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Meteor to mark your birthday? Japanese start-up hopes to launch its own shooting stars

Lena
© South China Morning PostLena Okajima, chief executive of space technology venture ALE.
Fancy a meteor shower racing across the night sky to mark your birthday? One Japanese start-up is hoping to deliver shooting stars on demand and choreograph the cosmos.

And, say scientists, it's not just about painting huge pictures on the night-sky that would be visible to millions of people; artificial meteors could help us to understand a lot more about Earth's atmosphere.

Lena Okajima, who holds a doctorate in astronomy, says her company, ALE, is intending to launch a micro satellite that can eject shooting stars at exactly the right time and place to put on a celestial show. "I'm thinking of streams of meteors that are rare in nature," Okajima said in an interview. "It is artificial but I want to make really beautiful ones that can impress viewers."

In collaboration with scientists and engineers at Japanese universities, the ALE team is developing a satellite that will orbit the Earth and eject dozens of balls, a few centimetres in diameter, at a time.

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Asteroid Icarus to make closest approach to Earth on Tuesday

1566 Icarus
© NASA JPL Small-Body Database Browser/Osamu Ajiki/Ron Baalke/Ade AshfordEarth-crossing asteroid 1566 Icarus (1949 MA) will miss our planet by a safe five million miles, or 21 lunar distances, at 4:39 pm BST on 16th June 2015 — the closest it will approach Earth until 2090.
Asteroid Icarus, which stretches more than half a mile long, will pass within "close-range" to the earth on Tuesday.

The asteroid will make its closest approach to Earth on Tuesday, passing within five million miles.

Though the asteroid will be in close proximity, it will be too dim to be seen through everyday backyard telescopes.

For those hoping to catch a glimpse of the space rock, Slooh will run a live broadcast from the Canary Islands starting at 5 p.m. EDT.

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Meteor fireball or jet contrail? Bright object blazes over Wellington, New Zealand

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© NZ HeraldFireball over Wellington
MetService says a ball of fire seen in the sky over Wellington this evening shouldn't be a cause for concern.

Witnesses in Hataitai say the streak of light looked like a meteor or asteroid.

But MetService duty forecaster Leigh Matheson believes it was the contrail of a long-haul aircraft which was due to fly over the city at around that time.

"The lights that were seen over Wellington, we believe, was the contrail of a long-haul aircraft that was flying across the country," Matheson reports. "Around 5.30 in the evening the setting sun lit the contrail up quite brightly."

Meteor

Meteor soars through the sky over Santa Fe, New Mexico

Taken by Jan Curtis on June 7, 2015 @ 11 miles S of Santa Fe, NM
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© Jan Curtis
Took while sleeping. Occurred at 1:23:36 AM MDT, looking east from just south of Santa Fe in the direction of the moon. Used Nikon d7000, iso 1000, 35mm Nikkor lens @ f/2.0 for 8sec. Note a few explosive bursts before terminating. Used PS 6.0 to increase contrast due to strong moonlight from RAW image. Estimate magnitude -5.

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Fireball captured by three separate cameras in São Paulo, Rio de Janeiro and Espirito Santo, Brazil

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© Screen grab via YouTube
A fireball has been captured by 3 cameras exploding in the sky over Brazil on June 7, 2015.

The cameras were situated in São Paulo, Rio de Janeiro and Espirito Santo! Amazing!

The space rock was filmed by EXOSS cameras flying over three states at 05:20 am.

Such a triangulation is very rare and permitted to calculate precisely the route of the bright meteor:

The meteor entered the Earth's atmosphere at an angle of 25.5 degrees and at an altitude of 116.7 km. It disintegrated at an altitude of 79 km at a speed of 57 km/s after a flight of about 88 km in 1.5 seconds.

No reports of booms yet!


Comment: From January 5th of this year:

SOTT Exclusive: Huge asteroid filmed breaking up into hundreds of meteor fireballs over Southern Brazil


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Why has NASA announced that a meteor is NOT going to hit the Earth in September?

Meteor Shower
© endoftheamericandream.com
Internet buzz about a giant meteor that is going to strike our planet in September has become so intense that NASA has been forced to issue a statement publicly denying that it is going to happen. NASA insists that the agency knows of "no asteroid or comet currently on a collision course with Earth", and that "no large object is likely to strike the Earth any time in the next several hundred years". To be honest, NASA should perhaps hold off on making such bold statements concerning what will happen in the future considering the fact that the Chelyabinsk meteor that exploded over Russia in 2013 took them totally by surprise. In any event, what we do know is that our region of space is absolutely packed with meteors and asteroids. At this point, approximately 10,000 major near earth objects have been discovered by scientists, and about 10 percent of them are one kilometer or larger in size. If any of those big ones were to hit us, we would be looking at another Tunguska event or worse. Very large meteors have struck our planet before, and they will hit us again. It is only a matter of time.

But of most immediate concern to lots of people out there are the various theories that are floating around about September. The following is an excerpt from an article that appeared in a British news source just this week...
Internet bloggers and Armageddon conspiracists are predicting the "end of days" event to happen between September 22 to 28.

One blogger has worryingly suggested US residents retain their firearms after suggesting that the controversial military operation Jade Helm taking place between July and September in several southern states is in preparation for predicted anarchy that could ensue as the asteroid nears the planet.

Meanwhile, many fringe religious groups and Biblical theorists are claiming the predicted impact will herald the beginning of the Rapture - a seven-year tribulation period.
These theories have become so popular that NASA decided to come out and publicly address them...
A NASA spokesman said: "NASA knows of no asteroid or comet currently on a collision course with Earth, so the probability of a major collision is quite small.

"In fact, as best as we can tell, no large object is likely to strike the Earth any time in the next several hundred years."
So NASA has spoken.

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'Big, bright' meteor seen over Tasmania

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A meteor sighting over Launceston this morning has prompted a reminder that cold, clear winter conditions provide a perfect platform for sightings. As northern Tasmania shivers through sub-zero overnight temperatures, the clear skies helped the region's early risers spot a rare meteor display.

Residents near Launceston reported seeing a large, bright meteor travelling through the sky just before 5:00am. Lesley from Gravelly Beach told ABC Northern Tasmania she witnessed the bright display as she drove to Launceston's airport.

"It was so big and so close and I thought 'gee, this is going to land in someone's backyard'," she said.

"I've never seen anything as big as what this was before, and so bright - in the tail there were a couple of very bright spots."

Local astronomer Martin George said meteors occurred more often than people thought, but seeing a bright one was rare.

"The longer you spend looking at the night sky, the more likely you are to see meteors," he said.

"Typically you'll see about five or six every hour, but brighter meteors are few and far between."

He said with colder nights often leading to clearer skies, now was the best time to be on the lookout.

"We also have longer nights in the winter, which means there is plenty more opportunity to go out stargazing or meteor-gazing and, of course as always, you do see much more if you're away from those nasty city lights."

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Fireball lights up the sky above Almeria, Spain

Fireball/Meteor lights up the skies above Almeria, Spain.

Breaking News - Almeria, Spain Fireball Meteor 2220 Local 01JUN2015 - Updates pending.


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Search for remnants from a fireball over the Illawarra and Sydney

Meteorite
© Kevin Walsh/FlickrWollongong astronomer David Finlay says meteorites like this could have fallen in areas in north western Sydney following sightings of a fireball over the Illawarra and Sydney on Sunday evening.
Reports of a bright, fragmenting fireball visible from the Illawarra and Sydney on Sunday evening has Wollongong astronomy enthusiast David Finlay on the hunt to find out what happened after it disappeared, with the chance people could have a meteorite on their property.

If Sunday evening's striking pink sunset across the Illawarra wasn't enough, about an hour later there was another exciting event in the sky.

Wollongong astronomy enthusiast David Finlay says he's getting reports from people in Wollongong and Sydney who saw a bright meteor with a glowing orange head blazing through the sky, leaving a green tail behind.

"I've been told just before it got to the horizon, it exploded and fragmented," Mr Finlay says.

"That description of it exploding and breaking up is a key indicator that the object that created this meteor may have been big enough to leave meteorites on the ground.

"We can narrow down the search area and maybe notify people that live in the area there may be meteorites on the ground from this event."

David runs the Facebook page Australian Meteor Reports, where people can share their sightings.

Sunday evening's event prompted several people to jump on the page and report what they saw.

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New asteroid discovered - Amor Asteroid (2015 KQ154)

The MPEC 2015-K126 issued on May 28, 2015 announced the discovery of a new Amor-type asteroid officially designated 2015 KQ154. This asteroid (~ magnitude 16) was discovered by C. Jacques, E. Pimentel & J. Barros through a 0.28-m f/2.2 astrograph + CCD telescope of SONEAR Observatory (MPC code Y00), on images obtained on May 25.1, 2015.

According to the preliminay orbit, 2015 KQ154 is an Amor type asteroid. Amor asteroids are a group of Near-Earth objects with orbits similar to that of 1221 Amor (1.017 AU < q < 1.3 AU). They approach the orbit of Earth from beyond, but do not cross it. Most Amors do cross the orbit of Mars. Click on the image below to see the orbit types of the different groups of Near-Earth asteroids.
NEO Types
© Remanzacco Observatory
We performed some follow-up measurements of this object on 2015, May 28.4, remotely from the U69 MPC code (iTelescope network - Auberry California) through a 0.61-m f/6.5 astrograph + CCD. Here you can see an animation showing the fast movement of 2015 KQ154 on the the sky on May 28, 2015 (it was moving at 8.35 "/min). Each frame is a single 10-second exposure (East is up, North is to the right).

Congrats to SONEAR team for the discovery of 2015 KQ154, that is the thirteenth Near Earth Object discovered by their survey.