Fireballs
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Meteor fireball over Indiana and other states on February 26

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© Joseph Y
We received 17 reports about a fireball seen over IL, IN, MO, OH and WI on Sunday, February 26th 2023 around 01:04 UT.

For this event, we received 2 videos and 2 photos.


Info

Asteroid impact in slow motion

Researchers at the University of Jena and the German Electron Synchrotron DESY solve a 60-year-old mystery with a high-pressure study.
Barringer crater in Arizona
© US Geological SurveyBarringer crater in Arizona was formed about 50 000 years ago by an approximately 50-meter iron meteorite.
For the first time, researchers have recorded live and in atomic detail what happens to the material in an asteroid impact. The team of Falko Langenhorst from the University of Jena and Hanns-Peter Liermann from DESY simulated an asteroid impact with the mineral quartz in the lab and pursued it in slow motion in a diamond anvil cell, while monitoring it with DESY's X-ray source PETRA III. The observation reveals an intermediate state in quartz that solves a decades-old mystery about the formation of characteristic lamellae in material hit by an asteroid. Quartz is ubiquitous on the Earth's surface, and is, for example, the major constituent of sand. The analysis helps to better understand traces of past impacts, and may also have significance for entirely different materials. The researchers present their findings in the journal Nature Communications.

Asteroid impacts are catastrophic events that create huge craters and sometimes melt parts of Earth's berock. "Nevertheless, craters are often difficult to detect on Earth, because erosion, weathering and plate tectonics cause them to disappear over millions of years," Langenhorst explains. Therefore, minerals that undergo characteristic changes due to the force of the impact often serve as evidence of an impact. For example, quartz sand (which chemically is silicon dioxide, SiO2) is gradually transformed into glass by such an impact, with the quartz grains then being crisscrossed by microscopic lamellae. This structure can only be explored in detail under an electron microscope. It can be seen in material from the relatively recent and prominent Barringer crater in Arizona, USA, for example.
"For more than 60 years, these lamellar structures have served as an indicator of an asteroid impact, but no one knew until now how this structure was formed in the first place," Liermann says. "We have now solved this decades-old mystery."
To do so, the researchers had spent years modifying and advancing techniques that allow materials to be studied under high pressure in the lab. In these experiments, samples are usually compressed between two small diamond anvils in a so-called diamond anvil cell (DAC). It allows extreme pressures - as prevalent in Earth's interior or in an asteroid impact - to be generated in a controlled manner.

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Meteor fireball over Arizona, California and Nevada on February 22

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We received 27 reports about a fireball seen over AZ, CA and NV on Wednesday, February 22nd 2023 around 13:37 UT.

For this event, we received one video.


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Meteorite crater discovered in French winery

With the aim of creating an appealing brand, the name of the " Domaine du Météore " winery near the town of Béziers in Southern France points to a local peculiar: one of its vineyards lies in a round, 200-metre-wide depression that resembles an impact crater. By means of rock and soil analyzes, scientists led by cosmochemist Professor Frank Brenker from Goethe University Frankfurt have now established that the crater was indeed once formed by the impact of an iron-nickel meteorite. In doing so, they have disproved a scientific opinion almost 60 years old, because of which the crater was never examined more closely from a geological perspective.

Impact Crater
© Frank Brenker, Goethe University FrankfurtThe “ Trou du Météore ”: The crater at the “ Domaine du Météore ” winery really was caused by a meteorite impact.
Countless meteorites have struck Earth in the past and shaped the history of our planet. It is assumed, for example, that meteorites brought with them a large part of its water. The extinction of the dinosaurs might also have been triggered by the impact of a very large meteorite.

Meteorite craters which are still visible today are rare because most traces of the celestial bodies have long since disappeared again. This is due to erosion and shifting processes in Earth's crust, known as plate tectonics. The "Earth Impact Database" lists just 190 such craters worldwide. In the whole of Western Europe, only three were previously known: Rochechouart in Aquitaine, France, the Nördlinger Ries between the Swabian Alb and the Franconian Jura, and the Steinheim Basin near Heidenheim in Baden-Württemberg (both in Germany ). Thanks to millions of years of erosion, however, for laypersons the three impact craters are hardly recognizable as such.

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Meteor fireball over Michigan and surrounding states on February 20

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© Spalding Allsky Camera Network, Node73 - Pete Mumbower
We received 197 reports about a fireball seen over IL, IN, MI, NY, OH, Ontario, PA and WI on Monday, February 20th 2023 around 01:51 UT.

For this event, we received 5 videos and one photo.


Fireball 2

Best of the Web: Meteorite found in northern France following break-up of brilliant meteor fireball

023 CX1 Fireball Meteorite discovered in Northern France.
© FRIPON/Vigie-ciel023 CX1 Fireball Meteorite discovered in Northern France.
On February 12, around 10 pm EST (0300 GMT, February 13), an asteroid burned up rather dramatically over Europe.

Hours later, a space-focused citizen science volunteer group found a meteorite from the fireball event 2023 CX1.

Members of the science group Vigie-Ciel (translated to 'Sky Lookout') and a related project, FRIPON, another space-focused citizen science effort working with French scientific institutions like the Paris Observatory and the University of Paris-Saclay can be credited with confirming the exciting find.

Loïs Leblanc, an 18-year-old student, found the meteorite first. At 4:47 pm, Leblanc chanced upon "a dark stone barely level with the ground of a field in the town of Saint-Pierre-le-Viger," the group wrote in a blog post.


Comment: Videos below of this terrible beauty as it burned up over northwestern Europe:


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Meteor fireball over Italy on February 14

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We received 30 reports about a fireball seen over Abruzzo, Basilicata, Calabria, Campania, Emilia-Romagna, Lazio, Ljubljana, Marche, Puglia, Toscana, Umbria and Zadarska županija on Tuesday, February 14th 2023 around 17:59 UT.

For this event, we received one video.


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Texas: Meteor fireball tracked on anniversary of Chelyabinsk incident - UPDATE: NASA confirms detection of asteroid

meteor texas
© US National Weather ServiceSatellite imagery shows the bright flash produced by a suspected meteor spotted over southern Texas on February 15, 2023.
A suspected meteor was seen blazing through the sky over Texas on Wednesday night, according to a local sheriff, who cited air traffic controllers in the area. The US National Weather Service confirmed that it detected a bright "flash" in the atmosphere, almost exactly ten years after a massive meteor came down in Chelyabinsk, Russia.


Comment: It actually happened during daytime, as you'll see from CCTV footage below.


Hidalgo County Sheriff Eddie Guerra took to social media to relay the reports from the aviation authorities in Houston, saying more than one aircraft had spotted a meteor near McAllen, a border town in southern Texas.

"Was informed by my federal partners that Houston Air Traffic Control received reports from two aircrafts that they saw a meteorite west of McAllen. Where the exact point of impact is unknown," the sheriff said, adding that there had been no reports of damage in the area.

The chief of police in nearby Alton, Jonathan Flores, told local media that he felt a "blast" on Wednesday night, but could not pinpoint its origin.

Comment: UPDATE: 17th February 2023 @ 12:03 CET

NASA - late to the party, as usual! - confirms 'entry of an asteroid':

ZeroHedge reports further:
After examining multiple reports, NASA released a statement Thursday that confirmed a meteoroid made entry near McAllen around 1800 ET.

"NASA experts believe the object was a meteoroid about two feet in diameter weighing about 1,000 pounds," a statement from the space agency read. [...]

We have one question: Why didn't planetary defense systems monitor the meteoroid, especially since it was a 1,000-pound chunk of space rock? Or was the military's radar system too busy chasing balloons?
Good question. British astronomer Victor Clube articulated the perfect answer:
"We do not need the celestial threat to disguise Cold War intentions; rather we need the Cold War to disguise celestial intentions!"

~ British astronomer Victor Clube, author of The Cosmic Serpent and The Cosmic Winter, in a report commissioned by the U.S. Air Force



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Meteor fireball over Ohio and 2 other states on February 14

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© Ryan Connor
We received 8 reports about a fireball seen over MI, OH and PA on Tuesday, February 14th 2023 around 09:41 UT.

For this event, we received one video and one photo.


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Small Asteroid 2023 CX1 (NEOCP Sar2667) impacted Earth on February 13

On 2023 February 12.8 (20:18:07 UTC), K. Sarneczky found a small asteroid with the 0.60-m Schmidt + CCD of the Piszkéstető Observatory in Hungary (K88 MPC code) that was soon after put on the NEOCP list with the provisional designation Sar2667 for the follow-up by other observers. The object was subsequently imaged by many observers around the world and various impact assessment systems found a 100% impact probability in the area of the English Channel on Feb. 13 between 02 and 04 UTC. This is the second discovery by Sarneczky of an impactor, following the 2022 EB5 event in March 2022.

M.P.E.C. 2023-C103 issued subsequently on 2023 February 13 at 04:13 UT assigned the official designation 2023 CX1 to Sar2667 with the following comment:
K. Sarneczky reported a new NEOCP candidate observed at GINOP-KHK (K88). Rapid follow-up from multiple sites indicated an impact with the Earth's atmosphere on February 13 03:00 UTC near the coast of Normandy, France, as determined by imminent impact monitoring services such as JPL's Scout, ESA's Meerkat and MPC's internal warning system.
Map of the impact zone predicted to occur a few kilometers from French coast, North-East of Le Havre. Click on it for a bigger version.

Asteroid Impact Site
© International Meteor Organization
2023 CX1 was a small Aten asteroid with an estimated size of ~1.0 m (based on the object's absolute magnitude H=32.6).