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Bright light seen shooting across Wellington's night sky


Stuff
Tue, 25 Apr 2017 22:40 UTC
When Stephen Moore installed a dashcam in his vehicle, it wasn't to capture footage of UFOs.

But that's exactly what happened when his son witnessed a bright light shoot across the Wellington sky shortly before 8pm on Tuesday.
Meteor
© Stephen MooreThe dashcam captured the bright light on Wellington's Featherston St.
The pair eagerly returned to their home in Hataitai and downloaded the footage from the camera.

"It records in real time, so after we saw it we thought it was too fast to be a plane," said Moore.

Brett Jennings saw something similar in Nelson, and said the light was bright green in colour.
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Fireball

Beach camera films bright meteor fireball over Dawlish, UK

DB Simon
dawlishbeach.com
Tue, 11 Apr 2017 17:50 UTC
Dawlish Beach meteor
© dawlishbeach.com
Whilst sat enjoying the late night view on the cameras, i was very surprised to see a bright light shoot across the screen.

Considering tonight is a very bright full moon we don't often see much of the night sky.

The following video will give you your own chance to make your mind up as to whether this is another meteor or just a vert bright shooting star.

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Bright meteor with house-shaking sound reported over Queensland, Australia

Cathy Adams
Northern Star
Mon, 17 Apr 2017 02:35 UTC
Queensland meteor April 2017
© Deslee Oldham Facebook
THERE have been reports of a house-shaking thud in Killarney after the meteorite was spotted in our skies last night.

Our sister paper, the Warwick Daily News reported the buzz on social media: Brigitte Jones said, "I felt it out here, the house shook."

Madeline Wilkins posted "I'm in Toowoomba and saw a burning light in the sky maybe a meteorite, heading that direction just before I saw this post... Maybe related?"

Killarney resident Krissy Bloomfield said, "On Brosnan Rd kids saw what we thought shooting star just before the bang."

Some residents reported thinking the noise was thunder or fireworks.

Louise Reed from the Queen Mary Falls Caravan Park posted, "We heard it up here too. It looked like a shooting star right before it and then bang."

And this from Krystal N Lillee Cook, "We heard it in oak street...was really loud like a big crack of thunder."

Comment: Last September a 'huge meteor' exploded off the Queensland coast with a shockwave coming onshore, rattling residents and homes.

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Meteor seen shooting across North Carolina sky


WFMY News 2
Thu, 13 Apr 2017 03:04 UTC
meteor over North Carolina
© Earl Ayers
Did you see it? A bright light, streaking across the night sky was a delight to many across the Carolinas and throughout the Southeast. WFMY News 2 is getting lots of reports about a meteor Wednesday evening.

According to reports, the meteor flew through the night sky around 8:43pm. Those who saw it describe a bright, white light lasting for about 10 seconds, and say it's a sight they'll never forget. Reports have been coming in from North Carolina, including the Triad area, as well as South Carolina, Virginia, Tennessee, Georgia and even Florida.

Earl Ayers tweeted a video of the meteor captured on a camera at a home in Cornelius, North Carolina. Make sure to look to the upper left to see the bright light.
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Trail of meteor fireball captured on camera over Plymouth, UK

Nicholas Bieber
Daily Star (UK)
Tue, 11 Apr 2017 19:18 UTC
The mystery object - believed to be a meteor - tore through the skies above Plymouth
The mystery object - believed to be a meteor - tore through the skies above Plymouth

Ben Landricombe was walking to work in Plymouth early this morning when he caught glimpse of the "shooting star".

The council worker then raced back to his house to grab his camera before the rare sight disappeared from the red-hued Devon sky.

Ben, 36, said: "I've never seen anything like it in my life.

"I was driving to work, then I saw a big spark in the sky. I thought I better get my camera.

"I missed the meteor coming through the atmosphere, but I saw the sparks coming down, travelling really fast."
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Meteor fireball captured over Rome, Italy

Daniele Cataldi
Space Weather
Sun, 09 Apr 2017 17:42 UTC
Fireball over Rome
© Daniele Cataldi
Meteor, Fireball, Bolide taken by Daniele Cataldi on April 9, 2017 in Italy, Lariano, Rome.
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Bright meteor fireball streaks over Southern California skies


CBS Los Angeles
Tue, 11 Apr 2017 05:12 UTC
Meteor fireball over Socal
© Leticia Odanga/twitter (screen capture)
What appeared to be a fireball shooting across the night sky prompted a great deal of reaction on social media Monday evening.

The bright flash was spotted a little before 9 p.m. from as far south as San Diego, north to Los Angeles and as far east as Phoenix. Here is some of what people claim they saw.


Comment: The American Meteor Society (AMS) received 518 reports about a fireball seen over AZ, CA, Baja California, MA, NV and NM on Tuesday, April 11th 2017 around 04:00 UT.

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SOTT Focus: SOTT Earth Changes Summary - March 2017: Extreme Weather, Planetary Upheaval, Meteor Fireballs


Sott.net
Fri, 07 Apr 2017 17:30 UTC
Wildfires USA March 2017
Planetary environmental chaos continued unabated this month. Several spectacular fireballs were seen from one end of the world to the other. Wildfires ravaged several mid-West states while unusually strong winds hit Illinois and New York. Madagascar got slammed by a ferocious storm as did Brazil, New Zealand and France.

Severe flooding hit several parts of the globe, but the worst affected was Peru where dozens of people died and hundreds of thousands have been left with no homes. With freak tidal waves from Iran to South Africa, strange 'gas' explosions in the UK and methane gas leaks in Russia, not to mention snow off the coast of Africa and lightning scoring direct strikes on cars, March was a pretty intense month for the planet and its inhabitants.
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April 2017: The month of 4 visible comets - Comet PanSTARRS (C/2015 ER61) brightens overnight

Bob King
Sky & Telescope
Wed, 05 Apr 2017 23:34 UTC
C/2015 ER61
© José J. ChambóLook at the difference in appearance of comet PanSTARRS (C/2015 ER61) pre-outburst (left) on April 1st and in outburst on April 4th.
2017 may well go down as the year of the binocular comet. Three have been easy catches, and it's only the start of April: 45P/Honda-Mrkos-Pajdusakova, 41P/Tuttle-Giacobini-Kresak and Lovejoy (C/2017 E4). Now there's a fourth. Overnight, PanSTARRS (C/2015 ER61) joined the club.

Discovered two years ago on March 15th by the Pan-STARRS 1 telescope on the summit of Haleakalā, it was a faint 21st-magnitude midge. But how it's bloomed! By late March and the start of April, the comet had brightened to around magnitude +8.5 while puttering across Sagittarius and Capricornus low in the southern sky before dawn.
PanSTARRS (C/2015 ER61)
© Gerald RhemannThis April 5th photo catches the comet in the full glory of its outburst.
Then it happened. On April 4th, comet observer Juan José González Suárez reported a possible outburst to magnitude +7.4. This was confirmed, both visually and photographically, by several observers including myself early this morning. It's now as bright as magnitude +6.5, a leap of two magnitudes practically overnight! Although the specific cause of the outburst isn't known, it's likely that some sort of outgassing or disruption on the comet's surface exposed fresh ice to sunlight, initiating a new wave of vaporization.

Comment:

Green comet flyby on April 1st

Another comet brightens and now visible in the Northern hemisphere

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Close pass by asteroid 2017 GM

Gianluca Masi
EarthSky Org
Tue, 04 Apr 2017 20:03 UTC
Asteroid 2017 GM is one of the 10 closest asteroids known so far to sweep past Earth, and then keep going. At its closest, it was less than 1/20th of the moon's mean distance.
Asteroid 2017 GM
© EarthSky OrgImage of asteroid 2017 GM, captured this morning (April 4, 2017), while the asteroid was approaching its closest point to Earth. Taken by Gianluca Masi and Michael Schwartz, as part of a cooperation between Tenagra Observatories, Ltd., in Arizona and the Virtual Telescope Project in Italy.
The near-Earth asteroid 2017 GM was discovered by the Mt. Lemmon Survey in Arizona (USA) on April 3, 2017, and, just a few hours later - midday April 4 in Europe, early in the day April 4 for the Americas - it safely came as close as within 10,000 miles of Earth (16,000 km, about 0.04 lunar distances). Our observations helped in determining its orbit.

We captured 2017 GM while it was safely approaching us. For this, we remotely used a telescope in Arizona, made available to the Virtual Telescope by Tenagra Observatories, Ltd. Above is an image coming from a single 30-seconds exposure, unfiltered, taken with the 16?-f/3.75 Tenagra III ("Pearl") unit. The robotic mount tracked the fast apparent motion (150?/minute) of the asteroid, so stars are trailing. The asteroid is perfectly tracked: it is the sharp dot in the center, marked by two red lines.
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