Fireballs

Green meteor fireball streaks across the skies of Jacksonville, Florida

John Gaughan
News4Jax
Thu, 10 Jun 2021 03:29 UTC

"Beautiful" is how it was described by John Cermack, floor director here at Channel 4. He was outside just before The 10 O'Clock News and came rushing in to tell me all about it.

Did he get any video? No. But some Ring cameras around Jacksonville sure did!

The video above was sent to us by Marvin Wagner. The video is looking east across the St. Johns River just north of Green Cove Springs.

It took place about 9:50 p.m. and crossed from southwestern to southeastern skies as it broke up. Typically breaking up between 30 and 70 miles up in the atmosphere and traveling at tens of thousands of mph, these rocks heat up rapidly and this causes them to explode. You can see that in the video.

What you can't see is that it was greenish in color. This implies it was made of nickel, which burns green.

The exact track appears to have come across the state of Florida probably across Tampa to Daytona.

Large meteor fireball recorded over Almería, Spain

Caha.es
Mon, 07 Jun 2021 20:01 UTC

Last June 5th at 23h29 UT a impressive fireball was registered to the Southwest of Calar Alto Observatory in Almería.

Unfortunately, most Spain was covered with clouds, so no other stations could detect this object. Due to this, triangulation was impossible and no more data is available concerning this phenomena.

However, Calar Alto Observatory enjoyed clear skies and one of the external surveillance cameras could register the impressive fireball.

Below is the video registered with the external surveillance camera at Calar Alto Observatory in Almería.

Bright meteor fireball over Southern Queensland, Australia

Tel Lekatsas
YouTube
Sun, 06 Jun 2021 18:39 UTC

A very bright meteor captured early this morning. Sony IMX291 sensor. The final image is a stack of all the captures, created by summing the maxima of the images. The camera is very sensitive and the image stack is saturated so the meteor appears white. There is a very faint green trail seen on an averaged stack (not shown).

Suspected megacryometeor crashes through Wisconsin home, nearly hitting resident

KTIV
Wed, 26 May 2021 09:52 UTC

Imagine trying to get up and get ready for your day but instead of having to shut off your alarm clock, you are greeted by a cannonball-sized chunk of ice.

While Mother Nature can be known for some pretty interesting weather, this strange icy incident left one Elk Mound family with a large hole right above their bed.

A large ball of ice, weighing 12.6 pounds, crashed through the bedroom ceiling.

Comment: Footage of another possible megacryometeor crashing to earth was captured by CCTV in London in 2019: Block of ice falls from sky landing metres from London street cleaner (VIDEO)

Website Strange Sounds has documented a number of other similar events in California, Scotland, Italy, and India.

As for the cause behind this phenomena, Wikipedia notes:

A megacryometeor is a very large chunk of ice which, despite sharing many textural, hydro-chemical, and isotopic features detected in large hailstones, is formed under unusual atmospheric conditions which clearly differ from those of the cumulonimbus cloud scenario (i.e. clear-sky conditions). They are sometimes called huge hailstones, but do not need to form under thunderstorm conditions. Jesús Martínez-Frías, a planetary geologist and astrobiologist at Institute of Geosciences (Spanish: Instituto de Geociencias, IGEO) in the Spanish National Research Council (Spanish: Consejo Superior de Investigaciones Científicas, CSIC)^[1] in Madrid, pioneered research into megacryometeors in January 2000 after ice chunks weighing up to 6.6 pounds (3.0 kg) rained on Spain out of cloudless skies for ten days.

Formation

The process that creates megacryometeors is not completely understood, mainly with respect to the atmospheric dynamics necessary to produce them. They may have a similar mechanism of formation to that leading to production of hailstones.^[4] Scientific studies show that their composition matches normal tropospheric rainwater for the areas in which they fall. In addition, megacryometeors display textural variations of the ice and hydro-chemical and isotopic heterogeneity, which evidence a complex formation process in the atmosphere.^[5]^[6]^[7] It is known that they do not form from airplane toilet leakage because the large chunks of ice that occasionally do fall from airliners are distinctly blue due to the disinfectant used (hence their common name of "blue ice").

Some have speculated that these ice chunks must have fallen from aircraft fuselages^[4] after plain water ice accumulating on those aircraft through normal atmospheric conditions has simply broken loose. However, similar events occurred prior to the invention of aircraft.^[8]^[9] Studies indicate that fluctuations in tropopause, associated with hydration of the lower stratosphere and stratospheric cooling, can be related to their formation.^[5] A detailed micro-Raman spectroscopic study made it possible to place the formation of the megacryometeors within a particular range of temperatures: −10 to −20 °C (14 to −4 °F).^[10] They are sometimes confused with meteors because they can leave small impact craters.

And, indeed, there are many signs in our skies that our atmosphere is undergoing a shift towards cooling:

Meteor fireball over Brazil may have come from another solar system

Erik Mack
CNET
Fri, 04 Jun 2021 20:24 UTC

A small space rock that slammed into Earth's atmosphere and flamed out as a spectacular fireball over Brazil may have traveled from beyond our solar system to put on the bright display.

Brazil's Meteor Watch Network (Bramon) captured the so-called Earth-grazer meteor on Sunday evening over the southern part of the country. Two cameras in the network captured the meteoroid burning up in a brilliant streak painting its way across the night sky.

The fireball is considered an Earth-grazer because it collided with our atmosphere at a very shallow angle. A statement from Bramon suggests the meteor may have interstellar origins. "Preliminary analyses indicate that it was generated by a meteoroid coming from outside the solar system," it said.

The science around interstellar objects visiting our solar system is nascent and controversial.

Comment: See also: Large meteor fireball recorded in Rio Grande do Sul and Santa Catarina, Brazil

Mystery 'explosion' baffles residents in York, UK

Mike Laycock
The York Press
Sat, 05 Jun 2021 05:16 UTC

Residents in a York neighbourhood have been baffled by a loud 'explosion' which brought them out on to the streets.

Jonathan Tyler contacted The Press to say the 'explosion' happened at about 9.10pm last Sunday evening in the Fishergate area, and it was enough to bring many people in Sandringham Street out into the road.

"There had been a smaller explosion several hours earlier," he said. "To my surprise, nothing has been reported in The Press or elsewhere to my knowledge.

"It seemed to us much louder than a car backfiring, and if it was a vehicle collision The Press would surely have heard about it - there were two 'explosions'. I did wonder about a sonic boom - we have the constant rumble of high-level military flights."

Another resident, Ben Rich, said: "I heard it too and also came out to see if there was anything to see - it did sound very loud.

"Looking on nextdoor.com, it was also clearly heard on South Bank. The speculation seems to be fireworks echoing off the river or a sonic boom, although an odd time of night for that."

Meteor fireball recorded over Germany on May 30th

American Meteor Society
Fri, 04 Jun 2021 19:42 UTC

We received 12 reports about a fireball seen over Bayern, Brandenburg, Hessen, Hlavní město Praha, Mecklenburg-Vorpommern, Nordrhein-Westfalen, Sachsen, Schleswig-Holstein and Thüringen on Sunday, May 30th 2021 around 22:55 UT.

Large meteor fireball recorded in Rio Grande do Sul and Santa Catarina, Brazil

Samira Avelar
climaaovivo.com
Thu, 03 Jun 2021 19:19 UTC

Photo of the meteorite that fell in Tramandi, on the coast of Republika Srpska.

Live Weather Cameras and our partner Bramon (Brazilian Meteor Observatory) recorded a meteor in Rio Grande do Sul and Santa Catarina in the early hours of this Thursday (3rd).

(Translated by Google)

New Comet C/2021 J1 (Maury-Attard)

Ernesto Guido
Remanzacco Blogspot
Thu, 03 Jun 2021 18:31 UTC

CBET 4972 & MPEC 2021-L11, issued on 2021, June 02, announce the discovery of a new comet (magnitude ~19.0) on CCD images taken by A. Maury and G. Attard on May 09.3 UT with the 0.28-m f/2.2 Rowe-Ackermann Schmidt astrograph at San Pedro de Atacama, Chile in the course of the MAP (W94) survey. The new comet has been designated C/2021 J1 (Maury-Attard). This is the first amateur comet discovery of 2021. It is also the first comet ever discovered using the synthetic tracking technique (using TYCHO software).

Stacking of 27 unfiltered exposures, 30 seconds each, obtained remotely on 2021, May 16.3 from X02 (Telescope Live, Chile) through a 0.61-m f/6.5 astrograph + CCD, shows that this object is a comet with a compact coma about 7" arcsecond in diameter (Observers E. Guido, M. Rocchetto, E. Bryssinck, M. Fulle, G. Milani, C. Nassef, G. Savini, A. Valvasori).

Our confirmation images (click on the images for a bigger version; made with TYCHO software by D. Parrott)

Meteor fireball over Córdoba, Spain (June 2nd)

Meteoroides.net
Wed, 02 Jun 2021 16:43 UTC

This bolide was spotted over Spain on 2 June 2021, at about 4:12 local time (equivalent to 2:12 universal time). The event was generated by a rock from a comet that hit the atmosphere at about 183,000 km/h. The fireball overflew the province of Córdoba. It began at an altitude of about 111 km, and ended at a height of around 83 km.

This bright meteor was recorded in the framework of the SMART project, operated by the Southwestern Europe Meteor Network (SWEMN) from the meteor-observing stations located at Sevilla, La Hita (Toledo), La Sagra (Granada), Calar Alto and Madrid (Universidad Complutense). The event has been analyzed by the principal investigator of the SMART project: Dr. Jose M. Madiedo, from the Institute of Astrophysics of Andalusia (IAA-CSIC).