Fireballs
S


Fireball 5

Irish skies lit up by 'extremely bright' fireball


The Irish Times
Mon, 10 Mar 2014 12:02 UTC
Chelyabinsk Fireball
© www.chelyabinsk.ru/ReutersA fireball which burned up over Russia last February generated shockwaves which circled the globe twice.
An 'extremely bright fireball' was seen streaking across Irish skies on Saturday night before breaking up, Astronomy Ireland has said.

The organisation received "lots of reports" of sightings of the meteor which lit up the sky shortly after 9.30pm.

"Fireballs are seen quite rarely, but when they appear on a clear evening when people are travelling from work we often get inundated with reports," said astronomy Ireland chairman David Moore.

Reports from the public help to "determine the fireball's path through the sky and find out if it is likely to have ended up on land or in the sea," Mr Moore said.

Fireballs are very bright meteors caused by larger particles of debris from space, Astronomy Ireland said. They can seem close but occur "very high up in the atmosphere, approximately 70km and above", it said.
Read More...
Fireball 4

Massive new asteroid 2014 CU13 to pass Earth tonight

Tariq Malik
Space.com
Sun, 09 Mar 2014 11:12 UTC
2014 CU13
© Slooh Community ObservatoryThis graphic depicts the path of asteroid 2014 CU13 during its distant flyby of Earth on March 9, 2014. The Slooh online community observatory hopes to track the asteroid to help astronomers better refine the newfound asteroid's orbit.
An asteroid at least the size of a 60-story building will make a distant flyby of Earth this week, and you watch astronomers track the space rock tonight (March 9) in a live webcast, weather permitting. The asteroid poses no threat to Earth.

The online Slooh community observatory will host the free webcast at 10 p.m. EDT (0200 GMT) to track asteroid 2014 CU13, a space rock about 623 feet (190 meters) wide discovered on Feb. 11 that will pass Earth at a range of about eight times the distance between Earth and the moon on Tuesday (March 11). The average Earth-moon distance is about 239,000 miles (385,000 kilometers), so eight lunar distances is about 1.9 million miles (3 million km).

You can watch the asteroid webcast live on the Slooh website, with streaming views from Slooh's remotely operated telescope in the Canary Islands, off the west coast of Africa. You can watch the asteroid webcast live on Space.com here.
Read More...
Fireball 5

Dinosaur-killing asteroid triggered lethal acid rain

Becky Oskin
LiveScience
Sun, 09 Mar 2014 13:00 UTC
Impact Event
© NASAArtist's illustration of an asteroid hitting Earth 65 million years ago.
The oceans soured into a deadly sulfuric-acid stew after the huge asteroid impact that wiped out the dinosaurs, a new study suggests.

Eighty percent of the planet's species died off at the end of the Cretaceous Period 65.5 million years ago, including most marine life in the upper ocean, as well as swimmers and drifters in lakes and rivers. Scientists blame this mass extinction on the asteroid or comet impact that created the Chicxulub crater in the Gulf of Mexico.

A new model of the disaster finds that the impact would have inundated Earth's atmosphere with sulfur trioxide, from sulfate-rich marine rocks called anhydrite vaporized by the blast. Once in the air, the sulfur would have rapidly transformed into sulfuric acid, generating massive amounts of acid rain within a few days of the impact, according to the study, published today (March 9) in the journal Nature Geoscience.

The model helps explain why most deep-sea marine life survived the mass extinction while surface dwellers disappeared from the fossil record, the researchers said. The intense acid rainfall only spiked the upper surface of the ocean with sulfuric acid, leaving the deeper waters as a refuge. The model could also account for another extinction mystery: the so-called fern spike, revealed by a massive increase in fossil fern pollen just after the impact. Ferns are one of the few plants that tolerate ground saturated in acidic water, the researchers said.
Read More...
Fireball

Air France 447: The computer crash


Times Online
Sun, 07 Jun 2009 08:36 UTC
As the first bodies from Air France 447 are found, investigators suspect a terrifying mix of weather and technological weakness was responsible
Read More...
Galaxy

Heaven and Earth: Unusual natural events and strange phenomena from around the world in February/March 2014

Last Messages
YouTube
Fri, 07 Mar 2014 10:07 UTC
Image
© Martin Rietze/National
This video compiles footages of strange phenomena of all kinds, including awesome natural events or beautiful phenomena from around the world in the last few weeks. Just a small sample of what we've seen already this year!

In the past month or so we have seen: Unusual solar activity including an X class flare - Aurora Borealis much further south than usual, including southern UK - Huge waves off coast of California, Brazil, UK - England battered by record storms, floods and sinkholes - Severe drought in California, followed by extreme storms and floods - US cities in the East frozen still - Strange skies over Europe - Ecuador Tungurahua volcano erupts - Strange 'hailstone' falls over Nevada - Weird pulsating orange Earth phenomena melts ice and boils water - Amazing sinkhole in the Corvette Museum - New York sinkhole swallows car - Popocatelpetl Volcano, Mexico eruptions - Sakurajima, Japan spectacular volcanic eruption - Large fireball over Maine, USA - Huge eruption from Volcano Pacaya in Guatemala
Read More...
Fireball

Mysterious blast lights up sky over Eastern Siberia


RIA Novosti
Thu, 06 Mar 2014 19:07 UTC

Moscow - An explosion of unclear origin illuminated the sky over eastern Siberia on Thursday morning, leaving frightened locals to speculate about an asteroid or malfunctioning rocketry, media reports said.

The blast, for which no official explanation has been offered, was witnessed by the population of the Kyrgydai village in Russia's Yakutia region, the Vesti14.ru news website said.

Two extremely grainy videos from surveillance cameras documenting the alleged blast - or at least a bright flash in the sky - are available on YouTube.

Reports said some debris apparently plummeted into the taiga after the explosion, but nothing had been recovered by the time of this article's publication.
Read More...
Fireball 3

Fireball lights up New Mexico sky, 6 March 2014

Kim Vallez
KRQE
Thu, 06 Mar 2014 18:58 UTC

Albuquerque - There was fire in the sky last night following by a huge boom. It happened last night about 11:45 and it was captured by the Lamy Observatory. The streak across the sky has been classified as a Meteor Fireball.

The classification is often determined by how bright it appears. In this case it was brighter than Venus and even the moon.
Fireball over New Mexico
© Screen Capture
People in Albuquerque's north valley tell KRQE News 13 it was so loud their houses shook. They wonder if the meteor actually crashed here but there's no evidence it did.
Read More...
Fireball 2

Fireball explodes over Yellowknife, Canada - Witnesses say it 'turned night sky blue', 6 March 2014


680News.com
Thu, 06 Mar 2014 18:27 UTC
Meteor
© Yuichi TakasakaI was leading Aurora Photography Tour in Yellowknife again this March tonight. We had quite colourful Auroras all night, all of sudden at 02:13 local time, one shooting star started from Western sky and exploded towards North. It got so bright that I had to close my eyes like someone used electric flash in front of me. A few minutes later, we could hear the huge explosion from the direction of the fireball fell. What an exciting night!!!

Montreal - A fireball exploded and lit up the skies over Yellowknife early Thursday morning, but was not believed to have caused any damage.

One expert compared it to a similar incident that took place over Montreal last November. An image of the explosion was posted on the website of Spaceweather.com. It was captured by a photographer who was leading a tour of the Aurora Borealis.

The exploding meteor was described as being so bright that it turned the night sky blue. Peter Brown, a physics professor at Western University in London, Ont., viewed the photo of the bright fireball, which he calculated was less than one metre in size.

He told The Canadian Press the fact that there was an explosion meant the object had probably penetrated deep into the atmosphere.

But Brown said that he was almost certain the explosive force was too weak to cause any damage. He added that the view of an exploding fireball is something that people might only see once a year.

The Western University physics professor noted the meteor that exploded over the skies of Montreal in November 2013 created a thundering boom, but it also shook houses.

The two fireballs over Yellowknife and Montreal paled in comparison to what happened over Chelyabinsk, Russia just over a year ago. That's when a meteor estimated to be about 10 tons exploded over the Ural Mountains on Feb. 15, 2013 with the power of an atomic bomb. The sonic blasts from that fireball shattered windows and injured about 1,000 people.

Source: The Canadian Press
Read More...
Fireball 5

Asteroid came close today and missed, but there's another tonight!

Jake Ellison
The Big Science Blog
Wed, 05 Mar 2014 23:01 UTC
Asteroid 2014 EC
© Blastr.com
This afternoon asteroid 2014 DX110 zoomed by the Earth at a distance closer than the moon. NASA said:
As happens about 20 times a year with current detection capabilities, a known asteroid will safely pass Earth Wednesday closer than the distance from Earth to the moon.

This asteroid, 2014 DX110, is estimated to be about 100 feet (30 meters) across. Its closest approach to Earth will be at about 217,000 miles (about 350,000 kilometers) from Earth at about 1 p.m. PST (4 p.m. EST) on March 5. The average distance between Earth and its moon is about 239,000 miles (385,000 kilometers).
We're all more aware of these small yet dangerous asteroids that slide right by the Earth because, one, NASA and others are getting better at discovering them on approach; and, two, there was that surprise meteorite that blew up over Chelyabinsk last year (see gallery below), injuring hundreds and generally freaking people out.

Now, as Slate reports, a smaller one will pass even closer tonight ... and of particular note, it was spotted just yesterday:
An asteroid called 2014 EC that was discovered only last night will pass the Earth just after midnight UTC tonight, sliding past us at a distance of just 56,000 km (35,000 miles) above Earth's surface! This rock is roughly 10 meters across - half the diameter of the Chelyabinsk asteroid. A miss is as good as a mile, as they say, but it shows that there are lots of these things passing us all the time.
As the veil lifts and we humans get better at seeing just how much danger is circling our little blue life raft, scientists and enthusiasts are arguing that we need a plan. In response, the U.N. has established the International Asteroid Warning Network for that purpose.
Read More...
Fireball 5

Asteroid expected to whizz between the Earth and the moon on March 5


RT.com
Tue, 04 Mar 2014 12:28 UTC
Asteroid
© AFP Photo/NASA/JPL CaltechThis NASA image shows an artist's animation that illustrates a massive asteroid belt.
An Apollo class asteroid is expected to whizz between the Earth and the moon on March 5. The 98-foot-wide space rock is expected to come within 218,000 miles of earth (0.9 lunar distances), creating quite the site for stargazers.

The asteroid, named 2014 DX110, is expected to make its closest approach at 21:07 GMT on Wednesday at a blistering speed of 14.85 km/s (32,076 mph). Although the space rock poses no threat to earth, it highlights the earth's susceptibility to near-Earth asteroids.

For amateur astronomers interested in watching the flyby as it happens, the virtual telescope project will offer live coverage via Slooh, which allows viewers to peer through a telescope via the web.

DX110 belongs to the Apollo class of asteroids, a group of Earth-crossing asteroids, which pose a potential threat to humankind. The February-15, 2013, 65-foot-wide meteor, which exploded over the town of Chelyabinsk in the southern Urals region of Russia, belonged to the Apollo class. The meteor explosion was 30 times stronger than the Hiroshima atomic bomb. As windowpanes shattered throughout the city, 1,500 people were injured, but luckily no one was killed.

Nearly one year after the Chelyabinsk atmospheric extravaganza, another massive asteroid sailed past the Earth. The space-rock known officially as 2000 EM26 had an estimated diameter of 885 feet, roughly the equivalent of 3 football fields. It however, only came within some 2,094,400 miles of Earth.
Read More...