© SMART Project (screen capture)
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A new network of video surveillance cameras in New Zealand has detected a surprise meteor shower on New Year's Eve. The shower is called the Volantids, named after the constellation Volans, the flying fish, from which the meteoroids appear to stream towards us.
"In a way, the shower helped chase bad spirits away," says SETI Institute meteor astronomer Peter Jenniskens. "Now we have an early warning that we should be looking for a potentially hazardous comet in that orbit."
In September of 2014, Jenniskens teamed up with Professor Jack Baggaley of the University of Canterbury in Christchurch, New Zealand, to establish a meteor video surveillance project in the southern hemisphere to find such warning signs of dangerous comets. This project was similar to the existing Cameras for Allsky Meteor Surveillance network (CAMS) in northern California. The CAMS network is sponsored by, and supports the goals of, the NASA Near Earth Object Observation program.
© Danielle Futselaar/SETI InstituteNew Year’s Eve meteor shower.
In September of 2014, Jenniskens teamed up with Professor Jack Baggaley of the University of Canterbury in Christchurch, New Zealand, to establish a meteor video surveillance project in the southern hemisphere to find such warning signs of dangerous comets. This project was similar to the existing Cameras for Allsky Meteor Surveillance network (CAMS) in northern California. The CAMS network is sponsored by, and supports the goals of, the NASA Near Earth Object Observation program.
© Thinkstock
Dr. Mario Trieloff, a geoscientist at Heidelberg Universityin Germany, and his colleagues used a new, more accurate dating technique based on naturally-occurring isotopes to investigate rock glasses retrieved from various locations in Asia, Australia, Canada, and Central America.
As they report in a paper to be appear in the April 2016 edition of Geochimica et Cosmochimica Acta the samples are all virtually identical in age, despite the fact that, in some cases, they have significantly different chemistry. This indicates that a series of separate impact events must have occurred at roughly the same time, the study authors explained in a statement.
Tektites are formed when terrestrial material melts following a meteorite impact, is launched into the air and then hardens into glass, and Dr. Trieloff's team said that they can determine when and where projectiles struck the planet's surface, how often, and how large those objects were.
© SMART Project (screen capture)
© NASANASA image of a fireball from a past meteor shower.
OK, so first, off: Don't panic! As impacts go, this was pretty small*. After all, you didn't even hear about until weeks after it occurred. Events this size aren't too big a concern. Had it happened over a populated area it would've rattled some windows and probably terrified a lot of people, but I don't think it would've done any real damage.
For comparison, the Chelyabinsk explosion, which was strong enough to shatter windows and injure over 1000 people (due to flying glass), had an equivalent yield of 500,000 tons of TNT, 40 times the energy of this more recent impact.
The event was reported on the NASA/JPL Near-Earth Object Fireball page, which lists some of the brightest such things.
Comment: Certainly, this is not the first time this has happened in this area. We can say with some certainty that a similar space rock in the very same area, was the cause of the destruction of Air France Flight 447 on June 1st 2009, as reported by Sott.net
Notice also that this chunk of space rock fell on the same day that Copenhagen had a massive overhead meteor explosion and a bit earlier in the day a meteorite killed one and injured three, in India!
© SMART Project (screen capture)
© YouTube Screen Capture
The video, posted to YouTube (see below) by Overwatch Security, features body camera footage filmed by a worker for the firm as he walked on a Victoria beach on a stormy day.
The man faces out toward the water as the suspected meteor lights up the sky and streaks down toward the water.
The lights are quickly followed by the sound of the object passing through the air toward the water.
The video's time-stamp indicates it was filmed just after 8 p.m. Jan. 27.
Cool video I captured with my dashcam of a really close meteor. I witnessed a similar incident higher up in the sky 2 days before this... Interesting happening, glad I was driving by at the right moment. This was on 183 Westbound in the Euless area.
A portion of a ‘heat map’ – showing location of witnesses or observers, and ground trajectory – of January 24, 2016, daylight meteor via the American Meteor Society.
© MikesAstroPhotos.com.Meteorite
Mike Hankey, Larry Atkins, Laura Atkins, Brendan Fallon and Josh Adkins searched for days in pine forests and swamplands across Florida in search of the space rock. The zone where the meteorites were found matched up perfectly with the trajectory that the meteor took during the January 24th fireball event. According to the American Meteor Society, there are now almost 130 reports that a bright meteor streaked over the southeast U.S. on January 24th and 10:25 A.M. ET.
© Brendan FallonJosh Adkins holds up an 800-gram meteorite – a chunk of rock from space – associated with the January 24, 2016 daylight meteor over the U.S. Southeast.
© NASA / Reuters
A recent study by researchers at the University of Manchester posits the theory that a "hidden reserve" of meteorites lies between 10 and 50cm beneath the icy surface.
If discoverable, these rocks - which were originally part of large planets which subsequently broke apart - could help scientists in their understanding of the formation of the solar system.
Einstein's ripples in the fabric of spacetime have just been detected, 100 years on https://t.co/kFswoOMaVG pic.twitter.com/vERfthrSVm
— RT UK (@RTUKnews) February 11, 2016
Comment: Within the past week other meteor fireballs have been observed in the region, over southern Spain and Portugal, Morocco and southern France.