Tag Archives: meteor

Oklahoma City Meteor? UFO?

Posted on by

Glowing Object During Daytime Over Oklahoma City On Nov 19, 2014, UFO Sighting News 3 Videos.

Date of sighting: November 19, 2014
Location of sighting: Edmond, Oklahoma City, Oklahoma, USA

Sure this could be a meteor and the chance of it being a meteor does outweigh it being a UFO, but I do know from research that some UFOs do make cloud trails in the sky and can mimic meteors when entering our atmosphere. The trail is not broken up nor is there pieces of the object falling off. This is one solid object. How better to enter a primitive planet during the day and not being noticed? Just make your ship appear as a meteor. SCW

1st Eyewitness states:
Look what i was lucky enough to capture this morning. Flew right by and north towards Edmond.

2nd Eyewitness states:
Posting this a little late but I saw this flying through the sky this morning. Kind of cool and eerie at the same time.

3rd Eyewitness states:
Caught this when I was taking the garbage out this morning! I assume this is a meteor from the comet that passed by earlier this week?

2

 from:    http://www.ufosightingsdaily.com/2014/11/glowing-object-during-daytime-over.html

8/28 Fireball Southeast USA

Posted on by

MAJOR FIREBALL EVENT: Bill Cooke of NASA Meteoroid Environment Office reports that a major fireball event occurred over the southeastern USA on August 28th. The explosion was brighter than the Moon and it might have scattered meteorites on the ground. Watch the movie, then read Cooke’s full report below:

“On August 28 at 07:27 UTC (2:27 AM local time in Alabama), all six NASA all-sky cameras in the southeast picked up a very bright fireball,” he says. “Its peak magnitude was approximately -11, or six times brighter than the Last Quarter Moon. This may very well be the brightest event our network has observed in 5 years of operation.”

“The cameras were completely saturated, necessitating a manual solution of the fireball’s trajectory and orbit,” he adds. Initial results indicate that the meteoroid massed 45 kg (roughly 0.3 to 0.4 meters in diameter) and hit the top of Earth’s atmosphere traveling 23.7 km/s (53,000 mph).

Cooke is currently examining doppler radar records and other data to determine where the fall zone is located.

from: spaceweather.com

More on Russian Meteor Strike

Posted on by

RUSSIAN METEOR UPDATE: On Friday, February 15th at 9:30 am local time in Russia, a small asteroid struck the atmosphere over the city of Chelyabinsk and exploded. According to reports from news organizations and Russian authorities, as many as 1000 people received minor injuries from the shock wave. This is the most energetic recorded meteor strike since the Tunguska impact of 1908.

Researchers have conducted a preliminary analysis of the event. “Here is what we know so far,” says Bill Cooke, head of NASA’s Meteoroid Environment Office. “The asteroid was about 15 meters in diameter and weighed approximately 7000 metric tons. It struck Earth’s atmosphere at 40,000 mph (18 km/s) and broke apart about 12 to 15 miles (20 to 25 km) above Earth’s surface. The energy of the resulting explosion was in the vicinity of 300 kilotons of TNT.” (continued below)

“A shock wave propagated down and struck the city below, causing large numbers of windows to break, some walls to collapse, and minor damage throughout the city,” he continued. “When you hear about injuries, those are undoubtedly due to the effects of the shock wave, not due to fragments striking the ground. There are undoubtedly fragments on the ground, but as of this time we know of no recovered fragments that we can verify.”

Videos of the event may be found here and here. In many of the videos you can hear the sound of windows shattering as the meteor’s loud shock wave reaches the ground. Onlookers cry out in Russian as alarms and sirens sound in the background. This pair of wide-angle gif animations is also worth watching: #1, #2.

It is natural to wonder if this event has any connection to today’s record-setting flyby of asteroid 2012 DA14. Paul Chodas of the Near Earth Object Program at JPL says no. “The Russian fireball is not related to 2012 DA14 in any way. It’s an incredible coincidence that we have had these two rare events in one day.”

fr/spaceweather.com

Meteor Hits Russia

Posted on by

Meteorite – not the end of the world – strikes Russia’s Siberia

A bus-sized meteor exploded over Russia’s Ural Mountains, sparking speculation about everything from a missile attack to the end of the world. The shock waves smashed windows and damaged buildings.

By Fred Weir | Christian Science Monitor

  • Russian meteorite caught on tape; injuries reportedKABC – Los Angeles  0:56A meteor hit over Russia’s Ural Mountains on Friday, causing sharp explosions and reportedly injuring …

Related Content

A meteor the size of a bus exploded in the atmosphere over the Russian Urals city of Chelyabinsk Friday, terrifying thousands with blinding light flashes and powerful sonic booms that shattered windows, damaged buildings, and injuries may be heading toward 1,000, mainly due to flying glass and debris.

Thanks to the proliferation of new technologies like CCTV and dashboard cameras in cars, the dazzling meteor shower that hit the far-western Siberian region may be the first event of its kind in history to be filmed from almost every angle.

Dozens of videos have cropped up on YouTube and other social media, and they offer an astounding glimpse of what happens when a huge hunk of rock, estimated at about 10 tons, plows into the atmosphere at a speed of 30,000 miles per hour. It disintegrated in a series of bright flashes while still several miles above the Earth’s surface.

According to eyewitnesses quoted by the Ekho Moskvi radio station, the event began around 9 a.m. local time, when it was not yet full daylight. The station said that thousands of people rushed into the frigid streets, looking up at the fiery contrails in the sky, with many wondering if it was an air disaster, a missile attack, or the end of the world.

“My ears popped, the windows in our building are smashed, everyone says an airplane exploded. My cellphone stopped working for awhile,” said one witness from Chelyabinsk.

“I was driving to work and suddenly there was this flash that lit everything up like bright sunlight,” said another. “The shock wave nearly drove me off the road.”

Close to 1,000 people were reported injured, but only three seriously enough to be hospitalized, according to the official RIA-Novosti agency. Windows were blown out across a wide area, and several buildings were reported damaged, including a Chelyabinsk factory, whose roof caved in.

Pieces of the meteor have been reported coming down across several regions in western Siberia and even nearby Kazakhstan. Russia’s Defense Ministry reported that soldiers have located a 20-ft.-wide crater near a lake in Chelyabinsk region.

Russia‘s military may have known of the impending meteor strike several days in advance, but did not issue any special public warnings, according to the independent Rosbalt news agency (link in Russian).

“The preliminary data about its size and composition suggested it would break up in the atmosphere. There was no cause for alarm,” the agency quoted an unnamed Defense Ministry official as saying.

Experts say that such meteor showers are not uncommon, but this one was much bigger than usual, and it occurred over a major population center in the early morning, where huge numbers of people could watch it. Chelyabinsk is an industrial city of about 1 million.

“Judging by the intensity of the shock waves, this was a body at least 30 ft. in diameter and weighing around 10 tons. That’s a big one,” says Nikolai Chugai, a department head at the official Institute of Astronomy in Moscow.

“It came in very fast, at a shallow angle, and disintegrated in an arc across the sky. That accounts for the amazing sound-and-light show…. If it had come in vertically, it would have been way more destructive, but over a smaller area,” he adds.

The European Space Agency reported Friday that there is no connection between the meteor that hit Russia and the huge 165-ft. diameter asteroid known as DA14, which is due to pass within 17,000 miles of Earth – less distance than satellites in geosynchronous orbit – within the next day or so.

“It did a lot of damage, but what do you expect?” asks Nikolai Zheleznov, an expert with the Institute of Applied Astronomy in St. Petersburg. “A meteorite is a large projectile, like a bomb, that enters the atmosphere at high speed. Imagine the kinetic energy in a rock 30 ft. across. When it comes roaring into the atmosphere, the air density is like a solid wall that it slams into. Kinetic energy turns to heat, and then there is percussion….

“We live in a solar system that’s full of asteroids and meteorites. There’s no avoiding them. Thousands of tons of meteorites fall onto the Earth every year, far more than we can even keep track of. So, try not to worry too much.”

from:    http://news.yahoo.com/meteorite-not-end-world-strikes-russias-siberia-144416162.html

Fireball Over Toronto

Posted on by

Blazing meteor falls east of Toronto

CBC News

Posted: Dec 14, 2011 10:11 AM ET

Last Updated: Dec 14, 2011 11:01 AM ET

Ontario researchers want to hear from anyone who saw a basketball-sized fireball in the sky east of Toronto Monday night or has found fragments of the fallen meteorites.

Meteorites, meteors and asteroids

  • Meteorites are fragments of rock or metal that have landed on Earth after falling from space. They are usually pieces from a comet or asteroid orbiting the Sun.
  • Meteors are fireballs or “shooting stars” visible in the sky when a piece of space rock enters the Earth’s atmosphere. The friction heats the rock until it glows brightly.
  • Asteroids are bodies made of rock or metal that range in size from boulder-sized to nearly the size of a small moon or planet. Most of the asteroids in our solar system form part of the Asteroid Belt orbiting the sun between Mars and Jupiter.

 

The meteor, described as a “slow-moving fireball, estimated to be no bigger than a basketball,” was recorded at 6:04 p.m. ET Monday by six cameras that are part of the University of Western Ontario’s Southern Ontario Meteor Network, the university said in a news release. 

Researchers think it likely dropped meteorites ranging in size from one gram to hundreds of grams east of Selwyn, Ont., north of Peterborough, near the end of Upper Stony Lake, about 115 kilometres northeast of Toronto. They may have a total mass of up to a few kilograms.

While the meteor fell during the Geminid meteor shower, researchers said it wasn’t related to that event.

Because researchers tracked the meteor’s trajectory with their cameras, they can figure out where in our solar system it comes from. They say it is rare and valuable to be able to combine that information with an actual meteorite sample.

“Finding a meteorite from a fireball captured by video is equivalent to a planetary sample return mission,” said Peter Brown, director of the University of Western Ontario’s Centre for Planetary and Space Exploration, in a statement Wednesday.

P.O.V.

What would you do if you found a meteorite? Take our survey.

“Only about a dozen previous meteorite falls have had their orbits measured by cameras … so each new recovered meteorite is adding to our understanding of the formation and evolution of our own solar system.”

The video footage showed that the meteor first entered the atmosphere at an angle of 25 degrees from the horizontal, moving at 14 kilometres per second. It first became visible over Lake Erie, then moved toward the north-northeast and was visible until it reached an altitude of 31 kilometres, when it was just south of Selwyn.


Based on the path of the meteor, as tracked by a series of six cameras, meteorite fragments probably landed near Upper Stony Lake, a northeast of Peterborough, Ont. Click for a larger image. (Courtesy University of Western Ontario)