Fireballs
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Fireball

Loud boom over North Carolina caused by meteor fireball

Meteor over NC
© American Meteor SocietyThe American Meteor Society received about 50 reports about a fireball seen over the Southeast late Thursday night. This map shows places that reported seeing the fireball.
The American Meteor Society received about 50 reports about a fireball seen over the Southeast late Thursday night.

AMS said the fireball was seen shortly after 10 p.m. in North Carolina, South Carolina, Alabama, Tennessee, Georgia, Virginia and Kentucky and Tennessee.

Because there was nothing other than the fireball reported in the area at the time of the boom, speculation is that the boom was likely a meteor breaking up in the atmosphere.

Click here to see the AMS report.

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Meteor fireball explodes over South Australia (VIDEOS)

South Australia meteor fireball
© facebook/Matthew Graziano (screen capture)
Six days after a suspected meteor shook Streaky Bay and very briefly lit up parts of South Australia's night sky, the event remains the talk of the town.

CCTV images of the spectacle show a bright light in the sky, lasting a couple of seconds, just before midnight on Friday, with locals reporting a thunder-like rumble a few minutes later.

Those lucky enough to have witnessed the event have described an "orange fireball" which could be seen from across the West Coast and Eyre Peninsula and as far afield as Elliston, Port Lincoln, Whyalla, Riverton and even Mount Barker, near Adelaide.


Comment: See also: Possible fast moving meteor fireball sighted over South Australia


Fireball 5

88 pound meteor strikes the moon causing a massive explosion

meteor strike
© GettyThe moon was struck by a meteor creating an explosion visible with the naked eye.
A METEOR with the explosive power of TEN cruise missiles has struck the Moon - sparking a massive explosion visible with the naked eye.

And terrifyingly the 56,000 mph collision - captured by NASA scientists highlighting the catastrophic danger planet earth faces from similar meteors - was caused by a space rock weighing no more than 88 lbs (40 kilos).

Despite the meteor's tiny proportions - about the size of a small boulder and the weight of an average 10-year-old boy - the impact damage was colossal and the explosion shone with the brightness of a magnitude 4 star.

Fireball 5

Tunguska impact of 1908: Witnesses describe what it's like to live through a meteor strike

Tunguska blast
© Denys, Wikimedia CommonsThe Tunguska blast affected hundreds of square miles of northern Russia.
109 years ago today, a meteor crossed paths with Earth and blew apart in the air above a remote area of northern Russia, near the Tunguska River, on June 30, 1908.

Wind from the blast flattened trees for hundreds of miles, and the shock wave it sent through the ground would have registered a 5.0 on the Richter scale. The dying meteor exploded with a force estimated to be on par with the earliest nuclear bombs, around 15 megatons, although estimate range from 3 megatons to 30. (It's hard to say much for sure about the Tunguska object, because it left no crater, and no fragments have ever been found -- though not for lack of searching.) It could have flattened a major city. Fortunately, it struck in a remote area of the Russian taiga.

The director of the meteorological observatory at Irkutsk, whose seismographs recorded the impact, gave questionnaires to witnesses in the region and published a collection of their responses in 1924. Locals describe a fireball in the sky, multiple thunderclaps, a blast of heated wind, and a rumbling of the Earth.

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Glowing meteor fireball flies over the Mediterranean Sea

Fireball over the Mediterranean Sea
© YouTube/Meteors
This amazing fireball overflew the Mediterranean Sea on 4 July 2017 at 0:09 UT ( 2:09 local time). The event was produced by a sporadic meteoroid. The bolide began at an altitude of about 90 km above the sea level and ended at a height of around 50 km above the sea. The fireball was recorded in the framework of the SMART Project from the astronomical observatories of La Hita (Toledo, Spain), Calar Alto (Almería, Spain) and Sevilla (Spain).

This impressive fireball flew over the Mediterranean on July 4 at 2:09 am local time ( 0:09 UT). The event occurred by the entry into the terrestrial atmosphere of a sporadic meteoroid. The luminous phenomenon began at a height of about 90 km above sea level, and ended at an altitude of about 50 km.


Comet 2

Bizarro comet challenging researchers

llustration of Echeclus
© Florida Space Institute at UCFllustration of Echeclus.
Scientists pursue research through observation, experimentation and modeling. They strive for all of these pieces to fit together, but sometimes finding the unexpected is even more exciting. That's what happened to University of Central Florida's astrophysicist Gal Sarid, who studies comets, asteroids and planetary formation and earlier this year was part of a team that published a study focused on the comet 174P/Echeclus. It didn't behave the way the team was expecting.

"This is another clue that Echeclus is a bizarre solar system object," said University of South Florida physics research Professor Maria Womack, who leads the team.

Comets streak across the sky and as they get closer to the sun look like bright fuzz balls with extended luminous trails in their wake. However, comets are actually bulky spheres of mixed ice and rock, many of them also rich in other frozen volatile compounds, such as carbon monoxide, carbon dioxide, hydrogen cyanide and methanol.

Comets heat up as they get closer to the sun, losing their icy layers by sublimation and producing emission jets of water vapor, other gases and dust expelled from the comet nucleus, Sarid said. Once they move away from the sun, they cool off again. But some comets start showing emission activity while still very far from the sun, where heating is low.

Fireball 4

Possible fast moving meteor fireball sighted over South Australia

Meteor Over Adelaide
© Herald Sun, AustraliaMeteor Shower Adorns Southern Lights Over Tasmania.
A bright "fast-moving" light with a green trail across the sky Friday night has captured the imaginations of at least a few locals who are this morning trying to get to the bottom of what it is they saw - or think they saw.

Advertiser.com.au has received and read a smattering of reports about the strange light, which one expert says could have been a meteor or space junk re-entering the earth's atmosphere.

A Reddit user reported seeing "what I can only guess was a meteor" pass over Henley Beach.

"Saw it from the city, fast moving bright light, green trail, bright flash."

Another Reddit user responded that the same phenomenon was witnessed by "a lot of people" on the Eyre Peninsula.

Salisbury East man Bradley Cousins said he was driving home from work in Tanunda around midnight when he looked up at the moon because it "looked strange".

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Meteor reported over Hunter Valley, New South Wales

meteor
There were reports overnight of a meteor spotted in the skies over the Hunter Valley about 9pm. Geoscience Australia also received reports of tremors at the time the meteor was spotted.

Residents recounted hearing something like a firecracker going off, or constant thunder. Similar descriptions were given by people from Cessnock all the way to Swansea.


Comment: The previous day in Perth, Western Australia, stargazers were left baffled after a 'red fireball' was spotted.


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The five biggest meteor crashes of all time

As Meteor Watch Day falls on June 30, take a look at some of the biggest meteor crashes of all time:

Ensisheim

The oldest recorded meteorite, the Ensisheim struck earth on November 7, 1492, in Ensisheim, France. A 330-pound stone dropped from the sky into a wheat field, witnessed only by a young boy. German King Maximilian even stopped by Ensisheim to see the stone on his way to battle the French army. Maximilian decided it was a gift from heaven and considered it a sign that he would emerge victorious in his upcoming battle, which he did. Today, the largest portion stands on display in Ensisheim's Regency Palace.

Ensisheim space rock
© Ensisheim Regency Palace
Murchison

On September 28, 1969, a meteor exploded over the town of Murchison in Australia. The explosion left smoke rings in the air and left 700 kg of meteorite debris scattered across 33-sq-km area. Remarkably, the cosmic rocks contained molecules such as amino acids, which are essential to life. This was the first time organic chemicals had been found in a meteorite.

Comment: See also: Chelyabinsk meteor: A wake-up call for humanity


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Meteor streaks over Columbia County, Georgia

Georgia meteor
© YouTube/David Hough (screen capture)
Meteor streaks over Columbia County, Georgia on 26 June 2017.