson Speyerer, an engineer at Arizona State University in Tempe and author of a 12 October paper in Nature1.

Planetary geologists will also need to rethink their understanding of the age of the lunar surface, which depends on counting craters and estimating how long the terrain has been pummelled by impacts.

Although most of the craters dotting the Moon's surface formed millions of years ago, space rocks and debris continue to create fresh pockmarks. In 2011, a team led by Ingrid Daubar of NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California, compared some of the first pictures taken by NASA's Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter (LRO), which launched in 2009, with decades-old images taken by the Apollo astronauts.

The scientists spotted five fresh impact craters in the LRO images. Then, on two separate occasions in 2013, other astronomers using telescopes on Earth spotted bright flashes on the Moon; LRO later flew over those locations and photographed the freshly formed craters2, 3.

Fireball 4

Bright green meteor fireball observed streaking across South Central US

meteor over southern US
© Amy Retcher Dyess
WGNO News is investigating the possibility of a meteor streaking across the sky in Metairie.

The Jefferson Parish Sheriff's Department got a call of a possible plane crash on the Lake Pontchartrain Levee near Severn Avenue shortly before 7 a.m.

Our news crew responded and talked to a woman who says she saw a green light streaking across the sky and thought that it could have been a plane that was crashing.

Numerous agencies responded to the call, including the Jefferson Parish Fire Department, The Sheriff's Department, Lake Pontchartrain Levee Police and The Louisiana State Police.

Now it appears that it could have been a meteor.


Comment: The American Meteor Society (AMS) received over 600 reports about a fireball seen over MS, GA, TN, LA, FL, AL, KY and TX on Wednesday, October 12th 2016 around 11:48 UT.

According to Mike Hankey of the AMS "This was rarer than most as it was seen early in the morning. Also several reports of big smoke cloud left behind."

The object was was first seen 65 miles above Sawyersville, Alabama and moved west at about 89,000 mile per hour. NASA said "It appears to have fragmented 41 miles above Louisville, Mississippi."

south central US meteor map
© Google/AMS (screen capture)



Fireball

Meteor fireball sighted over Cyprus

Meteor over Cyprus
© Cyprus Mail
Eyewitnesses said on Monday they saw a meteorite early in the morning, which did not appear to have crashed on the island.

An eyewitness from Nicosia said he had seen a "very bright meteorite" at 6.30am, which was travelling from east to west.

Ioannis Fakas, the honorary chairman of the Cyprus astronomical society, told the Cyprus Mail later that he had accounts from two eyewitnesses who also saw the phenomenon while driving on the highway - near Stavrovouni, in the Larnaca district, and Petra tou Romiou, near Paphos.

According to the description provided by the witnesses, the meteorite was smaller than a football and it travelled at an altitude of around one kilometre.

There were no reports of it crashing on the island.

Early last month, residents of the mountain villages of Fasoula, Avdimou and Ayios Theodoros Agros called the police reporting a bright light and loud bangs believed to have been caused by a meteorite.

Police said they received reports of explosions from the higher regions but could not find anything despite their investigations.

Parts of the meteorite were thought to have fallen into the sea north of Cyprus.

Comet 2

Look up! Mother Nature's Draconid meteor shower show starts tonight

meteor shower
If you enjoy watching meteor showers, you are in for a treat: the Draconids, Orionids, and Leonids are coming.

All three meteor showers are visible through October and November.

First up is the Draconids, which begin tonight and should be visible through October 10.

The website Slooh is posting a special broadcast of the event this evening at 8 pm EST:
Most meteor showers peak well after midnight, but the Draconids are best seen between sunset and midnight when the radiant Draco is at its highest point in the sky. The meteors can appear anywhere, so just look up and wait for one to streak by. Then make your way inside and tune into the live Slooh show on October 7 to learn more about this reliable and occasionally spectacular meteor shower.

Fireball 2

Meteor fireball caught on film across Ontario sky

Fireball
Who saw this one?! Dashcam footage and all-sky cameras caught an amazing long-lived fireball meteor early Friday morning! It must have been seen by hundreds, if not thousands of people, though! Were you one of the lucky ones?

At around 6:45 a.m. EDT, Friday, October 7, a particularly resilient piece of space rock entered Earth's atmosphere over Georgian Bay, and blazed a bright trail across the predawn sky.


Reports submitted to the American Meteor Society - 165 at last update - have come in from locations throughout southern Ontario, and as far away as Kalamazoo, MI, Columbus, OH, and around Syracuse, NY.

Peter Brown, a meteor scientist at the University of Western Ontario, found that the university's network of all-sky cameras had captured a spectacular view of this meteor as it passed overhead.

Long-lived (10 sec), bright fireball over Georgian Bay last night - captured on many of @westernu meteor cameras. @westernuScience #fireball pic.twitter.com/voCTeUO0ao

— Peter Brown (@pgbrown) October 7, 2016
Youtube user DrClockSmasher also caught this one, as he was riding his motorcycle through northeast Metro Detroit.


Fireball 5

Amazing meteor fireball seen over Sierra Nevada, Spain

Sierra Nevada California meteor
© Via YouTube/Meteors
This fireball overflew Sierra Nevada on Oct. 4 at 23:46 UT (01:46 local time on Oct. 5). It was generated by a rock (a meteoroid) that hit the atmosphere at around 64000 km/h. The luminous event began at a height of about 74 km and moved eastwards. It ended at an altitude of about 26 km.


Fireball 2

Meteor fireball filmed over Calar Alto Observatory in Spain

Calar Alto Spain fireball
This fireball overflew the Calar Alto Observatory on Oct. 3 at 23:01UT (01:01 UT local time on Oct. 4). The event was produced by a cometary meteoroid that hit the atmosphere at around 137000 km/h. The fireball began at a height of about 101 km and ended at an altitude of 71 km.


Comment: Less than a week ago, Spain enjoyed another stunning fireball:

Spectacular meteor fireball lights up the skies over southern Spain


Fireball 2

Massive meteor fireball explodes over North America - Boom heard from Pennsylvania to Canada

Fireball
© University of Toronto Scarborough Observatory/via TwitterA time-lapse video caught the fireball streaking across the sky. According to social media, it was seen in the Northeast and in some Mid-Atlantic states, including Pennsylvania and New Jersey.
An apparent meteor lit up skies in the Northeast and Mid-Atlantic on Tuesday night, according to reports on social media.

It was spotted by skywatchers in Philadelphia, the northwest suburbs and in South Jersey, social media posts indicated.

A camera at the University of Toronto Scarborough Observatory captured the fireball on video. It released a time-lapse video on Twitter.


Comment: The American Meteor Society (AMS) received over 700 reports about a fireball seen over MI, PA, NY, OH, MD, Ontario, NJ, DC, WV, DE, MA, VA, Québec, CT, IN and VT on Wednesday, October 5th 2016 around 02:34 UT.

The fireball sightings could be one of the "top 10 events of the year" in terms of the number of received reports, according to Mike Hankey, operations manager for the AMS. "What struck me is that people from Canada to Southern Maryland saw it," Hankey added. "That means it was pretty bright."

AMS map evert 3737
© AMS

Reports here of people hearing the accompanying shockwave.