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© NASA/Joel KowskyMeteor streaks across the sky during the annual Perseid meteor shower, August 13, 2015.
Wednesday night, just before 10 p.m., sky-watchers from Maine to Philadelphia — and more than a few in the Lower Hudson Valley — caught a glimpse of a fireball, a meteor, burning up to dust as it entered the Earth's atmosphere.
The American Meteor Society keeps a map of public meteor sightings and, according to Operations Manager Mike Hankey, about 34 reports were received from across the Northeast, including one from Dobbs Ferry and another from Ardsley.
"It seemed to burn out at a low angle above the horizon," said Andrew Ploski, of Nyack. "My 9-year-old son and I were traveling back home last night after a visit with his grandmother in Yonkers. We were traveling north on the Sprain Brook Parkway near the Ardsley Road overpass. There appeared a large, very bright fireball with trail about the brightness and size of a car headlight. It streaked across my field of vision very quickly from my upper right to lower left — east to west."
Ploski was lucky, according to seasoned sky-watchers. "To see a meteor in Westchester is a little bit unusual," said Larry Faltz, president of Westchester Amateur Astronomers. "You have to be looking up at just the right moment."
Faltz explained that, when you see a fireball in the sky, you are not actually seeing a meteor but the ionization of the Earth's atmosphere as the object heads toward the ground. For that fireball effect to be visible, an object only needs to be as big as a grain of sand.
Reports came in of a large white flash in the sky around 7pm on Monday, with Twitter users across the Highlands, Aberdeenshire and Perth saying they had witnessed the phenomenon.
Some speculated the flashes and noises had been caused by a meteor. Others reported feeling buildings shake as a result of the bang.
Police Scotland said they had been unable to ascertain the cause of the noise.
The Met Office said there were no lightning or thunderstorms in the area.
During the month of February 2016, 3 new comets were discovered, there were 2 recoveries and cometary activity was detected for 2 previously discovered objects (earlier designated as asteroids). New fragments of comet P/2015 Y2 = P/2010 V1 (IKEYA-MURAKAMI) (see previous post) reported. According to a paper available on Arxiv, at least 17 fragments have been identified.
Moreover the binary nature of asteroid (2535) Hämeenlinna and a previously unknown shower of naked-eye meteors, now known as the Volantids, have been reported (see below for more about this news). "Current comet magnitudes" & "Daily updated asteroid flybys" pages are available at the top of this blog (or just click on the underline text here).
The dates below refer to the date of issuance of CBET (Central Bureau Electronic Telegram) which reported the official news & designations.
- Comet Discoveries
Feb 14 Discovery of C/2016 C1 (PANSTARRS)
Feb 15 Discovery of P/2016 BA14 (PANSTARRS)*
Feb 19 Discovery of C/2016 C2 (NEOWISE)
Moreover the binary nature of asteroid (2535) Hämeenlinna and a previously unknown shower of naked-eye meteors, now known as the Volantids, have been reported (see below for more about this news). "Current comet magnitudes" & "Daily updated asteroid flybys" pages are available at the top of this blog (or just click on the underline text here).
The dates below refer to the date of issuance of CBET (Central Bureau Electronic Telegram) which reported the official news & designations.
- Comet Discoveries
Feb 14 Discovery of C/2016 C1 (PANSTARRS)
Feb 15 Discovery of P/2016 BA14 (PANSTARRS)*
Feb 19 Discovery of C/2016 C2 (NEOWISE)
© M.Kelley/S.Protopapa/UMD Comet P/2016 BA14
© Google/AMSAmerican Meteor Society (AMS) Event#732-2016 - 'heat map' showing location of observers
The French Meteor Observation Network confirmed the phenomenon, which was spotted around 10:30am.
It said that the meteor travelled over the east of France between Reims and Nancy.
Social media was buzzing with comments from people who witnessed the fiery spectacle.
Frederick R said: "I looked out of my office window while I was on a call and clearly saw a fireball with a tail light. What struck me was that it seemed very close to the ground."
The meteor appears to have started its path above Chalons-en-Champagne, heading north-east and disappearing between Marn, Meuse and Brussels.
The phenomenon occurs when astral or comet debris travels at great speed into the earth's atmosphere.
© NASANASA image of a fireball from a past meteor shower.
The fireball, which was captured on the Geophysical Institute's All-Sky camera, flashed briefly into view and disappeared. One resident described it as a green flash with a long tail. Others said the tail also contained orange and red fragments.
It was visible for only seconds, they told the American Meteor Society, which tracks sightings.
Don Hampton of the Geophysical Institute's Poker Flat Research Range said, "It looks like a good sized meteor, but probably not a meteorite (which means it hit the ground.)"
Link to video on Facebook.
© M. Kelley/S. Protopapa/UMDThe image on the left is a combination of five 300-s exposures tracking the ‘asteroid,’ while the image on the right is a smoothed version to help enhance the tail (indicated by the arrow), proving that it is in fact a comet.
It was initially labeled as asteroid 2016 BA14 by the Pan-STARRS survey, but a group of astronomers from the University of Maryland took a closer look and found something very intriguing: a tail. Rather than a rocky, metallic asteroid, it appears the space object is actually an icy comet.
That means it's one of two comets flying by Earth in March. The other, Comet 252P/LINEAR 12, will pass by on March 21.
The newly discovered comet will fly by Earth the very next day, March 22, in the morning, and it will set a record.
"The P/2016 BA14 (PanSTARRS) flyby is significant because it is one of the closest flybys of a comet since comet Lexell in 1770, which passed about six lunar distances away," Michael Kelley of the University of Maryland, who confirmed the asteroid was a comet, told weather.com. "Asteroids frequently flyby at such close distances, but comet encounters are rare."
It will be the third closest comet flyby of Earth of all time, but it will still be 9 times the distance to the moon - well out of Earth's range.Even more interesting than its close range, Kelley says, is the possibility that the comet is a sister comet to 252P/LINEAR 12.
Comet P/2016 BA14 could very well have broken off from comet 252P/LINEAR 12, Slate reports.
"If we can understand if and why these small comets broke apart years ago, we may be able to better determine the general impact threat comets present to the Earth," Kelley says.
Astronomers will keep a close eye on both comets through Hubble Space Telescope observations. If you want to see the comet, you'll need binoculars or a telescope.
© SMART Project (screen capture)
Comment: Within the past week other meteor fireballs have been observed in the region, over southern Spain and Portugal, Morocco and southern France.
A new network of video surveillance cameras in New Zealand has detected a surprise meteor shower on New Year's Eve. The shower is called the Volantids, named after the constellation Volans, the flying fish, from which the meteoroids appear to stream towards us.
"In a way, the shower helped chase bad spirits away," says SETI Institute meteor astronomer Peter Jenniskens. "Now we have an early warning that we should be looking for a potentially hazardous comet in that orbit."
In September of 2014, Jenniskens teamed up with Professor Jack Baggaley of the University of Canterbury in Christchurch, New Zealand, to establish a meteor video surveillance project in the southern hemisphere to find such warning signs of dangerous comets. This project was similar to the existing Cameras for Allsky Meteor Surveillance network (CAMS) in northern California. The CAMS network is sponsored by, and supports the goals of, the NASA Near Earth Object Observation program.
© Danielle Futselaar/SETI InstituteNew Year’s Eve meteor shower.
In September of 2014, Jenniskens teamed up with Professor Jack Baggaley of the University of Canterbury in Christchurch, New Zealand, to establish a meteor video surveillance project in the southern hemisphere to find such warning signs of dangerous comets. This project was similar to the existing Cameras for Allsky Meteor Surveillance network (CAMS) in northern California. The CAMS network is sponsored by, and supports the goals of, the NASA Near Earth Object Observation program.
© Thinkstock
Dr. Mario Trieloff, a geoscientist at Heidelberg Universityin Germany, and his colleagues used a new, more accurate dating technique based on naturally-occurring isotopes to investigate rock glasses retrieved from various locations in Asia, Australia, Canada, and Central America.
As they report in a paper to be appear in the April 2016 edition of Geochimica et Cosmochimica Acta the samples are all virtually identical in age, despite the fact that, in some cases, they have significantly different chemistry. This indicates that a series of separate impact events must have occurred at roughly the same time, the study authors explained in a statement.
Tektites are formed when terrestrial material melts following a meteorite impact, is launched into the air and then hardens into glass, and Dr. Trieloff's team said that they can determine when and where projectiles struck the planet's surface, how often, and how large those objects were.
Comment: The American Meteor Society (AMS) has received 250 reports about a meteor fireball seen over Luxembourg, France, Belgium and Germany on 25th February 2016.
Over the past several days other meteor fireballs sightings in the region include: Spain, Portugal, Morocco and southern France.
NASA space data supports citizens' observations that - meteor fireball activity is increasing dramatically!