Fireballs

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Astronomers spotted a car-size asteroid just hours before it exploded over Puerto Rico

Laura Geggel
Live Science
Thu, 27 Jun 2019 16:31 UTC

Astronomers discovered a car-size asteroid hours before it slammed into Earth and burned up in the atmosphere this past weekend, news sources report.

Scientists in Hawaii initially spotted the asteroid, named 2019 MO, on Saturday (June 22). Soon after, the heavenly traveller broke apart in large fireball as it hit the atmosphere about 240 miles (380 kilometers) south of San Juan, Puerto Rico, according to the University of Hawaii.

This is only the fourth time in history that scientists have spotted an asteroid so close to impact. The other three detections all occurred within the past 11 years, including 2008 TC3, 2014 AA and 2018 LA, which landed as a meteorite in southern Africa just 7 hours after it was noticed by scientists.

Unlike 2018 LA, Earth's latest visitor was harmless and didn't make it to the ground. But the asteroid, 13 feet (4 meters) long, still made a spectacular fireball that was equivalent to about 6,000 tons of exploding TNT, according to the Center for Near Earth Object Studies (CNEOS), which is run by the Jet Propulsion Lab in Pasadena, California.

The asteroid's impact was so powerful, even satellites in orbit spotted it. Satellites operated by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) recorded its impact and destruction at 5:25 p.m. EDT (21:25 UTC), as you can see on this tweet below.

Comment: As Fireball Numbers Increase it is well worth remembering what can come out of the sky, without any warning at all:

Mysterious 'loud boom' heard over small English town spooks residents

Sputnik
Thu, 27 Jun 2019 19:12 UTC

The bang was powerful enough to trigger car alarms and left houses and office blocks shaking, and instantly sparked a debate online over its cause.

Derbyshire Police have revealed that the loud explosion heard in Derby city and the surrounding countryside area on Thursday morning was a sonic boom caused by a Royal Air Force (RAF) jet.

According to the authorities, the RAF Typhoon jet triggered the "loud bang" while moving at high speed to intercept an Air India flight from Mumbai to Newark after receiving a "security alert."

Comment: The BBC posted footage of the 'sonic boom':

Claire Murray said she was filming her dog in her garden in Breaston, near Long Eaton, between 09:45 and 10:00 when she heard the noise.

What was that loud boom near Clemmons, North Carolina? No one knows

John Hinton
Winston-Salem Journal
Tue, 25 Jun 2019 01:26 UTC

Numerous people reported on social media that they heard a loud ground-shaking boom around 9 p.m. Monday night in Clemmons and western Forsyth County.

However, state and federal officials say they don't know why it happened or what it was.

Scott Sharp, a meteorologist with the National Weather Service in Raleigh, said the boom could have been distant thunder coming from storms that moved through Davie, Yadkin, Stokes and Davidson counties at the time.

Dan Blakeman, a geophysicist with the National Earthquake Information Center in Denver, said there were no reports of earthquakes anywhere Monday night in North Carolina.

Unexplained boom heard across Hamilton, Ontario remains a mystery

Matthew Van Dongen
The Hamilton Spectator
Tue, 25 Jun 2019 01:07 UTC

The mystery boom in the wee hours Saturday was a literally moving experience for Bryan Adlam.

"I heard the boom - it was quite loud - but I also felt it. I felt my house move," said the real estate agent, who lives in the Crown Point neighbourhood near the escarpment.

Turns out bewildered residents across the city heard the same thing after 2 a.m. On the beach strip. The Mountain. Even Ancaster.

Adlam posted a question about the sound blast on Facebook that quickly spawned 500-plus comments, theories and, obviously, fart jokes.

But so far, the source of the thunderous bang remains a mystery.

Was it a supersonic jet? An industrial accident? A skyquake? Nobody seems to know.

Residents concerned after they hear, feel loud boom in Lehigh County, Pennsylvania

Will Lewis
WFMZ
Tue, 25 Jun 2019 22:34 UTC

People living in the New Tripoli area of Lehigh County want to know what caused an explosion Tuesday morning.

They say they heard or felt a blast, but authorities say they can't determine a cause.

Micki Tapper says she was awake at 7:30 a.m. That's when she heard it.

"There was just a really loud boom. My house shook, my windows shook," Tapper said.

The sound is picked up by her security camera microphone. You can hear a noise, but you can't discern much about it, or how far away it was.

Still, it was alarming. Tapper says she went outside to look around her home because she thought a tree fell on her house.

Comment: You can hear the booming sound starting at :25 in WTMZ's video coverage.

Nuke sensors detect asteroid explosion in the atmosphere over the Caribbean

Dr.Tony Phillips
Spaceweather
Tue, 25 Jun 2019 19:22 UTC

On June 22nd at 21:25 UT, a small asteroid entered Earth's atmosphere and exploded in broad daylight south of Puerto Rico. Airwaves recorded by the Comprehensive Nuclear Test Ban Treaty Organization's infrasound station in Bermuda pegged the blast energy between 3 and 5 kilotons of TNT-a fraction of a WW II atomic bomb. The explosion was clearly visible in images from NOAA's GOES-16 weather satellite:

Meteor expert Peter Brown of the University of Western Ontario says the infrasound signal is consistent with a "small multi-meter sized near-Earth asteroid." According to data compiled by NASA's Center for Near Earth Object Studies, asteroids of this size and energy hit Earth's atmosphere about once a year. That means it's rare-but not exceptionally so.

ESA puts comet mission on fast track

Richard A Lovett
Cosmos Magazine
Mon, 24 Jun 2019 18:29 UTC

© DEA / G. DAGLI ORTI/Getty Images
A sixteenth century illustration showing Montezuma observing a comet. The European Space Agency has a different plan.

Scientists at the European Space Agency (ESA) are working on a new "fast" mission to make the first flyby of a pristine comet - meaning one that has never before passed close to the sun.

Since the first comet mission, all the way back in 1978, numerous space agencies have made more than a dozen comet flybys, including one rendezvous and landing.

But never before has a mission attempted to visit a comet on its first plunge toward the sun, when its never-before-heated surface is almost unchanged from when it formed at the dawn of the solar system, some 4.5 billion years ago.

The recently approved mission, called Comet Interceptor, will also be unique in what it does as it nears its target.

Rather than simply flying by, it will split into four parts, each of which will whizz past the comet on a slightly different trajectory.

Three of these will be tiny instrument packages, which will view the comet from different angles. This will allow scientists back on Earth to create detailed 3D models not only of its surface, but of the gas, dust, and plasma surrounding it.

The fourth will be the mother ship, which will collect data from the smaller probes and relay it back to Earth.

"It's a novel concept," says Fabio Favata, head of the Strategy, Planning, and Coordination Office in ESA's Directorate of Science.

Details of the mission have yet to be determined, but the use of the word "fast" in its description doesn't mean it will be traveling at warp speed.

Meteor fireball sends shockwaves over Queensland, Australia

Yahoo News
Sat, 22 Jun 2019 20:03 UTC

Weather monitoring cameras have captured the moment a meteor exploded over Queensland, Australia on Saturday night (June 22)

According to the operator of the cameras, the blast at 10 pm sent shockwaves towards the Brisbane area.

A second camera showed the blast lighting the sky green above homes in the city of Ipswich.

Meteor fireball seen over Pennsylvania, Maryland, Virginia, New York and New Jersey

Sott.net
Sat, 08 Jun 2019 00:33 UTC

On June 8, 2019, over 30 reports were received by the American Meteor Society of a fireball seen in six northeast US states. Christoper S. in Seven Valleys, Pennsylvania captured the meteor on his security camera:

Reports of meteor fireball seen over west Texas

Sott.net
Sat, 15 Jun 2019 04:00 UTC

The American Meteor Society received 4 reports of a fireball over west Texas on June 15, 2019. Kevin P. filmed the meteor as it flew over Hawley:

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Fireballs

Astronomers spotted a car-size asteroid just hours before it exploded over Puerto Rico

Mysterious 'loud boom' heard over small English town spooks residents

What was that loud boom near Clemmons, North Carolina? No one knows

Unexplained boom heard across Hamilton, Ontario remains a mystery

Residents concerned after they hear, feel loud boom in Lehigh County, Pennsylvania

Nuke sensors detect asteroid explosion in the atmosphere over the Caribbean

ESA puts comet mission on fast track

Meteor fireball sends shockwaves over Queensland, Australia

Meteor fireball seen over Pennsylvania, Maryland, Virginia, New York and New Jersey

Reports of meteor fireball seen over west Texas

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