Fireballs
S


Comet 2

Comet Halley - Close encounters of the cometary kind

Halley's Comet
© Malaga Bay
Researchers trawling through the dusty corners of the Academic Archives primarily have to rely upon serendipity to provide them with break-through information.

However, when serendipity strikes the results can be startling.

Such was the case a few weeks ago when the Glen Turret Fan chronology neatly slid into place between the Arabian Horizon and the Heinsohn Horizon in the Old Japanese Cedar Tree chronology.
The Glen Turret Fan in upper Glen Roy contains 276 annual sedimentary layers that are coincidentally close to the 277 years between the Arabian Horizon of 637 CE and the Heinsohn Horizon of 914 CE i.e. the Heinsohn Sandwich.
...
The unexplained arrival of the Sand Bed in the Glen Turret Fan [upper Glen Roy] in 759 CE coincidentally echoes:

a) the unexplained Smothering of Samarra in sand
b) the unexplained Covering of Cologne in sand
c) the unexplained Clear Black Horizons in sand across Southern England and Scotland
d) the unexplained Sandy Sludge Layers in the Greenland Ice Cores...

See: The Fold Up Beds of Glen Roy
Old Japanese Cedar Tree chronology
© Malaga Bay
And then serendipity struck again in form of Comet Halley.

Comet Halley has several remarkable aspects.

Fireball 2

Meteor fireball seen in the skies above Greater Vancouver

meteor
A fireball was sighted speeding across the skies of the Metro Vancouver area late on March 16.

This footage, filmed by Tammy Kwan, a staff writer for Vancouver weekly newspaper The Georgia Straight, shows the bright ball visible above a stretch of Lougheed Highway in Pitt Meadows, British Columbia. In her writeup for The Georgia Straight, Kwan wrote that she had captured the video on her dashcam, and the sky "suddenly flashed green and then pale yellow."


Fireball

Meteor fireball lights up the sky near Orange, Australia

The meteor is spotted by a motorists travelling on the Escort Way.
The meteor is spotted by a motorists travelling on the Escort Way.
A meteor fireball blasting to Earth was spotted near Orange on Wednesday night.

Video footage of the bright light with a fiery tail was identified by skywatching expert Rod Somerville.

"That one to me looks just like a nice bright meteor, known as a fireball," he said.

The footage was taken from a car travelling on the Escort Way near Boree about 7.45pm and uploaded to YouTube by David Bell.


Fireball 4

Exploding meteor fireball causes panic in Pakistan´s mountainous north

meteor fireball explodes over Pakistan
© YouTube/Wapgee Inc (screen capture)
A suspected meteor lit up the skies above Pakistan´s mountainous north late Wednesday, officials said, with panicked residents reporting a mysterious light whizzing past and the sound of multiple, powerful blasts.

The incident occurred around 9PM, when citizens in the city of Gilgit and the surrounding Ghizer and Diamer districts saw the bright object racing through the night sky above the region´s remote, soaring mountains.

"I saw a light flash through the sky and then there were multiple blasts," Ghizer district resident Javed Iqbal told AFP Thursday.

"I felt as if something had hit the roof of my house. I rushed outside with my family members and saw everyone getting out of their homes. The blasts had shaken the whole valley," he said.

His story was echoed by others, including Shabir Mir of Gilgit, who said he saw the object "disappear into the mountains", followed seconds later by what sounded like more than one explosion.


Comet 2

New Comet: C/2017 E4 (LOVEJOY)

CBET nr. 4373, issued on 2017, March 13, announces the discovery of a comet (magnitude ~15) by Terry James Lovejoy on three CCD 8-s exposures taken five minutes apart starting on Mar. 9.684 UT with a Celestron C14 reflector operating at f/1.9 (+ QHY9 camera). The new comet has been designated C/2017 E4 (LOVEJOY).

I performed follow-up measurements of this object, while it was still on the neocp. Stacking of 10 unfiltered exposures, 30 seconds each, obtained remotely on 2017, March 10.7 from Q62 (iTelescope network) through a 0.50-m f/6.8 astrograph + CCD + focal reducer, shows that this object is a comet with a diffuse coma nearly 15 arcsec in diameter.

My confirmation image (click on it for a bigger version)
Comet Lovejoy C/2017
© Remanzacco Blogspot

Telescope

Study: Warped meteor showers hit Earth at all angles

Some meteor showers persist for weeks and months, even though Earth sweeps a big arc around the Sun during that time. The meteors arrive from a slightly different direction each day, which is a clue to why these showers last so long. In a review of ongoing meteor surveillance projects worldwide, 45 showers are identified that take this motion to extremes, visualized in spectacular animation.
Warped kappa Cygnids meteor
© SETIThe warped kappa Cygnids meteor shower peaks in mid August.
"I was most surprised by some showers that were initially seen close to the plane of the planets, but then moved up towards the pole over the course of weeks," says meteor astronomer Dr. Peter Jenniskens of the SETI Institute and NASA Ames Research Center.

Jenniskens runs the NASA sponsored project Cameras for Allsky Meteor Surveillance (CAMS) in Northern California, which aims to confirm some of the 300+ meteor showers on the International Astronomical Union (IAU) Working List that still need verification. 60 low-light video cameras film the skies over the San Francisco Bay Area and have recorded more than 300,000 meteoroid trajectories since beginning observations in 2010.

The observations show that meteor showers do not stay in one place. For example, the well-known Perseids get their name from the constellation of Perseus from which they radiate at their peak in mid-August. But the camera networks first detect the shower on July 1 in Cassiopeia. And the Perseids are tracked until September 3, when the meteors radiate from the neighboring constellation Camelopardalis.

Fireball 2

Meteor fireball recorded over Southern Germany

meteor fireball over Southern Germany
© YouTube/OGVT - Observatoire géophysique, Val Terbi (screen capture)
#Meteor over Southern #Germany recorded in #Montsevelier #ValTerbi #Jura on 03/11/2017, 00:57:43 UTC


Comment: A meteor was recorded from the same observatory four hours earlier over the Canton Ticino region of Southern Switzerland.


Fireball

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

Fireball Illinois
Februrary 2017 continued on as January started. Massive flooding in California due to "atmospheric rivers" dumping large amounts of rain on coastal areas and snow on the Sierra Nevada. The snow melt from this caused further flooding in Nevada. Eastern Canada also experienced record snowfall, as did Iran, Kazakhstan, Afghanistan and Japan.

Wildfires broke out in Eastern Australia and New Zealand while record rainfall inundated Western Australia. Major flooding also hit several South American nations including Chile, Peru and Colombia.

There are at least 30 active volcanoes around the world right now, including a really impressive one in Guatemala. Massive earth cracks opened in Pakistan and Italy.

These are just some of the chaotic events we present in this month's Sott 'Earth Changes' video compilation.


Comet 2

New Comet: C/2017 E1 (Borisov)

CBET nr. 4369, issued on 2017, March 04, announces the discovery of a comet (magnitude ~17) by Gennadii Vladimirovich Borisov on three unfiltered 120-s exposures obtained on Mar. 1.10 UT with a 0.4-m f/2.3 astrograph at the "Mobil Astronomical Robotics Genon" Observatory (MARGO) near Nauchnij. The new comet has been designated C/2017 E1 (Borisov).

I performed follow-up measurements of this object, while it was still on the neocp. Stacking of 20 unfiltered exposures, 30 seconds each, obtained remotely on 2017, March 1.5 from H06 (iTelescope network) through a 0.43-m f/6.8 reflector + CCD + f/4.5 focal reducer, shows that this object is a comet with a diffuse coma nearly 30 arcsec in diameter.

My confirmation image (click on it for a bigger version)
Comet Borisov
© Remanzacco Blog
M.P.E.C. 2017-E42 assigns the following preliminary parabolic orbital elements to comet C/2017 E1: T 2017 Apr. 9.8; e= 1.0; Peri. = 151.90; q = 0.90; Incl.= 14.54

Fireball 4

Bright green, fragmenting meteor fireball reported over northern UK

meteor fireball map northern UK
© Google/AMS (screen capture)
The American Meteor Society (AMS) has received 24 reports about a fireball seen over England and Scotland on Wednesday, March 1st 2017 around 18:54 UT.

Responding to a request by the UK Meteor Network for information, some tweets include: