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FireballsS
© Western University
A network of cameras directed by Western University observed a bright fireball across southern Ontario at 7:23 p.m. on Wednesday.
Analysis of the video data by Western scientists suggests that fragments of the meteor are likely to have made it to the ground between the communities of Saint Joseph and Crediton.
Western's Physics and Astronomy Department runs a camera network that constantly monitors the sky for meteors.
© visitthekennebunks.com
Word of the mystery boom spread across Facebook Monday evening around 9 p.m. and again Wednesday around the same time.
People took to social media asking "Did anyone hear that? What was it?" Speculation ranged from thunder snow to a sonic boom, or a blown electrical transformer.
"I can't believe it was thunder. This was felt and heard from Cape Porpoise to Waterboro. Then two series of popping noises like semi-automatic gun fire," Kennebunk resident Wendy Lank said. "It was so loud, it really made me uneasy."
© YouTube Screen shot
The joke, of course, is that this sucker is so roomy you can fit more than what you'd first grab fleeing your home if, says, a meteor was about to strike.
The secondary joke is that Americans have become so materialistic that they'd go back for seconds and thirds if they felt they could.
What makes it funniest, though, is it must have turned a few heads given the way a giant fireball streaked across the Michigan sky last week.
A fireball lit up the sky over Tennessee and North Alabama Thursday evening, January 18th. Dr. Bill Cooke from NASA's Meteoroid Environment Office tells us it was actually high above Missouri and still bright enough to be seen as far away as Florence, Alabama and Franklin County, Tennessee.
© Dado Ruvic/ReutersA meteor streaks over the sky during the Perseid meteor shower at the Maculje archaeological site near Novi Travnik August 12, 2014.
Scientists Jorge Zuluaga and Mario Sucerquia from the University of Antioquia in Medellin (Colombia), analyzed the probability of a space rock falling in different regions of the Earth using a process called "Gravitational Ray Tracing" (GRT).
The fact that the Tunguska and Chelyabinsk meteorites, over a century apart in time, were only separated by 2,300 kilometers (some 1,400 miles), led the Colombian physicists to conclude that some regions of our planet are more prone to this danger than others.
Still from a dash-cam video of the meteor fireball event over Michigan, 16 January 2018.
This one was a little different than the 'regular' fireball events occurring globally these days: people across southern Michigan also heard a powerful boom that arrived about three minutes after the white-out, and the event even registered as a magnitude 2.0 earthquake on local seismographs.
© Mike Austin/YouTube
Numerous videos recorded by security cameras and dashcams in the Metro-Detroit area and surrounding cities Tuesday night show a flash of bright light zooming across the sky, instantly turning night into day for an instant.
Comment: UPDATE: Wed, 17 Jan. 2018 (18.15 CET)
USGS has registered this event as a M2.0 earthquake with the epicenter at New Haven, just north of Detroit in Michigan.
Meteorite seen and heard in Detroit area. Location is approximate. The magnitude reported for this meteor cannot be directly used to compare its size to an earthquake because the source of the seismic signals are different.The American Meteor Society (AMS) has received almost 400 reports of the event. The flashing light and loud boom felt across Michigan and seen as far away as New York City and parts of Canada on Tuesday night was a meteoroid entering the atmosphere, according to NASA.
A post on the NASA Meteor Watch Facebook page, said the meteoroid traveled northwest from the Brighton area to the Howell area, citing the American Meteor Society's website. The 1 a.m. post read:
"Our analysis yields a similar result, and we have calculated that this was a very slow moving meteor - speed of about 28,000 miles per hour,"
"This fact, combined with the brightness of the meteor (which suggests a fairly big space rock at least a yard across), shows that the object penetrated deep into the atmosphere before it broke apart (which produced the sounds heard by many observers). It is likely that there are meteorites on the ground near this region - one of our colleagues has found a Doppler weather radar signature characteristic of meteoritic material falling to earth."
UPDATE: Sat, 20th Jan. 2018
The Daily Mail reports meteorite hunters have found fragments:
Meteorite hunters who flocked to Detroit from across the U.S. after a meteor exploded are finding the fragments.
Most of the fragments landed in Hamburg Township.The first fragments were located Thursday by professional hunters Larry Atkins and Robert Ward of Arizona, according to the American Meteor Society.WHAT IS A METEOROIDAtkins owns Cosmic Connection Meteorites, while Ward operates Robert Ward Meteorites.
A meteoroid is a small chunk of asteroid or comet.
When it enters Earth's atmosphere it becomes a meteor, fireball or shooting star.
The pieces of rock that hit the ground are meteorites, and are valuable to collectors.
The remnants must be analyzed by a lab to be accredited as meteorites.
'It's a really spectacular specimen,' Ward said while holding one of the meteorites.
'Two days ago, this was hundreds of thousands of miles past the moon, and now I'm standing here holding it in my hand.
'It's been a real good day.'Ward said he used seismic data, Doppler radar and witness information to narrow down where to search.
Meteorite hunters seek permission from landowners before searching on their property, Ward said.
Ward estimates he's collected about 600 meteorites from around the world over the years.
Longway Planetarium astronomers have also located three meteorites that'll be displayed Friday.
Darryl Pitt, a New York City resident and meteorite consultant to Christie's auction house, is offering $20,000 for a recovered fragment weighing at least 1 kilogram.
'I want to motivate more people to look,' Pitt said.
'Meteorites are extraordinarily rare and the world is just coming to terms with how special they are.'
© Mike Austin/YouTube
Phones at police stations and in newsrooms - including WWJ's - lit up with questions and concerns. Some joked that it was an extraterrestrial visitor, others worried a bomb had exploded.
Wolverine Lake Police Chief John Ellsworth was so shaken by the electricity he felt in the air followed by a blinding flash that he told WWJ he thought it was the 'beginning of the end.'
© Global News
Corbet Kratko was driving near the intersection of Highway 21 and Westpark Boulevard in Fort Saskatchewan when he said he saw the bright light descending through the sky.
The maintenance inspector with Alberta Transportation captured video of what appears to be a falling fireball on his vehicle's dash-cam at approximately 5:21 p.m.
Witness Rogan Hennie told CBC News he was driving north near Lacombe, Alta., around the same time when he saw what he described as "a meteor" in the sky.
Comment: For more information on the increase in fireball events, see: Michigan Meteor Event: Fireball Numbers Increased Again in 2017
And a few others that happened just this month: