Fireballs
S


Fireball 2

Film captures three mystery explosions and a flash of light that rocked houses and woke residents in Essex, UK

After: The man videoed a flash of bright light (circled), which occurred before the explosions were heard
After: The man videoed a flash of bright light (circled), which occurred before the explosions were heard
This mysterious footage captures the series of loud explosions and flashes of bright light that were reported across South East England last night.

The strange noises were heard in Essex and parts of East London and many concerned locals took to social media to look for answers.

One man from Ilford filmed the sky at around 11pm and spotted the eerie flashes of light before capturing the loud bangs, which he said shook his house.

'I have a theory that it was a meteorite,' said the video maker. 'If it had been a land-based explosion there would be damage somewhere but so far no damage.'

'It was too loud to be a firework that's for sure and fireworks don't shake houses. I don't think it's a supersonic aircraft as a sonic boom does not give off light.

'I think it was a meteorite burning up in the atmosphere. This would give off light and cause a sonic boom.'


The Royal Observatory at the Royal Museum of Greenwich discredited this notion, however.

A spokesman told MailOnline: 'This doesn't have the character of a meteor, since such a blast would only occur after a sustained bright light during atmospheric entry - not a quick flash as shown in the video.


Fireball

Dino-killing asteroid impact triggered lethal algal bloom

asteroid impact
© NASAArtist's illustration of an asteroid hitting Earth 65 million years ago.
The asteroid that killed the nonavian dinosaurs may have also killed countless marine animals after it triggered a worldwide algal bloom, a new study finds.

The infamous 6-mile-long (10 kilometers) asteroid hit Earth about 66 million years ago, creating the Chicxulub crater, an expanse spanning 110 miles (180 km) across and 12 miles (20 km) deep, according to a blog post by the American Geophysical Union (AGU).

Upon impact, the asteroid threw a vast amount of tiny fragments into the atmosphere, where they became extremely hot from the friction of rubbing against one another. As they fell back to Earth, these fragments created a global layer of silica glass about 0.12 inches (3 millimeters) thick. That layer is now known as the Cretaceous-Paleogene boundary, according to previous studies.

Comment: For further reading, be sure to check out our "Comets and Catastrophes" series.


Fireball 2

Daytime meteor fireball blazes over St. Louis, Missouri (VIDEO)

Meteor over St Louis
© Stan Honda/AFP/Getty Images
Dozens of people reported seeing what they thought was a meteor fall above the St. Louis area at about 11:40 a.m. Monday.

Reports on social media surfaced about the sight, described by some as as a flash that fell from the sky and disappeared a couple hundred feet above the horizon.

Tom Stolze, who runs the website O'Fallonweather.org, posted a video of a bright light falling in the sky (see video below) to the northwest of an outdoor camera in O'Fallon, Mo.

As of Monday night, the American Meteor Society received 77 reports of a fireball seen over Illinois, Missouri, Indiana, Iowa, Kansas, and Kentucky. Several of those reports were in the St. Louis area.

"It looked like one of the more expensive fireworks shooting down instead of up. I could have sworn it landed in the field I was driving by!" one report from Wendelin, Ill., in the eastern part of the state, said on the society site.

One person saw the flash above Berkeley: "I saw a streak of white light followed by a burst of yellow/orange before the object disappeared," he wrote.


Comment:



Comet 2

New comet discovered: C/2016 K1 (LINEAR)

CBET nr. 4282, issued on 2016, June 05, announces the discovery of an apparently asteroidal object (magnitude ~18.5) found on CCD images taken on May 31 with the 3.5-m f/1 Space Surveillance Telescope on Atom Peak in the White Sands Missile Range, NM, USA, in the course of the LINEAR survey. This object has been found to cometary appearance by CCD astrometrists elsewhere after it was posted on the Minor Planet Center's NEOCP webpage. The new comet has been designated C/2016 K1 (LINEAR).

We performed follow-up measurements of this object, while it was still on the neocp. Stacking of 10 unfiltered exposures, 120 seconds each, obtained remotely on 2016, June 04.4 from H06 (iTelescope network - New Mexico) through a 0.43-m f/6.8 astrograph + CCD + f/4.5 focal reducer, shows that this object is a comet with a compact coma nearly 8 arcsec in diameter elongated toward PA 225.

Our confirmation image (click on it for a bigger version)
C/2016 K1 (LINEAR)
© Remanzacco Blogspot
M.P.E.C. 2016-L34 assigns the following preliminary parabolic orbital elements to comet C/2016 K1: T 2016 July 14.36; e= 1.0; Peri. = 18.66; q = 2.29; Incl.= 90.94

Fireball 2

Bright meteor fireball visible from the entire island of Puerto Rico

Fireball
A bright fireball struck the sky over Puerto Rico on June 2, 2016 at around 9 pm.

The slow meteor was visible from the entire island moving from Northeast to Southeast.

The Caribbean Astronomical Society (SAC) noted that the remarkable meteor was reported from Juncos, Vega Alta and to Mayaguez, so across the entire island.

The bolide was bright enough to outshine the clouds.

It was like a glowing sphere, like a big shooting star with a long light blue tail.


Comment: See also this other recent report from the same island on May 25th: Bright meteor fireball captured over Cabo Rojo, Puerto Rico


Meteor

International Space Station cameras capture meteor fireball streaking through space

ISS fireball
© Via YouTube/SecureTeam10
UFO hunters claim to have spotted yet another unidentified object passing close to the International Space Station.

The footage, posted on YouTube by SecureTeam10, appears to show a streak of light captured by the cameras on-board the ISS.

Hundreds have commented on the video, offering their thoughts on what the object could be.

UFO hunters claim to have spotted yet another unidentified object passing close to the International Space Station. The footage, posted on YouTube by SecureTeam10 , appears to show a streak of light captured by the cameras on-board the ISS (pictured to the right of the silver module)

According to the video's narrator, SecureTeam received the footage via email from someone who was combing through hours of recordings of ISS live streams.

'This amazing footage of the ISS...has got me very excited,' said Tyler from SecureTeam.

It shows a streak of light passing behind the International Space Station when the orbiting base is in the shadow of the Earth.

The burst of light appears in the background for just a few seconds, changing colour from white to red before disappearing.

'When you look at this thing up close, it comes directly up out of nowhere, out of the darkness of space,' explains the video's narrator.

He proclaims: 'It can't be a fireball, 'cos there's no air in space - hence there can't be any fire,' before adding: 'My mind is just blown. What is this thing?'.


Fireball 5

Loud bang over New Zealand town remains a mystery

Palmerston North
© Leilani Hatch/Manawatu StandardPalmerston North's "big bang" has police and Fire Service puzzled.
The source of a loud echoing bang has the Palmerston North police and fire service baffled. A "deep resounding bang" was heard at about 10pm on Thursday, near Kelvin Grove. A police spokesperson said police attended the callout but they were not able to locate its source.

"It was a definitely a loud deep bang - nothing like a gun shot bang, which is quick and high pitch.

Palmerston North Astronomical Society member Noel Munford said the noise could have been a sonic boom created from a fire ball.

But he said if it was a fire ball, then there would have been reports of people seeing a "bright light", burning space junk, shooting across the sky. Gail Lucinsky said she heard the explosive sound from the bottom of Pahiatua Track.

"It was so loud that I jumped out of my skin thinking that one of my parents had fallen heavily and hit the wall in the room behind me."

She said she went outside to look for a source but could not find anything.

"A transformer exploding was suggested as a likely cause, but we couldn't see any part of Palmy in darkness, so it remained a mystery," she said.

Sofia Butler said she heard the explosion sound "very loud and clear" from Lombard St.

"I also heard lots of teens roaming around the streets which at the time I thought may be responsible for that big bang. I haven't heard anything like it to be fair."

Question

Strange orange object seen in New Zealand's sky

Orange Obect in Sky
© Screen Capture
A Kawerau woman says a "hard to miss" strange glowing object in the night sky has her baffled. (Watch video)

Rebecca Couchman was standing on her deck in Kawerau with her partner and a friend on Wednesday night when they all witnessed "a strange object in the sky that did not look normal".

"It was orange/red and moving across the sky. There was no sound at all. It was silent."

She said she did not believe it was a plane.

"We were standing out on the deck and it was hard to miss but right across the sky was an orange/red light moving fairly fast heading out towards Maketu way then all of a sudden it just disappeared.

"There was three of us and none of us have ever seen anything like it before.

Fireball

Huge fireball lights up night sky over Phoenix, Arizona - Residents stunned as meteor explodes, shaking homes

phoenix airzona meteor dashcam screenshot 2 Jun 2016
No, that's not the sun

Comment: In terms of size, this doesn't seem to have been 'a small meteor' - it sounds more like it was a comet fragment!

Will we be seeing another Chelyabinsk type event in the not too distant future?


A meteor flared across the sky over Phoenix, Arizona Thursday morning, reportedly waking many residents from their slumber with the sound of a loud bang as it passed.

Locals took to social media to question what the noise was, as others confirmed it was a meteor streaking through the sky.

Comment: Notice the recent uptick in meteor fireball events, as well as the increase in lightning deaths, volcanic eruptions, and extreme weather.


Fireball 2

Two meteor fireballs illuminate Brazilian skies on two subsequent nights

meteor fireball over Brazil
© YouTube/Bramon (screen capture)
On May 29 and May 30, 2016, two fireball explosions illuminated the sky of Brazil. The first event was so big, it was captured by five different cameras. Awesome meteor videos.

On May 29, 2016, 5 cameras from Bramon, the Brazilian Meteor Observation Network, simultaneously captured a disintegrating fireball over Varginha, Minas Gerais, Brazil.

The major fireball almost entered the atmosphere vertically (97°) at an altitude of 96 km The rock disintegrated rather rapidly in a strong but short explosion brighter than the full moon at about 28 km above sea level!

First orbital analyses show that this space rock may be of cometary origin and thus related to a meteor shower.


Comment: Another meteor fireball was recorded over Brazil just over a week ago.