Fireballs
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Fireball 2

Meteor caught on Russian dash cam

Jason Major
Universe Today
Tue, 30 Sep 2014 20:00 UTC
Meteor
© Screen Capture
Thanks to the ubiquitousness of dashboard-mounted video cameras in Russia yet another bright object has been spotted lighting up the sky over Siberia, this time a "meteor-like object" seen on the evening of Saturday, Sept. 27.

The video above, shared today by RT.com, shows the object as it streaked toward the western horizon over the Kemerovo region of Siberia. Even through the glare of streetlights and oncoming car headlights it could easily be seen... as to exactly what it was, that's not yet known.
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Fireball 5

Meteor strikes may not be random

Stuart Gary
ABC Science, Australia
Mon, 29 Sep 2014 06:31 UTC
Meteor
© NASAScientists have found that meteor impacts are not random events but may occur as Earth passes through streams of meteoroids.
Meteor impacts are far less random than most scientists assumed, according to a new analysis of Earth-strike meteors.

The research, reported on the pre-press astrophysics website ArXiv.org, concluded that meteor impacts are more likely to occur at certain times of the year when Earth's orbit takes us through streams of meteoroids.

The majority of meteors analysed hit the Earth in the second half of the year, say the researchers, brothers Carlos and Raúl de la Fuente Marcos of the Complutense University of Madrid.

"This lack of randomness is induced by planetary perturbations, in particular Jupiter's, and suggests that some of the recent, most powerful Earth impacts may be associated with resonant groups of Near Earth Objects and/or very young meteoroid streams," they report.

Meteoroid streams can be generated by the break-up of an asteroid or comet.

A planet or moon can also affect nearby asteroids and meteors, herding them into loose orbits called 'resonant streams', which can be broken up by big planets such as Jupiter and Saturn.

The study is based on 33 meteor impact events detected between 2000 and 2013 by infrasound acoustic pressure sensors, operated by the Comprehensive Nuclear-Test-Ban Treaty Organization.

The sensors are designed to detect clandestine nuclear tests, but also pick up meteor impacts with an explosive energy in excess of a thousand tonnes of TNT.
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Fireball 5

Fireball spotted above the Carolinas


WCNC.com
Sat, 27 Sep 2014 12:15 UTC
Fireball
© Joel Rydel/Facebook Screengrab
Charlotte, N.C. -- Dozens of fireball sightings were reported across the Carolinas and Virginia overnight.

According to the American Meteor Society's website, people in Charlotte, Mint Hill and Lancaster were among those who spotted the streaks in the sky. Reports came in around 11:15 Friday night and 3:15 Saturday morning. Twenty-nine reports were made in total.

One man in Virginia Beach captured the light on camera. Jim Rydel's video doesn't directly capture the meteors but shows the flashes in the sky. Some say it appears like more and more fireballs are passing over us but NBC Charlotte's Brad Panovich says it's likely just social media. People can make reports more easily and more often nowadays.

Brad encourages anyone who saw the fireballs to make their report here.
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Fireball 3

Four large fireballs reported over USA

Michael Wesp
www.ketknbc.com
Wed, 24 Sep 2014 20:37 UTC
AMS Fireball Reports
© AMS
The American Meteor Society (AMS) says four large, unique fireball events were reported Tuesday night.

AMS stated three of the events all occurred within an hour and a half of each other--- a rare happening. The AMS concluded each event was unique, due to the analysis of time, proximity of witnesses and pointing data gathered. It's likely several were captured by NASA, said AMS.

Locations of the events were reported all the way from Florida to Michigan.

Anyone who witnessed the fireball can report the event to the AMS on their website.

Comment: SOTT's fireball heat map for the past year:



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Fireball 2

Fireball streaked across Mid-Atlantic sky Sunday evening


newsworks
Mon, 15 Sep 2014 00:00 UTC
Image
This disintegration of this bright fireball lit up the sky of New Jersey, New York and Pennsylvania on September 2014
If you saw a bright object race across sky around 11 p.m. Sunday, you're not alone.

Social media exploded with reports of a fireball streaking across the sky.

A fireball is another term for a very bright meteor, according to the American Meteor Society (AMS).

"Incredibly bright #meteor even at apparently low altitude just fell over #DC. Wonderful moment!" tweeted photojournalist William B. Plowman from Washington, D.C.

Comment: More footage of same.



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Fireball 5

Meteor streaks across Vancouver skies


The Huffington Post B.C.
Sun, 14 Sep 2014 01:38 UTC
A fireball mesmerized people in parts of B.C., Washington and Oregon on Saturday night.

Jen Pickard was fortunate enough to snap a photo of the tail end of what's believed to be a meteor. She and her friend were paddling in Qualicum Beach on Vancouver Island after watching the sun set, when a "huge ball of fire flew by" at about 8:20 p.m.

"It was yellowish blue and flew in an arc," Pickard wrote in an email to The Huffington Post B.C. She described the 45-second streak like a shooting star but much larger and closer.
Vancouver Meteor_1
© Jen Pickard/Ruth Stefanek
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Fireball 2

Incredible video of comet fragment passing over California

MrMBB333
Fire in the Sky News
Fri, 12 Sep 2014 12:41 UTC
Image
© Unknown
The following video is from Time To Wake Up News facebook page, the original video of the fireball was posted by Landon Miller who works at KTVN TV and can be found here.

Video of 'fireball' witnessed over California! 9/12/2014 @ 6am Pacific.


Comment: See also: Thousands of people in California lose power after truck crash and meteor flash

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Comet 2

Large fireball observed over Colorado

Afza Fathima
International Business Times
Fri, 05 Sep 2014 19:45 UTC
Image
© Reuters / Doug MurrayA Perseid meteor streaks towards the horizon during the annual Persied meteor shower in Palm Beach Gardens, Florida, August 12, 2008. Perseids meteors are bits of debris left by the comet Swift-Tuttle which burn up in the Earth's atmosphere.
On Tuesday, Sep. 2, a lot of people in Colorado said they saw a fireball streak across the sky at about 10.30 p.m.

Director of the Sommers-Bausch Observatory at the University of Colorado, Seth Hornstein, said that the bright ones were rare and they see only three or so of them that get significantly brighter every year.

A man sent an email to 9news stating that he and several members of his family had seen the fireball from their home. Reports on sightings can be done on the website of the American Meteor Society and these reports showed that the family wasn't the only one.

The website shows that people from eighteen different cities near Colorado like Fountain, Evergreen, Boulder, Pueblo, Estes Park Littleton, Aurora and Arvada had also seen the meteor.

Hornstein said that the meteor was approximately the size of a sports ball, either a baseball or a volleyball. Though that doesn't seem like it is too big, he explained that usually the size of the fireball would be the size of a pebble or a grain of sand.
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Fireball 5

Shock asteroid warning: Earth faces 100 years of killer strikes beginning in 2017 - or maybe even earlier?

Nathan Rao
Daily Express, UK
Fri, 05 Sep 2014 20:24 UTC

Comment: In light of readers' feedback regarding the following article, a few comments:

The 'science' in this article isn't really defensible. It's the 'newsworthiness' of the story that stands out for SOTT.net, just the fact that ANY kind of space threat scenario is being publicized.

A couple of possibilities as to what is going on here:

The author is 'leaking info' which, though not scientifically accurate, gets that message out there that 'something wicked this way comes'.

Alternatively, the author is writing deliberately rubbish stuff that can easily be debunked, thereby debunking anyone by association who notices that something is definitely 'up'.

Maybe a bit of both is at work; maybe something else entirely. Journalistic standards aren't exactly what they might once have been, so this could simply have been a rush-job to meet the deadline for a 'sensational' story.

But consider this: while the UK's Daily Express is 'tabloid trash', it's also owned by a media baron, a British media baron, no less, who are notoriously good at 'info-crafting'. As such, most, if not all, of its content, like all MSM, is pretty carefully vetted. If you get to hear about something, then there's generally a political reason why you're getting to hear about it.

So, SOTT.net is re-posting this article - for posterity's sake if nothing else - to take note of the fact that a British media outlet has just alerted sizeable numbers of people to the reality of imminent cosmic threat, whether intentionally, as part of a 'tar-baby' maneuver, or otherwise.

The bottom line is that the planet today - in contrast with a decade ago - IS being peppered with more and more space rocks, and more and more people are starting to take notice.

The article itself may be 'noise' - and most, unaware of the extent of the space threat, would be correct to dismiss it - but we happen to know for a fact that there is a 'signal' behind it.


Image
© GETTYExperts predict that asteroids are to pepper the planet from 2017
Asteroids could rain down on the earth for 100 years, shocked experts have just warned.

A previously unknown asteroid belt has been located in deep space and is now hurtling towards our part of the solar system.

It means a 'global killer' could collide with Earth as soon as 2020, wiping out life as we know it and changing the climate for millennia.

The terrifying predictions came as NASA revealed disturbing new data showing 400 impacts are expected between 2017 and 2113, based on new observational data of objects seen in space over the past 60 days.

Most will have a maximum diameter of around 100 metres - the size of seven double decker buses - and the potential to cause significant damage.

Comment: The above article has since been 'debunked' here.

What its critics don't realize is that the cosmic situation is probably even more dire than sketched out by Nathan Rao.

Regular readers will be familiar with Laura Knight-Jadczyk's investigations into the planet's repeated close encounters with comet clusters down through history...

Comets and Catastrophe

The Apocalypse: Comets, Asteroids and Cyclical Catastrophes

Comets and the Horns of Moses

... which are timely in light of the significant increase in meteor fireballs in recent years. Here are just a couple of recent hits, both coming around the same time that 'harmless' Asteroid 2014 RC made its 'fly-by' last Sunday September 7th: Rao's article is an easy target. He's right to sound the alarm, though he did so for the wrong reasons: indeed the probability of direct-hit impacts from larger bodies in our near-to-medium future is probably mathematically small. The point that both Rao and his critics miss, however, is that with more objects comes more finer material - lots of it, including the threat of comet-borne viruses. These alone can have catastrophic climate change effects for people and planet. Forget an extinction-level asteroid 200 years from now: the danger from civilization-ending cosmic catastrophe is present now.

Another reason why Rao's article is an easy target is because he made the mistake of homing in on specific space rocks. There is NO WAY TO TELL what might hit, and when. The world's observatories were focused on 2012 DA14 when, 6 hours before its scheduled fly-by, another large rock - from another direction - arrived out of nowhere to explode over Chelyabinsk, Russia!

The take-home point is that - based on multiple data points - the overall level of cometary debris in the inner solar system has massively increased in recent decades, and especially since the early 2000s. As Pierre Lescaudron wrote in his recently published 'Earth Changes and the Human-Cosmic Connection':
There has been a significant increase in the discovery of asteroids in recent decades. In 1980, there were 9,000 known asteroids in the solar system. By 2000, there were 86,000. By 2007, there were 380,000. As of 2013, the International Astronomical Union's Minor Planet Center had data on 1.1 million asteroids.

Of the 1.1 million asteroids known in 2013, NASA announced the discovery of the 10,000th NEO - Near Earth Objects on Earth-crossing orbits - in June 2013. An alarming number especially when we know that most NEOs are discovered just as they fly past Earth, and very often inside lunar distance. Other estimates place between 100,000 and 1,000,000 more undiscovered NEOs on similar Earth-crossing orbits, increasing the current estimated total range of asteroids in the solar system to 100 million.

The number of discovered comets has also increased in recent years. While newly discovered comets were virtually nil at the beginning of the 1990s (for example, only one comet was discovered in 1995, namely 1995 O1 Hale-Bopp), by 2000 over 150 new comets were being discovered per year, a figure that increased to 265 by 2009. Note that the figures between 2009 and 2013 are not yet finalized. Once updated, I fully expect the final count for those years to be higher than the current count.

Rather appropriately, 2013 was declared the 'Year of the Comets', with a high number of active comets in the Sun's vicinity. By November 21st, 17 comets were visible with a small telescope, of which five exhibited a magnitude between +4 and +7.5 - meaning they could be seen with binoculars - and two of which (ISON and Encke) could be seen with the naked eye.

Remember, these are only the identified comets, bright enough to be observed at a long distance. Most 'comets' remain invisible (as 'asteroids') until they start glowing as a result of the heliosphere-induced electric stress they experience when they enter the solar system. If the exceptional fireball events in 2013 were anything to go by, 2014 may have even more celestial surprises in store for us.


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Fireball

Great balls of fire: Meteor illuminates Spanish skyline


RT.com
Mon, 08 Sep 2014 11:36 UTC
Spanish Meteor
© Still from Vimeo video
Early risers got an unexpected treat on Sunday in Spain, as a fireball whistled across the country - lighting up the morning sky. It passed through eight regions, traveling the length of the country, leaving a trail of smoke in its wake.

The Spanish Meteor Network confirmed the fireball had passed over the country; however, they did not know where it had originated, the Local reported.
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