Mon, 02 Mar 2009 21:58 UTC
Energetic City
There's no official confirmation yet of anything unusual in the area
but residents east of Fort St. John report seeing something strange
falling from the sky on Saturday afternoon.
Vincent Miller says he saw it, while travelling north on road 239. [Hear audio]
Mr. Miller says it all happened very quickly but it looked like it came down less than five miles away.
However, he's heard no reports of any sitings of debris on the ground.
He puts his farm about 14 miles straight east of Fort St. John, on the north side of the Beatton River.
Small Asteroid Buzzes Earth
Newly-discovered asteroid 2009 DD45
is about to fly past Earth only 72,000 km (0.000482 AU) away. That's
about twice the height of a typical geostationary communications
satellite. The 30- to 40-meter wide space rock is similar in size to
the Tunguska impactor of
1908, but this time there is no danger of a collision. At closest
approach on March 2nd, around 1340 UT (5:40 am PST), 2009 DD45 will
speed through the constellation Virgo shining as brightly as an 11th
magnitude star. Experienced amateur astronomers can track the asteroid
using this ephemeris.
Update: Using a 14-inch telescope at the University of Nariño Observatory in Columbia, Alberto Quijano Vodniza has photographed the asteroid streaking toward Earth thirteen hours before closest approach: 1 MB movie.
Vincent Miller says he saw it, while travelling north on road 239. [Hear audio]
Mr. Miller says it all happened very quickly but it looked like it came down less than five miles away.
However, he's heard no reports of any sitings of debris on the ground.
He puts his farm about 14 miles straight east of Fort St. John, on the north side of the Beatton River.
Small Asteroid Buzzes Earth
SpaceWeather.com
Mon, 02 Mar 2009 10:14 UTC
Update: Using a 14-inch telescope at the University of Nariño Observatory in Columbia, Alberto Quijano Vodniza has photographed the asteroid streaking toward Earth thirteen hours before closest approach: 1 MB movie.
Lori Stiles
The University of Arizona
Wed, 25 Feb 2009 01:22 UTC
University of Arizona scientists have uncovered a curious case of missing asteroids.
The main asteroid belt is a zone containing millions of rocky objects between the orbits of Mars and Jupiter. The scientists find that there ought to be more asteroids there than researchers observe. The missing asteroids may be evidence of an event that took place about 4 billion years ago, when the solar system's giant planets migrated to their present locations.
UA planetary sciences graduate student David A. Minton and UA planetary sciences professor Renu Malhotra say missing asteroids is an important piece of evidence to support an idea that the early solar system underwent a violent episode of giant planet migration that might possibly be responsible for a heavy asteroidal bombardment of the inner planets.
The scientists are reporting on their research in an article, "A record of planet migration in the Main Asteroid Belt," in the Feb. 26 issue of Nature.
Minton and Malhotra began by looking at the distribution of asteroids in the main asteroid belt. Astronomers first discovered a series of gaps in the asteroid belt, now called the Kirkwood gaps, back in the 1860s when only a handful of asteroids were known. The gaps occur at distinct regions of the asteroid belt where Jupiter's and Saturn's gravity strongly perturbs and ejects asteroids. The present-day orbits of Jupiter and Saturn explain why these unstable regions are devoid of asteroids.
"What we wanted to know was, how much of the structure of the asteroid belt could be explained simply by the gravitational effects of the giant planets, as are the Kirkwood gaps," Minton said.
Minton and Malhotra looked at the distribution of all asteroids with diameters greater than 50 kilometers, or about 30 miles. All asteroids of this size have been found, giving the UA researchers an observationally complete set for their study. Also, almost all asteroids this large have remained intact since the asteroid belt formed more than 4 billion years ago, a time record spanning all but the very beginning of solar system history.
"We ran massive sets of simulations with computer planets where we filled up the asteroid belt region with a uniform distribution of computer asteroids," Minton said. The scientists then had the computers simulate the billions of years of solar system history.
Their simulations ultimately ended with far more asteroids remaining than are actually observed in the asteroid belt. When the simulated asteroid belt was compared with the actual asteroid belt, they discovered a peculiar pattern in the differences. The simulated asteroid belt matched the real asteroid belt quite well on the sunward-facing sides of the Kirkwood gaps, but the real asteroid belt seemed to be depleted in asteroids on the Jupiter-facing sides.
"Then we simulated the migration of the giant planets," Minton said. "The perturbing effects of the migrating planets sculpted our simulated asteroid belt. After the migration was over, our simulated asteroid belt looked much more like the observed asteroid belt."
The UA scientists' research was funded by NASA and by the National Science Foundation.
"Our interpretation is that as Jupiter and Saturn migrated, their orbital resonances swept through the asteroid belt, ejecting many more asteroids than is possible with the planets in their current orbits," Malhotra said. "And the particular pattern of missing asteroids is characteristic of the pattern of Jupiter's and Saturn's migration."
"Our work explains why there are fewer asteroids on the Jupiter-facing side of the Kirkwood gaps compared to the sun-facing side," Minton said. "The patterns of depletion are like the footprints of wandering giant planets preserved in the asteroid belt."
Their results corroborate other lines of evidence indicating that the giant planets - Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus and Neptune - formed in a more tightly compacted configuration, and then Jupiter moved slightly closer to the sun, while the other giant planets moved farther apart from each other and farther away from the sun.
Minton and Malhotra say that their result has implications for how far and how fast the planets migrated early in solar system history, and the possibility that planet migration perturbed asteroids that may have contributed to a heavy bombardment of the inner solar system.
"Our result doesn't directly answer the question of whether the timing of this can be tied to inner solar system heavy bombardment - that's open for debate," Minton said. "But what it does say is that there was an event that destabilized asteroids over a relatively short period of time.
"All the asteroids being kicked out of the asteroid belt had to go somewhere," he added. "The implication of this is that when all those asteroids were getting kicked out of the main belt, they could have become projectiles impacting the Earth and the moon, Mars, Venus and Mercury."
The main asteroid belt is a zone containing millions of rocky objects between the orbits of Mars and Jupiter. The scientists find that there ought to be more asteroids there than researchers observe. The missing asteroids may be evidence of an event that took place about 4 billion years ago, when the solar system's giant planets migrated to their present locations.
UA planetary sciences graduate student David A. Minton and UA planetary sciences professor Renu Malhotra say missing asteroids is an important piece of evidence to support an idea that the early solar system underwent a violent episode of giant planet migration that might possibly be responsible for a heavy asteroidal bombardment of the inner planets.
The scientists are reporting on their research in an article, "A record of planet migration in the Main Asteroid Belt," in the Feb. 26 issue of Nature.
Minton and Malhotra began by looking at the distribution of asteroids in the main asteroid belt. Astronomers first discovered a series of gaps in the asteroid belt, now called the Kirkwood gaps, back in the 1860s when only a handful of asteroids were known. The gaps occur at distinct regions of the asteroid belt where Jupiter's and Saturn's gravity strongly perturbs and ejects asteroids. The present-day orbits of Jupiter and Saturn explain why these unstable regions are devoid of asteroids.
"What we wanted to know was, how much of the structure of the asteroid belt could be explained simply by the gravitational effects of the giant planets, as are the Kirkwood gaps," Minton said.
Minton and Malhotra looked at the distribution of all asteroids with diameters greater than 50 kilometers, or about 30 miles. All asteroids of this size have been found, giving the UA researchers an observationally complete set for their study. Also, almost all asteroids this large have remained intact since the asteroid belt formed more than 4 billion years ago, a time record spanning all but the very beginning of solar system history.
"We ran massive sets of simulations with computer planets where we filled up the asteroid belt region with a uniform distribution of computer asteroids," Minton said. The scientists then had the computers simulate the billions of years of solar system history.
Their simulations ultimately ended with far more asteroids remaining than are actually observed in the asteroid belt. When the simulated asteroid belt was compared with the actual asteroid belt, they discovered a peculiar pattern in the differences. The simulated asteroid belt matched the real asteroid belt quite well on the sunward-facing sides of the Kirkwood gaps, but the real asteroid belt seemed to be depleted in asteroids on the Jupiter-facing sides.
"Then we simulated the migration of the giant planets," Minton said. "The perturbing effects of the migrating planets sculpted our simulated asteroid belt. After the migration was over, our simulated asteroid belt looked much more like the observed asteroid belt."
The UA scientists' research was funded by NASA and by the National Science Foundation.
"Our interpretation is that as Jupiter and Saturn migrated, their orbital resonances swept through the asteroid belt, ejecting many more asteroids than is possible with the planets in their current orbits," Malhotra said. "And the particular pattern of missing asteroids is characteristic of the pattern of Jupiter's and Saturn's migration."
"Our work explains why there are fewer asteroids on the Jupiter-facing side of the Kirkwood gaps compared to the sun-facing side," Minton said. "The patterns of depletion are like the footprints of wandering giant planets preserved in the asteroid belt."
Their results corroborate other lines of evidence indicating that the giant planets - Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus and Neptune - formed in a more tightly compacted configuration, and then Jupiter moved slightly closer to the sun, while the other giant planets moved farther apart from each other and farther away from the sun.
Minton and Malhotra say that their result has implications for how far and how fast the planets migrated early in solar system history, and the possibility that planet migration perturbed asteroids that may have contributed to a heavy bombardment of the inner solar system.
"Our result doesn't directly answer the question of whether the timing of this can be tied to inner solar system heavy bombardment - that's open for debate," Minton said. "But what it does say is that there was an event that destabilized asteroids over a relatively short period of time.
"All the asteroids being kicked out of the asteroid belt had to go somewhere," he added. "The implication of this is that when all those asteroids were getting kicked out of the main belt, they could have become projectiles impacting the Earth and the moon, Mars, Venus and Mercury."
The Selma News
Tue, 03 Mar 2009 20:29 UTC
Shortly after 11 a.m. The Selma News office in Kenly heard a big crashing noise that shook the office windows.
Several people in town were seen stepping outside of office buildings to see what happened.
Calls to Selma Town Hall and neighboring towns of Pine Level, and Micro, and Wilson's Mills showed that they heard the sound too. Police officers in several towns are checking into the noise which some say could possibly be a sonic boom, but that it had a different sound from other sonic booms they have heard.
A resident 2 miles east of Kenly towards Fremont said it shook the windows of his house.
Johnston County Emergency Services said they had received a couple call but did not know at this time what could have caused it.
If anyone has any information on the sound please contact the News office at 919-965-4343.
A
fist-sized meteorite plummeted to Earth somewhere in southern Savo. At
least three cameras captured the bright streak of the space-rock making
its fiery descent over the weekend.
"The meteorite has probably fallen along the border between Kangasniemi and Hankasalmi," says Arto Oksanen, from the astronomy organisation Jyväskylän Sirius.
The landing site got quite a bit of snow over the weekend, which makes finding and retrieving the meteorite quite difficult.
The rock shot into Earth's atmosphere at 15.4 metres per second, but it slowed down as it approached the ground.
Both the Ursa Astornomical Association and its local affiliate Jyväskylän Sirius are requesting that witnesses submit accounts or pictures of the shooting star.
Several people in town were seen stepping outside of office buildings to see what happened.
Calls to Selma Town Hall and neighboring towns of Pine Level, and Micro, and Wilson's Mills showed that they heard the sound too. Police officers in several towns are checking into the noise which some say could possibly be a sonic boom, but that it had a different sound from other sonic booms they have heard.
A resident 2 miles east of Kenly towards Fremont said it shook the windows of his house.
Johnston County Emergency Services said they had received a couple call but did not know at this time what could have caused it.
If anyone has any information on the sound please contact the News office at 919-965-4343.
Uutiset
Thu, 05 Mar 2009 00:09 UTC
© Ilmatieteen laitos
"The meteorite has probably fallen along the border between Kangasniemi and Hankasalmi," says Arto Oksanen, from the astronomy organisation Jyväskylän Sirius.
The landing site got quite a bit of snow over the weekend, which makes finding and retrieving the meteorite quite difficult.
The rock shot into Earth's atmosphere at 15.4 metres per second, but it slowed down as it approached the ground.
Both the Ursa Astornomical Association and its local affiliate Jyväskylän Sirius are requesting that witnesses submit accounts or pictures of the shooting star.
CBS
Wed, 04 Mar 2009 00:45 UTC
Santa Ana - As mysteries go, it might not rank up there with "What
happened to Amelia Earhart?" or "Did Oswald act alone?" but a strange
rattling, shaking, and quaking got people in Orange County all shook up
yesterday evening...and we can tell you this much, it wasn't an Elvis
sighting either.
We are used to earthquakes in the Southland, but this was no quake either! Or a sonic boom.
Yikes! What was it?
Well, uh, we still don't know.
Dave Lopez was on the scene to investigate what made the Earth move yesterday under his feet and everyone's else's -- around 9:15 p.m.
Windows shook, nerves were rattled, dogs barked and everyone thought, maybe, we were getting ready for the big one. More than 70 calls were logged into 911 by frightened folks thinking someone was breaking into their homes.
Experts still don't know what caused the shake and the shimmy.
At least, and this is the good thing, the sky did not come tumbling down.
We are used to earthquakes in the Southland, but this was no quake either! Or a sonic boom.
Yikes! What was it?
Well, uh, we still don't know.
Dave Lopez was on the scene to investigate what made the Earth move yesterday under his feet and everyone's else's -- around 9:15 p.m.
Windows shook, nerves were rattled, dogs barked and everyone thought, maybe, we were getting ready for the big one. More than 70 calls were logged into 911 by frightened folks thinking someone was breaking into their homes.
Experts still don't know what caused the shake and the shimmy.
At least, and this is the good thing, the sky did not come tumbling down.
Silicon Valley Mercury News
Wed, 04 Mar 2009 00:52 UTC
Santa Cruz, California - The shaking felt across the Central Coast this
morning was more than the small earthquakes near Tres Pinos and the Los
Altos Hills. Apparently a sonic boom is to blame.
The mysterious door and window rattling felt about 9:15 a.m. across Santa Cruz and Monterey counties wasn't an earthquake, according to the U.S. Geological Survey.
The sonic boom was so powerful that USGS seismometers on the ground picked up the movement.
A magnitude 2.0 earthquake hit about 8:40 a.m. this morning about a mile from the Los Altos Hills. Then at 11:12 a.m. a 1.7 movement was measured in a quarry near Portola Valley. The USGS attributed that to a probable quarry explosion.
"Our best guess is that it was a sonic boom from a jet of the coast of Monterey Bay," said Leslie Gordon with the USGS.
Steve Bauer, a public affairs officer at Vandenberg Air Force Base says he has no information about any activity off the coast this morning.
"If anything like that had occurred, we would have been notified," Bauer said.
Robert Diller, who lives on Glen Haven Road in Soquel, said he heard four loud booms this morning, first before 10 a.m. and then again around noon, two each time in succession.
"They made our windows rattle," Diller said. "It was like a blast, it sounded like a dynamite blast almost."
Diller said he didn't feel the earth move as others have reported.
Emergency dispatchers at the county's communications center said they too received calls this morning from concerned residents. They chalked it up to thunder.
A 1.3 magnitude quake hit just outside Tres Pinos at 5:42 a.m. and a 1.6 magnitude at 7:52 a.m. also outside Tres Pinos.
An Aptos woman she felt "what could have been an earthquake or sonic boom this morning - it shook our sliding glass window, loudly" about 9:17 a.m.
"It just happened again, twice in quick succession, at about 12:20 p.m.," said Julie Drysdale. "I was outside and heard two loud booms. My husband said the house shook quickly, like a truck hit it. Not the typical earthquake shaking, much quicker."
Source: Santa Cruz Sentinel
But what the noise was remained a mystery.
Tuckahoe police said several residents called about the loud noise, but that checks with the Yonkers, Eastchester and Bronxville departments yielded no answers.
A Mount Vernon man said his clock read 12:34 a.m. when he heard the boom.
Tuckahoe resident Margaret Belles was among those who heard it.
"We don't know what it was," she said. "From my house, you know, it was definitely a loud house-shaker."
The television show Law and Order was filming a car explosion Friday on Van Cortlandt Park Avenue in Yonkers, according to entertainment industry Web sites, but how late they were at work was unclear.
There was no seismic activity in the region, according to the Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory's Web site.
It's possible the noise was a sonic boom, but the Federal Aviation Administration could not be reached last night. The National Weather Service said there was no weather condition that would have caused such a sound.
California had a similar boom mystery two days earlier. Here's the Santa Cruz Sentinel story.
Anyone with information can call The Journal News at 914-694-5077.
The
loud boom heard throughout southern Westchester early yesterday morning
might have been a meteor crashing through the atmosphere at thousands
of miles per hour.
What people said sounded like an explosion, thunderclap or a sonic boom was heard around 12:24 a.m. People from Scarsdale, Mount Vernon, Yonkers, Tuckahoe, Eastchester and Bronxville contacted The Journal News or police.
Though many people heard the window-rattling boom, solid explanations have been harder to come by.
But Liz Holland, who lives atop a ridge in Mount Kisco, said she happened to be looking out a south window around 12:30 a.m. and saw on the horizon a brilliant yellow object streaking through the sky in a downward arc.
"It was pretty bright," she said. "It wasn't huge, but bigger than a shooting star, like a thick piece of string."
She said she made a wish, and had been telling friends about it since.
Bill Thys of the Rockland Astronomy Club wasn't watching the skies at the time.
"Damnit, I wish I was," he said today, adding that the description sounded like a meteor.
"Yellow's fairly typical," he said of a fireball, with different colors following in the train.
He said there was a very good chance it could account for the sonic boom because, "certainly, it was traveling fast enough."
A sonic boom occurs when a something passes above the speed of sound - 761 mph. Thys said a meteorite's relative speed hitting Earth's atmosphere - at that time of night with a tangential trajectory - would have measured in the thousands of miles per hour.
If you saw anything unusual that night, please call The Journal News at 914... or e-mail tgrauel@lohud.com.
Read more about this story tomorrow in The Journal News.
Comment: With all of the meteor/fireball sightings there have been, and even recorded, you would think that comments like the one above:
However, there was this very recent article that someone did finally admit that the Hudson Valley "sonic boom" could have been a meteor.
It's as if it is forbidden to even think that meteors could be to blame for these "sonic booms". Amazing, isn't it?
The mysterious door and window rattling felt about 9:15 a.m. across Santa Cruz and Monterey counties wasn't an earthquake, according to the U.S. Geological Survey.
The sonic boom was so powerful that USGS seismometers on the ground picked up the movement.
A magnitude 2.0 earthquake hit about 8:40 a.m. this morning about a mile from the Los Altos Hills. Then at 11:12 a.m. a 1.7 movement was measured in a quarry near Portola Valley. The USGS attributed that to a probable quarry explosion.
"Our best guess is that it was a sonic boom from a jet of the coast of Monterey Bay," said Leslie Gordon with the USGS.
Steve Bauer, a public affairs officer at Vandenberg Air Force Base says he has no information about any activity off the coast this morning.
"If anything like that had occurred, we would have been notified," Bauer said.
Robert Diller, who lives on Glen Haven Road in Soquel, said he heard four loud booms this morning, first before 10 a.m. and then again around noon, two each time in succession.
"They made our windows rattle," Diller said. "It was like a blast, it sounded like a dynamite blast almost."
Diller said he didn't feel the earth move as others have reported.
Emergency dispatchers at the county's communications center said they too received calls this morning from concerned residents. They chalked it up to thunder.
A 1.3 magnitude quake hit just outside Tres Pinos at 5:42 a.m. and a 1.6 magnitude at 7:52 a.m. also outside Tres Pinos.
An Aptos woman she felt "what could have been an earthquake or sonic boom this morning - it shook our sliding glass window, loudly" about 9:17 a.m.
"It just happened again, twice in quick succession, at about 12:20 p.m.," said Julie Drysdale. "I was outside and heard two loud booms. My husband said the house shook quickly, like a truck hit it. Not the typical earthquake shaking, much quicker."
Source: Santa Cruz Sentinel
VOCM
Wed, 04 Mar 2009 01:04 UTC
Some people in eastern Newfoundland reported seeing strange lights in
the sky last night. A man working at St Clare's Hospital saw a bright
white flash that lit up the skyline above St John's. A woman in
Bonavista saw two bright flashes of white and purple. Another woman
driving on the Trans Canada Highway near Clarenville saw a flash of
light that she described as "like a bomb without the boom." Officials
with Environment Canada, the RCMP and even Newfoundland Power were
baffled. Clayton Power says he was working in St John's when he saw a
flash of light around 9pm. Victoria Squires from Carmanville says she
was driving through Lethbridge when something lit up the sky.
A spokesperson with Environment Canada says the Canadian Lightning Detection Network has a detection rate for the Avalon area of 70-90%, but if the phenomena was cloud-to-cloud or in-cloud lightning their detection is only 5%.
The
mysterious door and window rattling that thousands of people felt
across Orange County Tuesday night about 9:15 p.m. was likely caused by
a sonic boom produced by a high speed jet, says Bob Dollar, a
seismologist at the U.S. Geological Survey.
And, in an extraordinary odd coincidence, a similar event occurred at 9:15 a.m. today (Wednesday) in Central California. Click here to read story.
"This morning Kate Hutton (of Caltech) reviewed seismograms from the event last night in Orange County," Dollar said in an email. "These data are consistent with a sonic event coming onshore near Dana Point and traveling northward inland.
"The energy traveled across our seismic sensor network at the velocity of a compressional wave in air rather than the velocity of a similar wave through the ground, which is""much faster. There was no S phase.
"Additionally, the felt descriptions (doors & windows being rattled but no building shaking) is consistent with a compressional wave such as a sonic but with no shear wave which one would expect in an earthquake."
The F/A 18 Super Hornet fighter jets used in Southern California by the Navy and Marines are capable of breaking the sound barrier and producing a sonic boom felt on the ground. The same thing happens locally when the space shuttle lands at Edwards Air Force Base. There are currently no shuttles in flight.
The weirdness of the event was captured by a simple message from Sherry Jacobs of Cypress who wrote, "I felt strong rattling of my patio door. I looked outside to check for strong winds and was surprised to find my wind chimes still."
A reader named Jill added: "I was sitting on my bed watching tv when my doorknob started rattling. My heart started racing because I'm home alone with my 1 year old and I didn't know what it was. It was more nerve-wrecking because besides the sound of the doorknob, I heard nothing and FELT nothing. I live pretty close to John Wayne airport so a lot of times when planes go by they rattle my windows and such so I tend to not notice the rattling anymore. But this was definitely weird and creeped me out pretty bad!"
Tracy Austin of Huntington Beach emailed to say, "We're fairly used to a quake every so often, this one was very strange, our whole house rumbled. Felt like someone was shaking our front door. Our dogs definitely felt it coming."
Note: Sciencedude is on jury duty in Santa Ana today. But I have temporary net access and I'm reading your emails. I am having trouble getting quick, clear info from Camp Pendleton about Tuesday's high explosives work. We simply don't know if explosives were going off in the mid-area of the base, behind the foothills, at the time of the mysterious shaking.
Comment: It is amazing, isn't it? How, even though it is known, meteorites exploding in the atmosphere, or crashing into the ocean also makes a "sonic boom" reverberation and are never mentioned as a cause of these effects.
Is it simply denial or do they know about something else but don't want you to know.
Comment: It is utterly amazing that even with someone who is a reader of the Orange County Register mentioning that it could have been an asteroid, none of the government, military or scientific authorities will "go there." At least not publicly.
The fact that THE asteroid went by on Monday does not signify that there couldn't have been other asteroid/meteors trailing along in it's wake and it is these that were heard, and felt, exploding in the atmosphere over the Pacific Ocean.
The fact that one sonic boom was heard on March 4th at 9:15pm and the other on March 5 at 9:15 am is a little different, but it doesn't negate the fact that these could have been meteorites exploding in the atmosphere.. There could have been quite a trail of these things that either burnt up over uninhabited places or weren't heard.
The strangest fact of all is, as mentioned above, that government and military and scientific personnel do not want to go there - at least publicly.
Comment: Have a look at this footage of 2009 DD45 recorded in Canberra on 2 March 2009
A spokesperson with Environment Canada says the Canadian Lightning Detection Network has a detection rate for the Avalon area of 70-90%, but if the phenomena was cloud-to-cloud or in-cloud lightning their detection is only 5%.
Science Dude
Wed, 04 Mar 2009 01:14 UTC
© Unknown
Bizarre: The USGS reported a 2.2 quake at 9:30 a.m. Tuesday that supposedly shook much of Orange County. But we didn't receive any calls or emails then. The emails didn't start until 9:15 p.m. tonight, almost 12 hours later -- even though much of tonight's shaking came from areas depicted in this map. Seismologist Bob Dollar called the situation "mysterious."
Bizarre: The USGS reported a 2.2 quake at 9:30 a.m. Tuesday that supposedly shook much of Orange County. But we didn't receive any calls or emails then. The emails didn't start until 9:15 p.m. tonight, almost 12 hours later -- even though much of tonight's shaking came from areas depicted in this map. Seismologist Bob Dollar called the situation "mysterious."
And, in an extraordinary odd coincidence, a similar event occurred at 9:15 a.m. today (Wednesday) in Central California. Click here to read story.
"This morning Kate Hutton (of Caltech) reviewed seismograms from the event last night in Orange County," Dollar said in an email. "These data are consistent with a sonic event coming onshore near Dana Point and traveling northward inland.
"The energy traveled across our seismic sensor network at the velocity of a compressional wave in air rather than the velocity of a similar wave through the ground, which is""much faster. There was no S phase.
"Additionally, the felt descriptions (doors & windows being rattled but no building shaking) is consistent with a compressional wave such as a sonic but with no shear wave which one would expect in an earthquake."
The F/A 18 Super Hornet fighter jets used in Southern California by the Navy and Marines are capable of breaking the sound barrier and producing a sonic boom felt on the ground. The same thing happens locally when the space shuttle lands at Edwards Air Force Base. There are currently no shuttles in flight.
The weirdness of the event was captured by a simple message from Sherry Jacobs of Cypress who wrote, "I felt strong rattling of my patio door. I looked outside to check for strong winds and was surprised to find my wind chimes still."
A reader named Jill added: "I was sitting on my bed watching tv when my doorknob started rattling. My heart started racing because I'm home alone with my 1 year old and I didn't know what it was. It was more nerve-wrecking because besides the sound of the doorknob, I heard nothing and FELT nothing. I live pretty close to John Wayne airport so a lot of times when planes go by they rattle my windows and such so I tend to not notice the rattling anymore. But this was definitely weird and creeped me out pretty bad!"
Tracy Austin of Huntington Beach emailed to say, "We're fairly used to a quake every so often, this one was very strange, our whole house rumbled. Felt like someone was shaking our front door. Our dogs definitely felt it coming."
Note: Sciencedude is on jury duty in Santa Ana today. But I have temporary net access and I'm reading your emails. I am having trouble getting quick, clear info from Camp Pendleton about Tuesday's high explosives work. We simply don't know if explosives were going off in the mid-area of the base, behind the foothills, at the time of the mysterious shaking.
Comment: It is amazing, isn't it? How, even though it is known, meteorites exploding in the atmosphere, or crashing into the ocean also makes a "sonic boom" reverberation and are never mentioned as a cause of these effects.
Is it simply denial or do they know about something else but don't want you to know.
The Mercury News
Fri, 06 Mar 2009 20:49 UTC
Santa Cruz - The search for the cause of the sonic boom, or booms, many
Central Coast residents felt Wednesday morning looks to be a bust.
Thursday, a Federal Aviation Administration official said the search for the source of the mysterious morning rattle has turned up nothing.
"We reviewed all the radar data for flights in the airspace in Northern California around the time that people reported this boom," said Ian Gregor, FAA spokesman for the Western-Pacific Region. "There were several military aircraft operating but they were slow. None of these aircraft were going supersonic."
Of course, just because officials can't trace the boom -- which was reported across the Central Coast and almost exactly 12 hours earlier in Orange County -- doesn't mean people imagined the shaking around 9:15 a.m. Wednesday. Some reported other booms in the hours after that.
To create a sonic boom -- shock waves that rock buildings and produce a thunder-like crack -- a jet must travel faster than the speed of sound, which is 767 mph.
Gregor said that because air traffic controllers handle so much traffic it's possible a speeding jet in their midst didn't register as unusual.
The mystery has spurred its share of conspiracy theories. On the Sentinel Web site, readers suggested the boom was E.T.'s return, an intercontinental missile from North Korea or test runs of new, secret U.S. Navy jets.
"It was a chemtrail weather-modification program jet making rain for you," one poster stated.
A few suggested it was the sound of their retirement accounts crashing.
Orange County residents had similar theories after thousands of doors and windows across that county rattled and vibrated. Some blamed jets from nearby Camp Pendleton or suggested a passing asteroid was the source of the shaking, according to an Orange County Register story. The asteroid passed Monday night.
A U.S. Geological Survey spokesman, meanwhile, said Wednesday's shaking was not caused by an earthquake, though several people called 911 to report a possible rattler after the boom.
The National Weather Service, meanwhile, said there were no thunderstorms in the region.
Gregor said he doesn't know if they will ever know what caused to boom.
"Obviously something happened, but I don't know," he said.
Thursday, a Federal Aviation Administration official said the search for the source of the mysterious morning rattle has turned up nothing.
"We reviewed all the radar data for flights in the airspace in Northern California around the time that people reported this boom," said Ian Gregor, FAA spokesman for the Western-Pacific Region. "There were several military aircraft operating but they were slow. None of these aircraft were going supersonic."
Of course, just because officials can't trace the boom -- which was reported across the Central Coast and almost exactly 12 hours earlier in Orange County -- doesn't mean people imagined the shaking around 9:15 a.m. Wednesday. Some reported other booms in the hours after that.
To create a sonic boom -- shock waves that rock buildings and produce a thunder-like crack -- a jet must travel faster than the speed of sound, which is 767 mph.
Gregor said that because air traffic controllers handle so much traffic it's possible a speeding jet in their midst didn't register as unusual.
The mystery has spurred its share of conspiracy theories. On the Sentinel Web site, readers suggested the boom was E.T.'s return, an intercontinental missile from North Korea or test runs of new, secret U.S. Navy jets.
"It was a chemtrail weather-modification program jet making rain for you," one poster stated.
A few suggested it was the sound of their retirement accounts crashing.
Orange County residents had similar theories after thousands of doors and windows across that county rattled and vibrated. Some blamed jets from nearby Camp Pendleton or suggested a passing asteroid was the source of the shaking, according to an Orange County Register story. The asteroid passed Monday night.
A U.S. Geological Survey spokesman, meanwhile, said Wednesday's shaking was not caused by an earthquake, though several people called 911 to report a possible rattler after the boom.
The National Weather Service, meanwhile, said there were no thunderstorms in the region.
Gregor said he doesn't know if they will ever know what caused to boom.
"Obviously something happened, but I don't know," he said.
Comment: It is utterly amazing that even with someone who is a reader of the Orange County Register mentioning that it could have been an asteroid, none of the government, military or scientific authorities will "go there." At least not publicly.
The fact that THE asteroid went by on Monday does not signify that there couldn't have been other asteroid/meteors trailing along in it's wake and it is these that were heard, and felt, exploding in the atmosphere over the Pacific Ocean.
The fact that one sonic boom was heard on March 4th at 9:15pm and the other on March 5 at 9:15 am is a little different, but it doesn't negate the fact that these could have been meteorites exploding in the atmosphere.. There could have been quite a trail of these things that either burnt up over uninhabited places or weren't heard.
The strangest fact of all is, as mentioned above, that government and military and scientific personnel do not want to go there - at least publicly.
Boston Herald
Sat, 07 Mar 2009 08:50 UTC
Dodged the bullet again - or rather, dodged the asteroid. It really is
time for the advanced nations to organize an anti-asteroid defense.
The asteroid - named 2009 DD45 - passed Earth early Monday (2 March 2009) 48,800 miles above Tahiti. It measured between 69 feet and 154 feet across, about as big as the one that crashed near Tunguska, Siberia, in 1908 and leveled 830 square miles of forest. That's a 32-mile wide circle.
Encounters with asteroids are rare, and the bigger the asteroid, the more rare it is. Most of our planet is open space (70 percent is ocean), so a collision with a small object is unlikely to do much damage. Small objects explode high in the atmosphere several times a year.
But larger objects can reach the ground. The Planetary Society, which is beating the drums for an asteroid defense, estimates that a "Tunguska Event" could cause at least some human casualties roughly every 300 years. A troubling scenario.
Space-capable nations should agree to maintain suitable rockets on standby for quick launch against intruders like 2009 DD45. It wouldn't cost much, and might be one of those rare instances where we can work with partners, such as Russia, on a mutually beneficial project.
The asteroid - named 2009 DD45 - passed Earth early Monday (2 March 2009) 48,800 miles above Tahiti. It measured between 69 feet and 154 feet across, about as big as the one that crashed near Tunguska, Siberia, in 1908 and leveled 830 square miles of forest. That's a 32-mile wide circle.
Encounters with asteroids are rare, and the bigger the asteroid, the more rare it is. Most of our planet is open space (70 percent is ocean), so a collision with a small object is unlikely to do much damage. Small objects explode high in the atmosphere several times a year.
But larger objects can reach the ground. The Planetary Society, which is beating the drums for an asteroid defense, estimates that a "Tunguska Event" could cause at least some human casualties roughly every 300 years. A troubling scenario.
Space-capable nations should agree to maintain suitable rockets on standby for quick launch against intruders like 2009 DD45. It wouldn't cost much, and might be one of those rare instances where we can work with partners, such as Russia, on a mutually beneficial project.
Comment: Have a look at this footage of 2009 DD45 recorded in Canberra on 2 March 2009
The Journal News
Sun, 08 Mar 2009 19:08 UTC
But what the noise was remained a mystery.
Tuckahoe police said several residents called about the loud noise, but that checks with the Yonkers, Eastchester and Bronxville departments yielded no answers.
A Mount Vernon man said his clock read 12:34 a.m. when he heard the boom.
Tuckahoe resident Margaret Belles was among those who heard it.
"We don't know what it was," she said. "From my house, you know, it was definitely a loud house-shaker."
The television show Law and Order was filming a car explosion Friday on Van Cortlandt Park Avenue in Yonkers, according to entertainment industry Web sites, but how late they were at work was unclear.
There was no seismic activity in the region, according to the Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory's Web site.
It's possible the noise was a sonic boom, but the Federal Aviation Administration could not be reached last night. The National Weather Service said there was no weather condition that would have caused such a sound.
California had a similar boom mystery two days earlier. Here's the Santa Cruz Sentinel story.
Anyone with information can call The Journal News at 914-694-5077.
The Journal News
Mon, 09 Mar 2009 22:04 UTC
© Unknown
What people said sounded like an explosion, thunderclap or a sonic boom was heard around 12:24 a.m. People from Scarsdale, Mount Vernon, Yonkers, Tuckahoe, Eastchester and Bronxville contacted The Journal News or police.
Though many people heard the window-rattling boom, solid explanations have been harder to come by.
But Liz Holland, who lives atop a ridge in Mount Kisco, said she happened to be looking out a south window around 12:30 a.m. and saw on the horizon a brilliant yellow object streaking through the sky in a downward arc.
"It was pretty bright," she said. "It wasn't huge, but bigger than a shooting star, like a thick piece of string."
She said she made a wish, and had been telling friends about it since.
Bill Thys of the Rockland Astronomy Club wasn't watching the skies at the time.
"Damnit, I wish I was," he said today, adding that the description sounded like a meteor.
"Yellow's fairly typical," he said of a fireball, with different colors following in the train.
He said there was a very good chance it could account for the sonic boom because, "certainly, it was traveling fast enough."
A sonic boom occurs when a something passes above the speed of sound - 761 mph. Thys said a meteorite's relative speed hitting Earth's atmosphere - at that time of night with a tangential trajectory - would have measured in the thousands of miles per hour.
If you saw anything unusual that night, please call The Journal News at 914... or e-mail tgrauel@lohud.com.
Read more about this story tomorrow in The Journal News.
Jorge Fitz-Gibbon and Danielle DeSouza
LoHud
Tue, 10 Mar 2009 20:06 UTC
A second loud boom may have rattled windows in parts of Rockland County
yesterday - and its origin remains as mysterious as the explosive noise
that blew through southern Westchester County over the weekend.
"It was about 5:15 a.m., and it woke up the whole house," said Nanuet resident Keith Wallenstein. "The house was shaking. It sounded like someone had flown an F-16 over the house."
"If it was thunder, it had to be right on the house," Wallenstein said. "And I know a bunch of people who heard it within 3 to 4 or 5 miles away. So I don't know if it was thunder."
Spokesmen at several Rockland police departments said they were not aware of any reports of loud booms early Monday morning.
An earlier unexplained "boom" shook homes in parts of southern Westchester early Saturday. That noise, and the one that reportedly woke up parts of Rockland yesterday, was unlikely to be an earthquake, weather pattern, falling space debris or a civilian aircraft, officials from local, state and federal agencies said yesterday.
"It's against regulations to be in supersonic speed or subsonic speed that would create the sonic boom," said Jim Peters, a spokesman for the Federal Aviation Administration. "And the only aircraft that are really equipped to make a sonic boom or can possibly make it are military aircraft. And I don't know what military missions, if any, were flown over the Hudson Valley that would've created that noise. You're looking for a needle in a haystack."
Officials at Westchester County Airport and Stewart International Airport said they had no knowledge of aircraft from their facilities causing the disturbance.
Officials at NASA said yesterday that they had no knowledge of the boom nor any explanations for it. They referred calls to the U.S. Air Force Space Command.
Calls to Space Command headquarters in Colorado seeking comment were not returned.
And no U.S. Coast Guard operations in the area could have generated such a loud noise, Petty Officer Barbara Patton said.
Andy Mussoline, a meteorologist with AccuWeather, said thunderstorms in the Rockland County area early yesterday morning could be a possible explanation for the reports.
However, Mussoline said, the weather during the earlier Westchester incidents was clear.
According to Lower Hudson Valley police reports and numerous callers to The Journal News, the earlier loud boom was heard throughout parts of Yonkers, Eastchester, Bronxville, Tuckahoe and Scarsdale at 12:24 a.m. Saturday.
Police in those communities had no new leads yesterday.
Tuckahoe police said officers went out after the reports came in, but found no obvious cause for the window-rattling noise.
Liz Holland, a Mount Kisco resident, told The Journal News over the weekend that she saw a bright yellow object streaking through the sky in a downward arc. Holland said "it wasn't huge, but bigger than a shooting star."
That prompted speculation that the boom might have been caused by a meteor that sailed over the Lower Hudson Valley.
But Mark Taylor, coordinator of the planetarium at the Hudson River Museum in Yonkers, called the likelihood of it "very rare."
"When people say bigger, they usually mean brighter," Taylor said. "It is possible that something in the atmosphere can do that, but it is very rare. But her seeing it moving in a downward arc would be an optical illusion. You would not be able to see that."
There also have been no confirmed reports of seismic activity over the weekend.
Then yesterday, Wallenstein and two other Rockland readers reported hearing a boom there.
On Wednesday, the Santa Cruz Sentinel also reported a similar noise in California's Central Valley - and another one 12 hours earlier in Orange County, Calif.
Both of the incidents remain unsolved, but officials there have discounted supersonic aircraft as the cause of the noise.
Source: The Journal News
"It was about 5:15 a.m., and it woke up the whole house," said Nanuet resident Keith Wallenstein. "The house was shaking. It sounded like someone had flown an F-16 over the house."
"If it was thunder, it had to be right on the house," Wallenstein said. "And I know a bunch of people who heard it within 3 to 4 or 5 miles away. So I don't know if it was thunder."
Spokesmen at several Rockland police departments said they were not aware of any reports of loud booms early Monday morning.
An earlier unexplained "boom" shook homes in parts of southern Westchester early Saturday. That noise, and the one that reportedly woke up parts of Rockland yesterday, was unlikely to be an earthquake, weather pattern, falling space debris or a civilian aircraft, officials from local, state and federal agencies said yesterday.
"It's against regulations to be in supersonic speed or subsonic speed that would create the sonic boom," said Jim Peters, a spokesman for the Federal Aviation Administration. "And the only aircraft that are really equipped to make a sonic boom or can possibly make it are military aircraft. And I don't know what military missions, if any, were flown over the Hudson Valley that would've created that noise. You're looking for a needle in a haystack."
Officials at Westchester County Airport and Stewart International Airport said they had no knowledge of aircraft from their facilities causing the disturbance.
Officials at NASA said yesterday that they had no knowledge of the boom nor any explanations for it. They referred calls to the U.S. Air Force Space Command.
Calls to Space Command headquarters in Colorado seeking comment were not returned.
And no U.S. Coast Guard operations in the area could have generated such a loud noise, Petty Officer Barbara Patton said.
Andy Mussoline, a meteorologist with AccuWeather, said thunderstorms in the Rockland County area early yesterday morning could be a possible explanation for the reports.
However, Mussoline said, the weather during the earlier Westchester incidents was clear.
According to Lower Hudson Valley police reports and numerous callers to The Journal News, the earlier loud boom was heard throughout parts of Yonkers, Eastchester, Bronxville, Tuckahoe and Scarsdale at 12:24 a.m. Saturday.
Police in those communities had no new leads yesterday.
Tuckahoe police said officers went out after the reports came in, but found no obvious cause for the window-rattling noise.
Liz Holland, a Mount Kisco resident, told The Journal News over the weekend that she saw a bright yellow object streaking through the sky in a downward arc. Holland said "it wasn't huge, but bigger than a shooting star."
That prompted speculation that the boom might have been caused by a meteor that sailed over the Lower Hudson Valley.
But Mark Taylor, coordinator of the planetarium at the Hudson River Museum in Yonkers, called the likelihood of it "very rare."
"When people say bigger, they usually mean brighter," Taylor said. "It is possible that something in the atmosphere can do that, but it is very rare. But her seeing it moving in a downward arc would be an optical illusion. You would not be able to see that."
There also have been no confirmed reports of seismic activity over the weekend.
Then yesterday, Wallenstein and two other Rockland readers reported hearing a boom there.
On Wednesday, the Santa Cruz Sentinel also reported a similar noise in California's Central Valley - and another one 12 hours earlier in Orange County, Calif.
Both of the incidents remain unsolved, but officials there have discounted supersonic aircraft as the cause of the noise.
Source: The Journal News
Comment: With all of the meteor/fireball sightings there have been, and even recorded, you would think that comments like the one above:
Taylor said. "It is possible that something in the atmosphere can do that, but it is very rare. But her seeing it moving in a downward arc would be an optical illusion. You would not be able to see that.There have been a lot of "sonic booms" or "loud noises" reported over the last couple of years, and very, very few have had anyone even whisper that it might be a meteor exploding in the atmosphere, or creating a sonic boom as it streaks through the skies.
However, there was this very recent article that someone did finally admit that the Hudson Valley "sonic boom" could have been a meteor.
It's as if it is forbidden to even think that meteors could be to blame for these "sonic booms". Amazing, isn't it?
NBC
Tue, 10 Mar 2009 17:49 UTC
The loud boom many southern Westchester residents heard Saturday
morning might have been caused by a meteor traveling through the
atmosphere.
Bill Thys of the Rockland Astronomy Club said there was a very good chance a meteor could have caused the sonic boom, lohud.com reported.
Residents from Bronxville, Yonkers and Scarsdale reported the loud noise around 12:25 a.m. on Saturday. Some reported seeing a yellow object streaking across the sky.
Several police departments received calls about the noise, but they were unable to locate the source. The National Weather Service said there were no weather conditions at the time to account for such a noise.
A sonic boom occurs when something moves faster than the speed of sound, which is 761 mpg. Meteors entering Earth's atmosphere typically move at over 1,000 mph, according to Thys.
Bill Thys of the Rockland Astronomy Club said there was a very good chance a meteor could have caused the sonic boom, lohud.com reported.
Residents from Bronxville, Yonkers and Scarsdale reported the loud noise around 12:25 a.m. on Saturday. Some reported seeing a yellow object streaking across the sky.
Several police departments received calls about the noise, but they were unable to locate the source. The National Weather Service said there were no weather conditions at the time to account for such a noise.
A sonic boom occurs when something moves faster than the speed of sound, which is 761 mpg. Meteors entering Earth's atmosphere typically move at over 1,000 mph, according to Thys.
Shropshire Star
Wed, 11 Mar 2009 20:43 UTC
A strange ball of light has been seen in the skies above Shropshire.
The white and orange ball was seen at 10pm yesterday and people in Shrewsbury said it appeared to drop to the ground near the Royal Shrewsbury Hospital.
Darren Perks was driving home when he saw it and said as it fell he saw what looked like a metallic ball inside the light.
Residents
of the town of Campo Maior in the Alentejo region of Portugal have
reported seeing a low flying UFO that at one stage hovered just above a
resident's garden.
At 7.30pm on February the 17th an elderly woman was in her backyard when she saw a glowing object illuminate the entire area. The woman was alone but her daughter who lived nearby also saw the otherworldly object.
In another part of town the same object was seen by an amazed couple who managed to capture the event (photos at left) in spite of their initial stunned surprised. Another witness reported seeing the object hover above a nearby church.
Campo Maior is an ancient Roman site: continuing the trend of UFO sightings in areas of some historical significance.
It appears that recent photographs of UFOs have been getting clearer and the contours of the flying craft often can be seen, in contrast to past photo's often showing light spots. Is this part of an Alien plan to slowly condition humans to their presence? Are visitors from space unilaterally planning to openly announce their presence here soon without getting consulting earthly governments?
The National Weather Service had no reports and suggested we check with the US Geological Survey.
The USGS is not showing any signs of seismic activity in our area. In fact, the closest earthquake to Mobile within the past week was 718 miles away in Sullivan, Missouri on Saturday night.
Eglin Air Force Base says they are not doing any training flights this afternoon which could've caused a sonic boom.
And both the Mobile County Sheriff's Office and EMA report nothing unusual.
But something definitely happened and it caused a lot of concern. Especially for a West Mobile woman who says dishes fell out of her cabinets and broke on the floor.
We'll keep looking into the mystery and let you know what we find out.
Frey is now trying to work out the age of the newly found craters. If they are the same age as the others, this would support the idea that asteroids bombarded the inner solar system for a particularly intense period about 4 billion years ago. Some researchers think that life may have existed before this bombardment, but if so, its survival now seems less likely, says Andrew Valley of the University of Wisconsin, Madison. "The probability that early primitive life, if it existed, could find refuge, even in sediments beneath the ocean would be reduced," he says.
Frey, who will present the work at the Lunar and Planetary Science Conference in Woodlands, Texas, later this month, expects more subtle features to be discovered when the Asian lunar probes release further data and NASA's Lunar Rover Orbiter launches in May.
Comment: There are two previous reports of the light in the sky of March 3rd.
You can find them here and here.
Seven
astronauts raced to the international space station aboard space
shuttle Discovery on Monday, while NASA debated whether the orbiting
outpost will need to move aside to dodge part of an old Soviet
satellite.
Space station astronauts had a close call last week with a small piece of orbiting junk, and NASA said Monday that debris from a satellite that broke apart in 1981 could come within about half a mile of the station early Tuesday.
NASA will decide later Monday whether to fire the space station's engines to nudge the complex out of the path of the debris.
The three space station residents had to move into their emergency getaway capsule last week for about 10 minutes because another piece of space junk came too close for comfort.
NASA has moved the space station out of the way of debris eight times in the past, most recently in August, according to NASA records.
A NASA spokesman said if the space station has to move, the shuttle will have to adjust its course slightly to be in position for docking on Tuesday.
The debris is from a satellite called Kosmos 1275, said NASA spokesman Bill Jeffs, who did not know the size of the piece.
Kosmos 1275 broke up somewhat mysteriously, said NASA orbital debris scientist Mark Matney. It may have crashed with another object that wasn't tracked and it made a cloud of 310 pieces of debris that are slowly falling into a lower orbit, he said.
The shuttle launch Sunday followed five delays that caused Discovery's mission to be shortened by a day and canceled a planned spacewalk.
After a "first, quick look," Bill Gerstenmaier, NASA's associate administrator for space operations, said no apparent debris came off the external fuel tank during the launch. Debris has been a concern for NASA since a piece flew off the fuel tank and caused a breach in the wing of Columbia in 2003, dooming the shuttle and its seven crew members.
As insurance, Discovery's crew planned to spend a good part of Monday examining the shuttle's thermal protection system with cameras and sensors attached to a boom which is hooked to the shuttle's robotic arm.
Mission managers said Sunday that despite shortening Discovery's stay by a day, they would still be able to complete most of the tasks planned. The canceled spacewalk chores will be tackled by the space station crew after Discovery leaves.
"It's not a major setback to us," said Gerstenmaier. "We're able to accomplish everything we want."
That includes dropping off the space station's newest crew member: Japanese astronaut Koichi Wakata, who is replacing U.S. astronaut Sandra Magnus. From Tokyo, Japan's Chief Cabinet Secretary Takeo Kawamura said he was relieved by the successful launch after the delays.
Other tasks during the 13-day mission include installing the station's last pair of solar wings so the orbiting outpost can operate at full power. The crew will also deliver a replacement for a broken machine that turns urine into drinking water.
Problems with hydrogen valves kept the shuttle grounded for weeks in February and then a hydrogen leak during fueling prevented launch Wednesday. The valves worked as they should have and there were no leaks during fueling Sunday.
Discovery's crew also included pilot Tony Antonelli and astronauts Joseph Acaba, Steve Swanson, Richard Arnold and John Philips. Acaba and Arnold are former teachers.
___
Associated Press Writer Mike Schneider in Cape Canaveral and AP Science Writer Seth Borenstein in Washington D.C. contributed to this report.
Comment: Last month we were told that two satellites collided over Siberia. A few days later, fireballs were caught on video over Texas. Now in a week time we have heard twice of astronauts having to dodge 'space junk'.
Is there something we are not being told about what is going on in our atmosphere?
The white and orange ball was seen at 10pm yesterday and people in Shrewsbury said it appeared to drop to the ground near the Royal Shrewsbury Hospital.
Darren Perks was driving home when he saw it and said as it fell he saw what looked like a metallic ball inside the light.
All News Web
Thu, 12 Mar 2009 19:58 UTC
© Unknown
At 7.30pm on February the 17th an elderly woman was in her backyard when she saw a glowing object illuminate the entire area. The woman was alone but her daughter who lived nearby also saw the otherworldly object.
In another part of town the same object was seen by an amazed couple who managed to capture the event (photos at left) in spite of their initial stunned surprised. Another witness reported seeing the object hover above a nearby church.
© Unknown
It appears that recent photographs of UFOs have been getting clearer and the contours of the flying craft often can be seen, in contrast to past photo's often showing light spots. Is this part of an Alien plan to slowly condition humans to their presence? Are visitors from space unilaterally planning to openly announce their presence here soon without getting consulting earthly governments?
WKRG
Thu, 12 Mar 2009 21:43 UTC
The National Weather Service had no reports and suggested we check with the US Geological Survey.
The USGS is not showing any signs of seismic activity in our area. In fact, the closest earthquake to Mobile within the past week was 718 miles away in Sullivan, Missouri on Saturday night.
Eglin Air Force Base says they are not doing any training flights this afternoon which could've caused a sonic boom.
And both the Mobile County Sheriff's Office and EMA report nothing unusual.
But something definitely happened and it caused a lot of concern. Especially for a West Mobile woman who says dishes fell out of her cabinets and broke on the floor.
We'll keep looking into the mystery and let you know what we find out.
New Scientist
Fri, 13 Mar 2009 18:24 UTC
Frey is now trying to work out the age of the newly found craters. If they are the same age as the others, this would support the idea that asteroids bombarded the inner solar system for a particularly intense period about 4 billion years ago. Some researchers think that life may have existed before this bombardment, but if so, its survival now seems less likely, says Andrew Valley of the University of Wisconsin, Madison. "The probability that early primitive life, if it existed, could find refuge, even in sediments beneath the ocean would be reduced," he says.
Frey, who will present the work at the Lunar and Planetary Science Conference in Woodlands, Texas, later this month, expects more subtle features to be discovered when the Asian lunar probes release further data and NASA's Lunar Rover Orbiter launches in May.
HBCC UFO Research
Sat, 14 Mar 2009 19:51 UTC
Posted: March 14, 2009
Date: March 3, 2009
Time Approx: 9:30 p.m.
I have also seen this light and since have tried to contact some experts/researched about electricity in the atmosphere because of what I've seen, that's what I gathered from it. No thunder. No Noise. Just a big "bang" of light that flickered for a few seconds as lightning would.
I live in St.Philip's Newfoundland a couple minute drive from St.John's. I was sitting over my dad as he was on the computer and a window is to my right. Out of the corner of my eye I seen a big flash of light, almost turning the outdoors into day but with a hue of blue. Lasted only for a few seconds. I asked my father did he see it, but he was too into the computer to even respond. So I passed it off as maybe some lightning..as odd and random as it was.
It wasn't until the next morning when my boyfriend from Bonavista asked me "did you see the flash of light" that I started to get really interested. He and many others could see it as far out as there!? Over three hour drive away. I thought that was a little impossible.
My research turned up with out answers only "assumptions" of what it may have been. My mother reported from some co-workers that it was a blue light/flash, there were a number of reports saying that the blue light also faded to pink. I would love to know what it actually was, I'm very curious about it but that is all of the info I have.
Date: March 3, 2009
Time Approx: 9:30 p.m.
I have also seen this light and since have tried to contact some experts/researched about electricity in the atmosphere because of what I've seen, that's what I gathered from it. No thunder. No Noise. Just a big "bang" of light that flickered for a few seconds as lightning would.
I live in St.Philip's Newfoundland a couple minute drive from St.John's. I was sitting over my dad as he was on the computer and a window is to my right. Out of the corner of my eye I seen a big flash of light, almost turning the outdoors into day but with a hue of blue. Lasted only for a few seconds. I asked my father did he see it, but he was too into the computer to even respond. So I passed it off as maybe some lightning..as odd and random as it was.
It wasn't until the next morning when my boyfriend from Bonavista asked me "did you see the flash of light" that I started to get really interested. He and many others could see it as far out as there!? Over three hour drive away. I thought that was a little impossible.
My research turned up with out answers only "assumptions" of what it may have been. My mother reported from some co-workers that it was a blue light/flash, there were a number of reports saying that the blue light also faded to pink. I would love to know what it actually was, I'm very curious about it but that is all of the info I have.
Comment: There are two previous reports of the light in the sky of March 3rd.
You can find them here and here.
Associated Press
Mon, 16 Mar 2009 16:37 UTC
© ESA
Space station astronauts had a close call last week with a small piece of orbiting junk, and NASA said Monday that debris from a satellite that broke apart in 1981 could come within about half a mile of the station early Tuesday.
NASA will decide later Monday whether to fire the space station's engines to nudge the complex out of the path of the debris.
The three space station residents had to move into their emergency getaway capsule last week for about 10 minutes because another piece of space junk came too close for comfort.
NASA has moved the space station out of the way of debris eight times in the past, most recently in August, according to NASA records.
A NASA spokesman said if the space station has to move, the shuttle will have to adjust its course slightly to be in position for docking on Tuesday.
The debris is from a satellite called Kosmos 1275, said NASA spokesman Bill Jeffs, who did not know the size of the piece.
Kosmos 1275 broke up somewhat mysteriously, said NASA orbital debris scientist Mark Matney. It may have crashed with another object that wasn't tracked and it made a cloud of 310 pieces of debris that are slowly falling into a lower orbit, he said.
The shuttle launch Sunday followed five delays that caused Discovery's mission to be shortened by a day and canceled a planned spacewalk.
After a "first, quick look," Bill Gerstenmaier, NASA's associate administrator for space operations, said no apparent debris came off the external fuel tank during the launch. Debris has been a concern for NASA since a piece flew off the fuel tank and caused a breach in the wing of Columbia in 2003, dooming the shuttle and its seven crew members.
As insurance, Discovery's crew planned to spend a good part of Monday examining the shuttle's thermal protection system with cameras and sensors attached to a boom which is hooked to the shuttle's robotic arm.
Mission managers said Sunday that despite shortening Discovery's stay by a day, they would still be able to complete most of the tasks planned. The canceled spacewalk chores will be tackled by the space station crew after Discovery leaves.
"It's not a major setback to us," said Gerstenmaier. "We're able to accomplish everything we want."
That includes dropping off the space station's newest crew member: Japanese astronaut Koichi Wakata, who is replacing U.S. astronaut Sandra Magnus. From Tokyo, Japan's Chief Cabinet Secretary Takeo Kawamura said he was relieved by the successful launch after the delays.
Other tasks during the 13-day mission include installing the station's last pair of solar wings so the orbiting outpost can operate at full power. The crew will also deliver a replacement for a broken machine that turns urine into drinking water.
Problems with hydrogen valves kept the shuttle grounded for weeks in February and then a hydrogen leak during fueling prevented launch Wednesday. The valves worked as they should have and there were no leaks during fueling Sunday.
Discovery's crew also included pilot Tony Antonelli and astronauts Joseph Acaba, Steve Swanson, Richard Arnold and John Philips. Acaba and Arnold are former teachers.
___
Associated Press Writer Mike Schneider in Cape Canaveral and AP Science Writer Seth Borenstein in Washington D.C. contributed to this report.
Comment: Last month we were told that two satellites collided over Siberia. A few days later, fireballs were caught on video over Texas. Now in a week time we have heard twice of astronauts having to dodge 'space junk'.
Is there something we are not being told about what is going on in our atmosphere?
Asian News International
Sat, 14 Mar 2009 03:40 UTC
London - A scientist is analyzing the age of craters found on the Moon
in the 1990s to find out if they are the same age as the others, which
would support the idea that asteroids bombarded the inner solar system
about 4 billion years ago.
Most surveys of lunar impact craters have used photos, but Herbert Frey of NASAs Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland, wanted to know if there were any old craters buried beneath younger ones.
So, he studied elevation mapping data from the Clementine mission in the 1990s.
He also used simulations to identify impact signatures, such as a roughly circular crater with a thin crust and a thicker rim.
This approach uncovered 150 craters more than 300 kilometres wide instead of 45.
Frey is now trying to work out the age of the newly found craters. If they are the same age as the others, this would support the idea that asteroids bombarded the inner solar system for a particularly intense period about 4 billion years ago.
Some researchers think that life may have existed before this bombardment, but if so, its survival now seems less likely, said Andrew Valley of the University of Wisconsin, Madison.
The probability that early primitive life, if it existed, could find refuge, even in sediments beneath the ocean would be reduced, he added.
Other researchers, however, disagree, arguing that life could have survived the barrage of impacts deep underground.
Frey, who will present the work at the Lunar and Planetary Science Conference in Woodlands, Texas, later this month, expects more subtle features to be discovered when the Asian lunar probes release further data and NASA's Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter launches in May.
Most surveys of lunar impact craters have used photos, but Herbert Frey of NASAs Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland, wanted to know if there were any old craters buried beneath younger ones.
So, he studied elevation mapping data from the Clementine mission in the 1990s.
He also used simulations to identify impact signatures, such as a roughly circular crater with a thin crust and a thicker rim.
This approach uncovered 150 craters more than 300 kilometres wide instead of 45.
Frey is now trying to work out the age of the newly found craters. If they are the same age as the others, this would support the idea that asteroids bombarded the inner solar system for a particularly intense period about 4 billion years ago.
Some researchers think that life may have existed before this bombardment, but if so, its survival now seems less likely, said Andrew Valley of the University of Wisconsin, Madison.
The probability that early primitive life, if it existed, could find refuge, even in sediments beneath the ocean would be reduced, he added.
Other researchers, however, disagree, arguing that life could have survived the barrage of impacts deep underground.
Frey, who will present the work at the Lunar and Planetary Science Conference in Woodlands, Texas, later this month, expects more subtle features to be discovered when the Asian lunar probes release further data and NASA's Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter launches in May.
Michael Schirber
Space.com
Thu, 12 Mar 2009 03:55 UTC
Many scientists believe the dinosaurs were snuffed out by comet collision
Some stars have a high level of comet activity around them, and that could spell doom for any life trying to take root on any local planets. Ongoing research is trying to determine what fraction of stellar systems may be uninhabitable due to comet impacts.
Many of our own solar system's comets are found in the Kuiper Belt, a debris-filled disk that extends from Neptune's orbit (30 AU) out to almost twice that distance. Other stars have been shown to have similar debris disks.
"The debris is dust and larger fragments produced by the break-up of comets or asteroids as they collide amongst themselves," says Jane Greaves of the University of St. Andrews in Scotland.
Roughly 20 percent of nearby sun-like stars have debris disks that are more substantial than our Kuiper Belt, according to data from the Spitzer space telescope. More debris means more comets, but does this also mean more killer impacts for any Earth-like planets that might be orbiting these stars?
The answer depends on whether there are any gas giant planets around.
Jupiter is known to shield Earth from some comets by deflecting them out of the solar system. However, scientists showed in 2007 that Jupiter also injects other comets into Earth-crossing orbits. In fact, if Jupiter were Saturn's size, the number of impacts on Earth would have been much higher.
Greaves has been modeling how comets are generally affected by gas giants. Her early results indicate that comets will be a major problem around a few percent of sun-like stars.
Comet sweep
Early in our solar system's history, there were plenty of remnants left over from planet formation. All this debris led to a heavy bombardment of comets and asteroids on the inner planets, as evident in the crater record of the moon (on Earth, most of these scars have eroded away with time or have disappeared due to tectonic activity).
The number of impacts eventually tapered off around 3.8 billion years ago, 700 million years after the solar system formed.
The cause of this decrease may have been a shift in the orbits of the gas giants that cleared away many of the comets. Jupiter and Saturn appear to have migrated outwards, pushing out on the orbits of Uranus and Neptune. This in turn perturbed the Kuiper Belt and ejected many of the comets into interstellar space, Greaves says.
"This might be a very peculiar event, or it might happen in other star systems - we don't know yet, because we have limited information about their giant planets," she says.
Catastrophic impact
Still, our planet has not been completely immune to deadly impacts.
Many scientists believe the dinosaurs were snuffed out by a 4-20 kilometer-wide comet or asteroid that struck 65 million years ago at a point on the Yucatan peninsula. The impact led to a global firestorm and the eventual extinction of more than half of the planet's life forms.
A 100-kilometer impactor would have left no survivors. Such a "catastrophic impact" would destroy the entire crust of the Earth and eject the atmosphere into space.
The Earth likely experienced a few of these catastrophic impacts very early on, before life as we know it had even begun.
"While 'dinosaur-killer' class impacts occur about every 100 million years [on Earth], we would be unlikely to experience another 100-km class event in the lifetime of the sun," Greaves says.
How much higher would the impact rate on a planet need to be to prevent life from ever forming?
Greaves thinks that life could not evolve on a planet where 10-100 kilometer-size impactors hit every 20 million years. This kind of bombardment doesn't allow organisms enough time to recover between blows. The level of biodiversity remains low, so there's less probability that any species will survive the next devastating impact.
In previous work, Greaves and her colleagues speculated that Tau Ceti - a nearby sun-like star that has been a favorite target of SETI searches - is uninhabitable due to the large number of comets that appear to be buzzing around it (although this assessment may have been overly pessimistic, she now says).
Her team is currently looking at the general threat posed by comets. They have modeled various representative planetary systems (both with and without gas giants). From this, they estimate that at least a few percent of stars are going to be too comet-stricken to be in the running as possible hosts for life.
Some stars have a high level of comet activity around them, and that could spell doom for any life trying to take root on any local planets. Ongoing research is trying to determine what fraction of stellar systems may be uninhabitable due to comet impacts.
Many of our own solar system's comets are found in the Kuiper Belt, a debris-filled disk that extends from Neptune's orbit (30 AU) out to almost twice that distance. Other stars have been shown to have similar debris disks.
"The debris is dust and larger fragments produced by the break-up of comets or asteroids as they collide amongst themselves," says Jane Greaves of the University of St. Andrews in Scotland.
Roughly 20 percent of nearby sun-like stars have debris disks that are more substantial than our Kuiper Belt, according to data from the Spitzer space telescope. More debris means more comets, but does this also mean more killer impacts for any Earth-like planets that might be orbiting these stars?
The answer depends on whether there are any gas giant planets around.
Jupiter is known to shield Earth from some comets by deflecting them out of the solar system. However, scientists showed in 2007 that Jupiter also injects other comets into Earth-crossing orbits. In fact, if Jupiter were Saturn's size, the number of impacts on Earth would have been much higher.
Greaves has been modeling how comets are generally affected by gas giants. Her early results indicate that comets will be a major problem around a few percent of sun-like stars.
Comet sweep
Early in our solar system's history, there were plenty of remnants left over from planet formation. All this debris led to a heavy bombardment of comets and asteroids on the inner planets, as evident in the crater record of the moon (on Earth, most of these scars have eroded away with time or have disappeared due to tectonic activity).
The number of impacts eventually tapered off around 3.8 billion years ago, 700 million years after the solar system formed.
The cause of this decrease may have been a shift in the orbits of the gas giants that cleared away many of the comets. Jupiter and Saturn appear to have migrated outwards, pushing out on the orbits of Uranus and Neptune. This in turn perturbed the Kuiper Belt and ejected many of the comets into interstellar space, Greaves says.
"This might be a very peculiar event, or it might happen in other star systems - we don't know yet, because we have limited information about their giant planets," she says.
Catastrophic impact
Still, our planet has not been completely immune to deadly impacts.
Many scientists believe the dinosaurs were snuffed out by a 4-20 kilometer-wide comet or asteroid that struck 65 million years ago at a point on the Yucatan peninsula. The impact led to a global firestorm and the eventual extinction of more than half of the planet's life forms.
A 100-kilometer impactor would have left no survivors. Such a "catastrophic impact" would destroy the entire crust of the Earth and eject the atmosphere into space.
The Earth likely experienced a few of these catastrophic impacts very early on, before life as we know it had even begun.
"While 'dinosaur-killer' class impacts occur about every 100 million years [on Earth], we would be unlikely to experience another 100-km class event in the lifetime of the sun," Greaves says.
How much higher would the impact rate on a planet need to be to prevent life from ever forming?
Greaves thinks that life could not evolve on a planet where 10-100 kilometer-size impactors hit every 20 million years. This kind of bombardment doesn't allow organisms enough time to recover between blows. The level of biodiversity remains low, so there's less probability that any species will survive the next devastating impact.
In previous work, Greaves and her colleagues speculated that Tau Ceti - a nearby sun-like star that has been a favorite target of SETI searches - is uninhabitable due to the large number of comets that appear to be buzzing around it (although this assessment may have been overly pessimistic, she now says).
Her team is currently looking at the general threat posed by comets. They have modeled various representative planetary systems (both with and without gas giants). From this, they estimate that at least a few percent of stars are going to be too comet-stricken to be in the running as possible hosts for life.
SpaceWeather.com
Tue, 17 Mar 2009 21:22 UTC
Newly-discovered asteroid 2009 FH is flying past Earth tonight only
85,000 km away. That's about twice the altitude of a geosynchronous
communications satellite. Advanced amateur astronomers in North America
can photograph the 20-meter-wide space rock racing through the
constellation Gemini after sunset on March 17th. It should be about as
bright as a 14th magnitude star. [ephemeris] [3D orbit]
Phil Helsel
Staten Island Advance
Tue, 17 Mar 2009 20:21 UTC
It was the boom heard round Staten Island.
An "explosion" rattled windows and nerves in homes from Huguenot to New Dorp last night, but the cause of the blast remained a mystery today.
About two dozen people called the Advance and dozens more posted on silive.com in search of an answer in what had become a guessing game late last night.
Police and firefighters responded to numerous 911 calls but came up empty.
What appears to be fact is that a loud "boom" at about 7:55 p.m. could be heard for miles.
But what was it?
Callers and posters to silive.com, the Advance's home on the Web, had their own ideas.
Which meant everything from a mortar to a meteor to a sonic boom, to an exploding meth lab to, as authorities believe, one heck of a king-sized firecracker.
"As of now we have no idea," said a police contact. "Nothing exploded in anyone's home or anything like that, and we checked all the power lines. ... We think it's probably fireworks."
The first of a flurry of 911 and other calls came from Clarke Avenue in Richmond and reported there had been a massive explosion in the neighborhood, followed by others who reported hearing the blast in Oakwood, Bay Terrace, New Dorp, Annadale, Eltingville and Huguenot.
The FDNY's Ladder Co. 85 in New Dorp was also dispatched but found nothing, and power company Consolidated Edison reported no outages or transformer explosions.
That didn't stop posters at silive.com, from weighing in fast and furiously.
"If this was heard and felt across this many areas it was NOT a firework. If it was, it was several blockbusters condensed/improvised," opined ITLBS1. "I would say possibly a transformer but I am sure people would have lost power if that was the case." After nearly four hours of speculation, the discussion had moved on to a possible sonic boom created by a spy plane.
The last sensory mystery around these parts took nearly four years to solve.
Last month, Mayor Michael Bloomberg announced that the city had pinpointed the source of a maple syrup smell that had occasionally wafted over the Island since 2005. The scent, Bloomberg said, was "the result of the manufacturing of fragrances and food flavors" in a New Jersey plant.
Phil Helsel is a news reporter for the Advance. He may be reached at helsel@siadvance.com.
An "explosion" rattled windows and nerves in homes from Huguenot to New Dorp last night, but the cause of the blast remained a mystery today.
About two dozen people called the Advance and dozens more posted on silive.com in search of an answer in what had become a guessing game late last night.
Police and firefighters responded to numerous 911 calls but came up empty.
What appears to be fact is that a loud "boom" at about 7:55 p.m. could be heard for miles.
But what was it?
Callers and posters to silive.com, the Advance's home on the Web, had their own ideas.
Which meant everything from a mortar to a meteor to a sonic boom, to an exploding meth lab to, as authorities believe, one heck of a king-sized firecracker.
"As of now we have no idea," said a police contact. "Nothing exploded in anyone's home or anything like that, and we checked all the power lines. ... We think it's probably fireworks."
The first of a flurry of 911 and other calls came from Clarke Avenue in Richmond and reported there had been a massive explosion in the neighborhood, followed by others who reported hearing the blast in Oakwood, Bay Terrace, New Dorp, Annadale, Eltingville and Huguenot.
The FDNY's Ladder Co. 85 in New Dorp was also dispatched but found nothing, and power company Consolidated Edison reported no outages or transformer explosions.
That didn't stop posters at silive.com, from weighing in fast and furiously.
"If this was heard and felt across this many areas it was NOT a firework. If it was, it was several blockbusters condensed/improvised," opined ITLBS1. "I would say possibly a transformer but I am sure people would have lost power if that was the case." After nearly four hours of speculation, the discussion had moved on to a possible sonic boom created by a spy plane.
The last sensory mystery around these parts took nearly four years to solve.
Last month, Mayor Michael Bloomberg announced that the city had pinpointed the source of a maple syrup smell that had occasionally wafted over the Island since 2005. The scent, Bloomberg said, was "the result of the manufacturing of fragrances and food flavors" in a New Jersey plant.
Phil Helsel is a news reporter for the Advance. He may be reached at helsel@siadvance.com.
Christine Sexton
Echo
Wed, 18 Mar 2009 19:47 UTC
Paranormal investigators are looking into reports of a mysterious UFO seen flying over Pitsea.
A woman and her son witnessed the "burning fireball" whizzing across the sky at the speed of an aeroplane.
The 40-year-old was driving in Ashlyns, Pitsea, with her son, aged 20, when she spied the spectacle on the horizon at 8.30pm on Friday.
The woman, from Pitsea, said: "We couldn't believe it. We actually pulled over to watch it. It seemed to be near to the Barstable School area.
"It was like a burning fireball - a bit like a massive firework - but it kept going up and all over the place at such great speed.
"It definitely wasn't a firework.
"It was almost white it was burning so brightly. I'm not an idiot, I know what I saw and it wasn't a plane or a balloon or anything like that.
"This is the first time I've ever seen anything like this. My son and I have been talking about it ever since."
The incident comes just a few weeks after another eerie sighting was made in South Woodham Ferrers. Witnesses reported seeing six strange red lights hovering in the sky.
Paul Joslin, from Crays Hill, near Billericay, is a budding UFO tracker.
Together with his group, the Unknown Phenomena Investigations Association, he looks into mysterious sightings across the district.
He said: "This sounds really interesting. We'll be looking into it.
"It could have been a UFO balloon, which people deliberately launch to try to trick others into believing they're seeing a UFO, but it doesn't sound like it to be honest.
"I would urge anyone else who saw it to come forward as well, so we can get as much information as possible about what it looked like."
Did you see the strange lights on Friday, or have you made a UFO sighting recently? Call the Echo on 01268 469308.
A woman and her son witnessed the "burning fireball" whizzing across the sky at the speed of an aeroplane.
The 40-year-old was driving in Ashlyns, Pitsea, with her son, aged 20, when she spied the spectacle on the horizon at 8.30pm on Friday.
The woman, from Pitsea, said: "We couldn't believe it. We actually pulled over to watch it. It seemed to be near to the Barstable School area.
"It was like a burning fireball - a bit like a massive firework - but it kept going up and all over the place at such great speed.
"It definitely wasn't a firework.
"It was almost white it was burning so brightly. I'm not an idiot, I know what I saw and it wasn't a plane or a balloon or anything like that.
"This is the first time I've ever seen anything like this. My son and I have been talking about it ever since."
The incident comes just a few weeks after another eerie sighting was made in South Woodham Ferrers. Witnesses reported seeing six strange red lights hovering in the sky.
Paul Joslin, from Crays Hill, near Billericay, is a budding UFO tracker.
Together with his group, the Unknown Phenomena Investigations Association, he looks into mysterious sightings across the district.
He said: "This sounds really interesting. We'll be looking into it.
"It could have been a UFO balloon, which people deliberately launch to try to trick others into believing they're seeing a UFO, but it doesn't sound like it to be honest.
"I would urge anyone else who saw it to come forward as well, so we can get as much information as possible about what it looked like."
Did you see the strange lights on Friday, or have you made a UFO sighting recently? Call the Echo on 01268 469308.
Fox News
Wed, 18 Mar 2009 22:30 UTC
Pasadena, California - Scientists say a newly discovered asteroid whizzed harmlessly past Earth on Wednesday, the second close encounter in a month.
The small space rock dubbed 2009 FH flew within 49,000 miles of the Earth's surface at 8:17 a.m. EDT.
Don Yeomans, who heads NASA's Near-Earth Object Program, says there was never any chance of an impact.
The asteroid, measuring 43 feet and 95 feet across, was spotted Monday night by the NASA-funded Catalina Sky Survey in Arizona.
An asteroid this size usually comes this close to Earth every few months.
Wednesday's flyby was farther away than another asteroid close call earlier this month. That asteroid was about the size of one that blasted Siberia a century ago came within 41,000 miles of Earth.
The small space rock dubbed 2009 FH flew within 49,000 miles of the Earth's surface at 8:17 a.m. EDT.
Don Yeomans, who heads NASA's Near-Earth Object Program, says there was never any chance of an impact.
The asteroid, measuring 43 feet and 95 feet across, was spotted Monday night by the NASA-funded Catalina Sky Survey in Arizona.
An asteroid this size usually comes this close to Earth every few months.
Wednesday's flyby was farther away than another asteroid close call earlier this month. That asteroid was about the size of one that blasted Siberia a century ago came within 41,000 miles of Earth.
US: Morning boom probably meteor, University of South Carolina-Aiken astronomer says
Preston Sparks
Augusta Chronicle
Fri, 20 Mar 2009 19:27 UTC
You weren't imagining things if you heard a loud boom between 2 and 3 a.m. this morning.
Dr. Gary Senn, director of the Dupont Planetarium in the Ruth Patrick Science Education Center at USC Aiken, says it was a large meteor, technically called a bolide.
"We've had a couple of calls this morning from people," he said. "It seems like a few people were outside and actually saw the thing itself. Others reported hearing the sound."
He said people have reported the sound to be like a clap of thunder. Sightings were of a large fireball in the sky.
About the same time as the boom was heard, a brief power outage occurred at the Medical College of Georgia Hospital at 2:41 a.m., according to hospital officials. However, spokeswoman Deborah Humphrey said there is no evidence it had anything to do with the boom.
"It appears to be coincidental," she said.
Dr. Senn said it's possible the meteor could have struck the ground somewhere in the area, but it all depends on whether it exploded upon entering the atmosphere - which could have caused the loud boom - or whether it hit at an angle that left it intact.
If it stayed intact, he said the loud sound people heard could have been that of a sonic boom.
"It's very rare, but occasionally if a large enough bolide enters at the right angle it can create a sonic boom," he said.
Dr. Senn said sightings of large fireballs in the sky are somewhat rare, but have occurred before in the Augusta area.
He said those who saw or heard this morning's fireball are asked to visit the Web site www.amsmeteors.org and file a fireball sighting report. From there, the American Meteor Society will use the information to help it determine where the meteor might have collided, should it have survived the entry into the atmosphere. The report can be found on the site by clicking on "fireball sightings" and then scrolling to the bottom to the link "fireball reporting form."
Dr. Gary Senn, director of the Dupont Planetarium in the Ruth Patrick Science Education Center at USC Aiken, says it was a large meteor, technically called a bolide.
"We've had a couple of calls this morning from people," he said. "It seems like a few people were outside and actually saw the thing itself. Others reported hearing the sound."
He said people have reported the sound to be like a clap of thunder. Sightings were of a large fireball in the sky.
About the same time as the boom was heard, a brief power outage occurred at the Medical College of Georgia Hospital at 2:41 a.m., according to hospital officials. However, spokeswoman Deborah Humphrey said there is no evidence it had anything to do with the boom.
"It appears to be coincidental," she said.
Dr. Senn said it's possible the meteor could have struck the ground somewhere in the area, but it all depends on whether it exploded upon entering the atmosphere - which could have caused the loud boom - or whether it hit at an angle that left it intact.
If it stayed intact, he said the loud sound people heard could have been that of a sonic boom.
"It's very rare, but occasionally if a large enough bolide enters at the right angle it can create a sonic boom," he said.
Dr. Senn said sightings of large fireballs in the sky are somewhat rare, but have occurred before in the Augusta area.
He said those who saw or heard this morning's fireball are asked to visit the Web site www.amsmeteors.org and file a fireball sighting report. From there, the American Meteor Society will use the information to help it determine where the meteor might have collided, should it have survived the entry into the atmosphere. The report can be found on the site by clicking on "fireball sightings" and then scrolling to the bottom to the link "fireball reporting form."
Mark Worley
The Mercury
Sun, 22 Mar 2009 19:56 UTC
The source of a long trail of lights seen by many Tasmanians speeding
across the sky yesterday afternoon remained unknown last night.
Tasmania Police switchboards were inundated with phone calls from across the state about 1.30pm -- all from people concerned about the lights which appeared to be heading downwards as they headed south.
Police told the Sunday Tasmanian the sightings had triggered fears that a plane or a meteor was about to crash to the ground.
Some callers had thought distress flares were being let off.
Launceston Planetarium curator Martin George said last night the descriptions he had heard sounded as if it had been a meteor burning up after entering the Earth's atmosphere but this could not be confirmed.
Witness Debbie Gibson was at Seymour Point, just north of Bicheno on Tasmania's East Coast, when the scorching light caught her eye.
"We were on the beach and I looked up above the water and saw this glistening thing in the sky," she said.
"It was really bright, and had a long thin tail which trailed behind it.
"But it was the colours which were really noticeable.
"It was yellow and blue and kind of silvery at the front of the light -- it looked like it was burning.
"It was going really fast and only probably took about eight seconds to stretch over the point and out of sight.
"I have never seen anything like it."
Elsewhere around the state, people thought they were watching a disaster unfold.
Acting Sergeant Tom Burley of the police radio dispatch service said initial callers were seriously worried.
"Some people rang in saying they thought a plane had crashed," Acting Sgt Burley said.
"Others around Hobart said they thought flares had been let off over the Derwent."
Acting Sgt Burley said police received more than 20 calls from concerned residents.
"We had calls from the Bass Highway near Latrobe in the North-West, from Bicheno on the East Coast and from south of Huonville in the South," he said.
"And there were a lot of calls from around Hobart.
"Everyone described a bright burning light which crossed the sky in a southerly direction."
Mr George said he had not seen the light, but had made several phone calls when he was alerted to the episode.
"From what I have learned from the various reports, it seems the most likely explanation is that it was a natural object entering the Earth's atmosphere," Mr George said.
"For an object to be this bright, it would typically need to have the mass of a few kilograms.
"I understand it was seen for up to about nine seconds which is unusually long for a meteor, but not unknown.
"From what I have been able to determine, no man-made objects were expected to re-enter the atmosphere so it does not appear to have been space junk."
Mr George said meteors that were easily visible during the day were extremely rare.
"To see something as clearly as people did yesterday, a person would have to watch the sky for several hours a day, for several years," he said.
Mr George said if the light had been a meteor it was likely to have either burnt up before it reached the ground or landed somewhere in the ocean.
Tasmania Police switchboards were inundated with phone calls from across the state about 1.30pm -- all from people concerned about the lights which appeared to be heading downwards as they headed south.
Police told the Sunday Tasmanian the sightings had triggered fears that a plane or a meteor was about to crash to the ground.
Some callers had thought distress flares were being let off.
Launceston Planetarium curator Martin George said last night the descriptions he had heard sounded as if it had been a meteor burning up after entering the Earth's atmosphere but this could not be confirmed.
Witness Debbie Gibson was at Seymour Point, just north of Bicheno on Tasmania's East Coast, when the scorching light caught her eye.
"We were on the beach and I looked up above the water and saw this glistening thing in the sky," she said.
"It was really bright, and had a long thin tail which trailed behind it.
"But it was the colours which were really noticeable.
"It was yellow and blue and kind of silvery at the front of the light -- it looked like it was burning.
"It was going really fast and only probably took about eight seconds to stretch over the point and out of sight.
"I have never seen anything like it."
Elsewhere around the state, people thought they were watching a disaster unfold.
Acting Sergeant Tom Burley of the police radio dispatch service said initial callers were seriously worried.
"Some people rang in saying they thought a plane had crashed," Acting Sgt Burley said.
"Others around Hobart said they thought flares had been let off over the Derwent."
Acting Sgt Burley said police received more than 20 calls from concerned residents.
"We had calls from the Bass Highway near Latrobe in the North-West, from Bicheno on the East Coast and from south of Huonville in the South," he said.
"And there were a lot of calls from around Hobart.
"Everyone described a bright burning light which crossed the sky in a southerly direction."
Mr George said he had not seen the light, but had made several phone calls when he was alerted to the episode.
"From what I have learned from the various reports, it seems the most likely explanation is that it was a natural object entering the Earth's atmosphere," Mr George said.
"For an object to be this bright, it would typically need to have the mass of a few kilograms.
"I understand it was seen for up to about nine seconds which is unusually long for a meteor, but not unknown.
"From what I have been able to determine, no man-made objects were expected to re-enter the atmosphere so it does not appear to have been space junk."
Mr George said meteors that were easily visible during the day were extremely rare.
"To see something as clearly as people did yesterday, a person would have to watch the sky for several hours a day, for several years," he said.
Mr George said if the light had been a meteor it was likely to have either burnt up before it reached the ground or landed somewhere in the ocean.
Greenwichtime.com
Thu, 26 Mar 2009 09:06 UTC
When the boom hit shortly before 10 p.m. on an autumn night a decade
ago, a security guard at First Union Bank on Main Street thought
robbers were breaking in.
The desk sergeant thought something exploded at police headquarters on Bedford Street.
Stamford Emergency Medical Service workers thought someone drove into their Strawberry Hill Avenue building.
At Curley's Diner downtown, the manager thought someone fell in the bathroom.
A woman who lived near Stamford Hospital thought her child pulled over a dresser.
They were all wrong. But to this day no one knows what caused the "Stamford Boom" of Oct. 3, 1999.
In fact, the mystery has grown.
The boom shook houses near Stamford Hospital, in Hubbard Heights and downtown -- and nowhere else.
Authorities ruled out earthquake, thunder, sonic boom, a gas, sewer or transformer explosion, construction blasting and meteors.
In the days that followed, it got weirder.
A man reported that he was walking on Compo Beach in Westport that afternoon when he saw a "spinning wheel in the sky" over Long Island Sound. A man on a boat off Compo Beach reported seeing a shiny object that looked like "two wheels seemingly connected, each going in the opposite direction" about the same time.
Later, about 4 p.m., a woman in Darien reported seeing "a strange spinning object" with lights before it disappeared over trees. Shortly afterward, two witnesses in Stamford reported seeing a UFO.
From Stamford, Darien and Norwalk came reports of flashing lights in the sky about 9:45 p.m. At 9:50 p.m., houses rattled in central Stamford, sending residents into the streets to ask each other, "What was that?"
Lillian Lampros of Holcomb Avenue remembers opening her door and looking into the yard.
"There was no light, no smoke, nothing," Lampros said. "It was such a big boom. I called my neighbor."
They thought a transformer exploded. They didn't think UFO.
Jon Nowinski, director of Smoking Gun Research Agency, a Westport nonprofit that investigates paranormal phenomena, said at the time that the sound could have been caused by an aircraft -- military or extraterrestrial -- that could accelerate straight up or at a steep angle fast enough to break the sound barrier. Otherwise, the sonic boom would be heard over a larger area.
"That's what struck us the most. This was isolated to a small area of Stamford," Nowinski said this week. "Another thing is that a sonic boom sounds almost like a rumble of thunder. People wouldn't think twice about it. But these people were reporting something that shocked them."
Smoking Gun researchers turned up reports of other mysterious booms elsewhere, also about a decade ago -- December 1997 near Springfield, Mo.; May 1998 near Los Angeles; August 1998 near Narragansett Bay, R.I.; and January 1999 near Denver.
Another occurred this month. Residents of Staten Island, N.Y., heard a large boom that shook buildings at 7:55 p.m. March 16. It was isolated to six neighborhoods. Authorities ruled out explosions, fireworks, sonic booms, weather and earthquake.
People often think earthquakes are the cause of rumbles, but that's unlikely in the Stamford area, where they occur once every few years and register 2.5 magnitude at the strongest, said Won-Young Kim, a seismologist at the Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory in Palisades, N.Y.
"People do feel it -- the house shakes -- but, unless the quake is very shallow, you don't hear anything," Kim said.
Meteors are another common explanation. But you'd see those, said Andrew Ackerman, an atmospheric scientist with NASA at the Goddard Institute for Space Studies in Manhattan.
"It looks like a missile with smoke behind it. A meteor will light up a daytime sky," Ackerman said.
It's possible UFOs exist, but aircraft that can break the sound barrier are "entirely military now that we no longer have the Concord," Ackerman said. The question is "whether you can expect to get a straight answer on the comings and goings of military aircraft. This is why UFOlogy can be such a rich vein -- you don't know what is known because the military can't tell you."
Nowinski said he is "a skeptic with UFOs" and he thinks "most of the things we see can be traced to the military. They are far more advanced than they are willing to let on."
Lampros said it's possible a UFO hovered over her home a decade ago.
"I don't disbelieve it. You just never know," she said. "But 'ET' hasn't come to my house yet."
-- Angela Carella is an assistant city editor at the Advocate.
The desk sergeant thought something exploded at police headquarters on Bedford Street.
Stamford Emergency Medical Service workers thought someone drove into their Strawberry Hill Avenue building.
At Curley's Diner downtown, the manager thought someone fell in the bathroom.
A woman who lived near Stamford Hospital thought her child pulled over a dresser.
They were all wrong. But to this day no one knows what caused the "Stamford Boom" of Oct. 3, 1999.
In fact, the mystery has grown.
The boom shook houses near Stamford Hospital, in Hubbard Heights and downtown -- and nowhere else.
Authorities ruled out earthquake, thunder, sonic boom, a gas, sewer or transformer explosion, construction blasting and meteors.
In the days that followed, it got weirder.
A man reported that he was walking on Compo Beach in Westport that afternoon when he saw a "spinning wheel in the sky" over Long Island Sound. A man on a boat off Compo Beach reported seeing a shiny object that looked like "two wheels seemingly connected, each going in the opposite direction" about the same time.
Later, about 4 p.m., a woman in Darien reported seeing "a strange spinning object" with lights before it disappeared over trees. Shortly afterward, two witnesses in Stamford reported seeing a UFO.
From Stamford, Darien and Norwalk came reports of flashing lights in the sky about 9:45 p.m. At 9:50 p.m., houses rattled in central Stamford, sending residents into the streets to ask each other, "What was that?"
Lillian Lampros of Holcomb Avenue remembers opening her door and looking into the yard.
"There was no light, no smoke, nothing," Lampros said. "It was such a big boom. I called my neighbor."
They thought a transformer exploded. They didn't think UFO.
Jon Nowinski, director of Smoking Gun Research Agency, a Westport nonprofit that investigates paranormal phenomena, said at the time that the sound could have been caused by an aircraft -- military or extraterrestrial -- that could accelerate straight up or at a steep angle fast enough to break the sound barrier. Otherwise, the sonic boom would be heard over a larger area.
"That's what struck us the most. This was isolated to a small area of Stamford," Nowinski said this week. "Another thing is that a sonic boom sounds almost like a rumble of thunder. People wouldn't think twice about it. But these people were reporting something that shocked them."
Smoking Gun researchers turned up reports of other mysterious booms elsewhere, also about a decade ago -- December 1997 near Springfield, Mo.; May 1998 near Los Angeles; August 1998 near Narragansett Bay, R.I.; and January 1999 near Denver.
Another occurred this month. Residents of Staten Island, N.Y., heard a large boom that shook buildings at 7:55 p.m. March 16. It was isolated to six neighborhoods. Authorities ruled out explosions, fireworks, sonic booms, weather and earthquake.
People often think earthquakes are the cause of rumbles, but that's unlikely in the Stamford area, where they occur once every few years and register 2.5 magnitude at the strongest, said Won-Young Kim, a seismologist at the Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory in Palisades, N.Y.
"People do feel it -- the house shakes -- but, unless the quake is very shallow, you don't hear anything," Kim said.
Meteors are another common explanation. But you'd see those, said Andrew Ackerman, an atmospheric scientist with NASA at the Goddard Institute for Space Studies in Manhattan.
"It looks like a missile with smoke behind it. A meteor will light up a daytime sky," Ackerman said.
It's possible UFOs exist, but aircraft that can break the sound barrier are "entirely military now that we no longer have the Concord," Ackerman said. The question is "whether you can expect to get a straight answer on the comings and goings of military aircraft. This is why UFOlogy can be such a rich vein -- you don't know what is known because the military can't tell you."
Nowinski said he is "a skeptic with UFOs" and he thinks "most of the things we see can be traced to the military. They are far more advanced than they are willing to let on."
Lampros said it's possible a UFO hovered over her home a decade ago.
"I don't disbelieve it. You just never know," she said. "But 'ET' hasn't come to my house yet."
-- Angela Carella is an assistant city editor at the Advocate.
Robert Block
Los Angeles Times
Mon, 23 Mar 2009 04:13 UTC
A
piece of space junk is approaching their orbit, so the shuttle powers
the space station out of the way. Ten days ago, another piece of junk
menaced the station.
Orlando, Florida -- With his ship still docked at the International Space Station, shuttle commander Lee Archambault fired up Discovery's steering jets Sunday to move the linked craft into a new position that will reduce their chances of colliding with a piece of space junk.
According to NASA, Archambault turned the station and the shuttle 180 degrees with the shuttle leading the station as it orbits Earth. That should increase the natural drag of the craft on the edge of the atmosphere enough to slow them down by about a foot per second, and lower their orbit just enough to avoid a piece of debris threatening the station.
"Had we not taken this action, the first time of closest approach would have been about two hours into Monday's spacewalk," NASA said in a news release.
The debris is part of a spent Chinese satellite and is estimated to be 4 inches across. It is in a similar altitude as Discovery and the station but in a slightly different inclination, meaning the debris would have crossed the shuttle-station orbit repeatedly for several days. The maneuver eliminates that risk, NASA said.
This is the third time in the last few weeks that the station has had to worry about space junk speeding around Earth on a possible collision course. Ten days ago, before Discovery launched, the crew of the station had to take shelter in a Russian Soyuz lifeboat capsule as a 5-inch piece of spent rocket motor came within striking distance; it missed. And in February, two satellites collided, creating a field of debris.
"Space debris is becoming an ever-increasing challenge," flight director Kwatsi Alibaruho said Sunday evening. When it comes to dodging junk, "it's a big deal. It's very tiring. Sometimes it's exhausting."
The latest episode occurred as NASA scrambled to put together a spacewalking repair plan for a jammed equipment platform at the space station.
Today, on the third and final spacewalk of Discovery's mission, astronauts plan to return to an equipment storage shelf that jammed and could not be deployed Saturday. The spacewalkers accidentally had inserted a pin upside down. On Sunday, Alibaruho said the catch for the mechanism is considerably stiffer than expected and engineers think the upside-down pin might not be the culprit after all.
Today's spacewalkers -- former teachers Joseph Acaba and Richard Arnold -- will use all their strength to get the shelf properly deployed. If nothing works, the jammed platform will be tied down with sturdier tethers.
A hastily assembled team of experts spent Saturday night and much of Sunday trying to figure out how best to deal with the problem.
The storage platform is meant to secure big spare parts that will be needed once NASA's shuttles stop flying.
Despite the recent incidents, Discovery's astronauts said they didn't worry about space junk when they were outside.
"We have enough other risks and worries to take on as we go outside," said Steven Swanson, who took part in the first two spacewalks.
While Archambault was steering the station away from danger Sunday, other astronauts were trying to figure out what was wrong with the water-recycling unit. The unit, designed to turn astronaut urine and sweat into drinking water, was not working properly despite a new part. The processor, delivered in November by the shuttle Endeavour's crew, hasn't worked since after Christmas. Recycling urine is crucial to NASA's long-range plans to support a full-time crew of six on the space station, beginning this year.
Discovery will leave the station Wednesday.
The Associated Press contributed to this report.
Last October, astronomers found the first
asteroid on a certain collision course with Earth, observing the
4-metre-long rock as it hurtled towards the planet and then exploded in
the sky some 37 kilometres above the Nubian Desert in Sudan.
At the time it was unclear whether the blast would leave anything but dust behind, but a team of scientists and volunteers has managed to recover fragments of the 80-tonne asteroid, called 2008 TC3, during several searches that began in December (see First tracked space rock recovered after impact). So far, meteorites weighing a total of about 5 kg have been found.
They will provide a crucial piece of ground truth to test how well observations of asteroids in space match up with their actual compositions.
New Scientist talks with Peter Jenniskens of the SETI Institute in Mountain View, California, about how the rocks were found.
How did you get started in the search?
I immediately realised if it was possible to recover some meteorites that it would be spectacular, because we could for the first time link a particular type of meteorite with a particular class of asteroids.
So I established contact with Dr Muawia Shaddad at the University of Khartoum and gave him as much advice as I could on what sort of information to collect from observers. In the days and weeks after the event, he asked around to people who had seen the fireball and sent me spectacular images of a big cloud of dust in the sky that were photographed by people's cell phones just before dawn on the morning of October 7 (see image).
It turns out thousands of people along the Nile [in northern Sudan] had seen this because it happened just after morning prayer. And they all described a really bright light, as if somebody just behind them had turned on their car lights.
The pictures themselves were not immediately usable to get information on how high in the sky the asteroid had exploded, because there were no reference stars in the pictures. So after a while I thought maybe I should go and visit, interview eyewitnesses, and take some star background images from the very spots where these pictures were taken.
[Shaddad] organised for us to travel all the way up to the border of Egypt to interview the eyewitnesses that saw the fireball and for a group of 45 students and staff from Khartoum to join us a few days later to help comb the desert for meteoroids.
Once you got to the Sudan, was it clear you would find meteorites?
Initially things looked pretty bleak, because the reports we were getting from the observers was that nothing big had came out of the explosion. We didn't know if anything would have survived. Never before has a meteoroid been recovered for something that exploded this high up in the atmosphere. When it's high up it's not appreciably slowed down by the atmosphere, and that makes the explosion very energetic, turning most of the thing into dust.
The few scraps that come out are small pieces and they fall very close to where the explosion happened. The big pieces just keep going. In the end, we had to walk 29 kilometres to cover this debris field.
How did the search work?
On the first day, we spent most of the day driving 28 kilometres inland from the railroad to the area where the smaller pieces would have fallen (see map). Then we basically lined up the students maybe 20 metres apart over the span of a kilometre and started to comb the desert.
We didn't quite know what to look for. Based on the spectra that were obtained of the object in space, there was talk that the rock might have been a C-type asteroid. C-types are linked to carbonaceous chondrites [primitive, unaltered meteorites], so I was looking for something dark. But I didn't know whether the crust would be recognisable, so it was quite difficult to explain what it might look like.
Were the pieces hard to find?
If we didn't have so many eyes and legs to go walk the desert, we would never have found them. [On the first survey] I walked in the desert for three days and I didn't find a single one. We had 45 people and only 15 meteorites were found the first time, and that was after 29 km of hiking and searching. It took a lot of patience.
Students came with various sorts of rocks, none of which were meteorites. As the Sun was low on the horizon, yet again someone came back and said a student had found something. I distinctly remember thinking, "Oh no, not again", and then I was brought to the student and he showed me this meteorite. It had a beautiful fusion crust - a nice layer of glass - and the rock had broken so you could look inside (see meteorite image).
It was still quite possible it was something that had lain in the desert for a long time, but in hindsight it was indeed part of our asteroid.
Very gradually we started finding bigger pieces, and at the end the pieces we were finding were chicken-egg size.
What did you find when you analysed the meteorites?
[The meteorites belong to a known type, but they are] different from the ones that have been recovered before, in the sense that [they're] very fragile and very dark, because there's lots of carbon. It's material that was heated so much that part of the rock became fluid but not the whole rock. It illustrates what happens in a certain phase of planet evolution before things get all molten (see Magma oceans sloshed across early asteroids).
We can now say with certainty that this dark variety corresponds to F-class asteroids. There are many ideas about how these rocks formed, so we're hoping that this meteorite will be able to differentiate between them. That's sort of a next step in the study.
Do you think you'll be able to recover more such meteorites in the future?
I really hope this would happen again sometime somewhere. Asteroids of this size hit the Earth about once a year, but for astronomers to see the object coming in, it has to move through the area of searches [by astronomical surveys], and that's only a small part of the sky, so we have to be lucky for this to happen. In the future, when more [astronomical surveys] come online, maybe our chances will improve.
They saw it coming, and
they got what was coming to them. For the first time, researchers not
only detected an asteroid in space, but also tracked its progress and
then collected its debris after it crashed to Earth.
The car-sized asteroid, dubbed 2008 TC3, landed in northern Sudan on October 7, 2008, scientists report in the March 25 Nature. The study combines for one asteroid data that are usually separate: Comparing data from observations of the asteroid in while it was space with analysis of its meteorite fragments on Earth will yield new insights into asteroids, the scientists say.
Small asteroids like 2008 TC3 are fairly common, with about one asteroid impacting Earth each year. But these small asteroids are usually not spotted until they enter the Earth's atmosphere. "It's like when bugs splatter on the windshield. You don't see the bug until it's too late," says physicist and study coauthor Mark Boslough of Sandia National Laboratories in Albuquerque, N.M. Bigger asteroids are easier to spot but are much less common. "You'd see a baseball coming towards the windshield much sooner," Boslough says. And it's hard to detect the small asteroids because even powerful telescopes can only scan a small portion of the sky each night.
Scientists got lucky when they spotted 2008 TC3 using the Catalina Sky Survey telescope atop Mount Lemmon north of Tucson, Ariz. "It just so happened that the asteroid was coming from the direction that the telescope was pointed in," says astronomer and study coauthor Peter Jenniskens of the SETI Institute in Mountain View, Calif.
As 2008 TC3 hurtled through space, researchers studied the spectra of sunlight reflected from its surface to get information about the asteroid's mineral composition. The spectra showed that the asteroid was likely to come from the mysterious F-class of asteroids, a class only observed in space but not yet found as a meteorite on Earth..
Monitoring 2008 TC3's progress, researchers correctly predicted that it would impact the Nubian Desert of northern Sudan about 19 hours after it was first spotted. Eyewitnesses reported seeing a fireball as the asteroid exploded over the desert.
Jenniskens and 45 students and staff from the University of Khartoum in Sudan searched for remnants along the asteroid's projected path. The recovery team eventually found about 47 meteorites from 2008 TC3.
When the researchers got the meteorites back to the lab, they were in for a surprise. "The recovered meteorites were unlike anything in our collections up to that point," Jenniskens says.
Studying the ratio of oxygen isotopes revealed that the meteorites were of the rare ureilite category. "This is the first time that ureilites were linked to F-class asteroids," comments astronomer David Nesvorny of the Southwest Research Institute in Boulder, Colo. Researchers had previously thought ureilite meteorites came only from S-class asteroids.
Following 2008 TC3 also gave the researchers the opportunity to test their asteroid tracking devices. If a dangerously large asteroid was on a collision course with Earth, scientists would want to know that everything worked, Boslough says.
Orlando, Florida -- With his ship still docked at the International Space Station, shuttle commander Lee Archambault fired up Discovery's steering jets Sunday to move the linked craft into a new position that will reduce their chances of colliding with a piece of space junk.
According to NASA, Archambault turned the station and the shuttle 180 degrees with the shuttle leading the station as it orbits Earth. That should increase the natural drag of the craft on the edge of the atmosphere enough to slow them down by about a foot per second, and lower their orbit just enough to avoid a piece of debris threatening the station.
"Had we not taken this action, the first time of closest approach would have been about two hours into Monday's spacewalk," NASA said in a news release.
The debris is part of a spent Chinese satellite and is estimated to be 4 inches across. It is in a similar altitude as Discovery and the station but in a slightly different inclination, meaning the debris would have crossed the shuttle-station orbit repeatedly for several days. The maneuver eliminates that risk, NASA said.
This is the third time in the last few weeks that the station has had to worry about space junk speeding around Earth on a possible collision course. Ten days ago, before Discovery launched, the crew of the station had to take shelter in a Russian Soyuz lifeboat capsule as a 5-inch piece of spent rocket motor came within striking distance; it missed. And in February, two satellites collided, creating a field of debris.
"Space debris is becoming an ever-increasing challenge," flight director Kwatsi Alibaruho said Sunday evening. When it comes to dodging junk, "it's a big deal. It's very tiring. Sometimes it's exhausting."
The latest episode occurred as NASA scrambled to put together a spacewalking repair plan for a jammed equipment platform at the space station.
Today, on the third and final spacewalk of Discovery's mission, astronauts plan to return to an equipment storage shelf that jammed and could not be deployed Saturday. The spacewalkers accidentally had inserted a pin upside down. On Sunday, Alibaruho said the catch for the mechanism is considerably stiffer than expected and engineers think the upside-down pin might not be the culprit after all.
Today's spacewalkers -- former teachers Joseph Acaba and Richard Arnold -- will use all their strength to get the shelf properly deployed. If nothing works, the jammed platform will be tied down with sturdier tethers.
A hastily assembled team of experts spent Saturday night and much of Sunday trying to figure out how best to deal with the problem.
The storage platform is meant to secure big spare parts that will be needed once NASA's shuttles stop flying.
Despite the recent incidents, Discovery's astronauts said they didn't worry about space junk when they were outside.
"We have enough other risks and worries to take on as we go outside," said Steven Swanson, who took part in the first two spacewalks.
While Archambault was steering the station away from danger Sunday, other astronauts were trying to figure out what was wrong with the water-recycling unit. The unit, designed to turn astronaut urine and sweat into drinking water, was not working properly despite a new part. The processor, delivered in November by the shuttle Endeavour's crew, hasn't worked since after Christmas. Recycling urine is crucial to NASA's long-range plans to support a full-time crew of six on the space station, beginning this year.
Discovery will leave the station Wednesday.
The Associated Press contributed to this report.
Rachel Courtland
New Scientist
Wed, 25 Mar 2009 20:30 UTC
© P Jenniskens/SETI Institute/NASA
Peter Jenniskens of NASA's Ames Research Center and Muawia Shaddad of the University of Khartoum (standing, centre) and volunteers combed the Nubian Desert in the Sudan to find remnants of asteroid 2008 TC3. This meteorite was found 8 December 2008 during the first of three search campaigns.
Peter Jenniskens of NASA's Ames Research Center and Muawia Shaddad of the University of Khartoum (standing, centre) and volunteers combed the Nubian Desert in the Sudan to find remnants of asteroid 2008 TC3. This meteorite was found 8 December 2008 during the first of three search campaigns.
At the time it was unclear whether the blast would leave anything but dust behind, but a team of scientists and volunteers has managed to recover fragments of the 80-tonne asteroid, called 2008 TC3, during several searches that began in December (see First tracked space rock recovered after impact). So far, meteorites weighing a total of about 5 kg have been found.
They will provide a crucial piece of ground truth to test how well observations of asteroids in space match up with their actual compositions.
New Scientist talks with Peter Jenniskens of the SETI Institute in Mountain View, California, about how the rocks were found.
How did you get started in the search?
I immediately realised if it was possible to recover some meteorites that it would be spectacular, because we could for the first time link a particular type of meteorite with a particular class of asteroids.
So I established contact with Dr Muawia Shaddad at the University of Khartoum and gave him as much advice as I could on what sort of information to collect from observers. In the days and weeks after the event, he asked around to people who had seen the fireball and sent me spectacular images of a big cloud of dust in the sky that were photographed by people's cell phones just before dawn on the morning of October 7 (see image).
It turns out thousands of people along the Nile [in northern Sudan] had seen this because it happened just after morning prayer. And they all described a really bright light, as if somebody just behind them had turned on their car lights.
The pictures themselves were not immediately usable to get information on how high in the sky the asteroid had exploded, because there were no reference stars in the pictures. So after a while I thought maybe I should go and visit, interview eyewitnesses, and take some star background images from the very spots where these pictures were taken.
[Shaddad] organised for us to travel all the way up to the border of Egypt to interview the eyewitnesses that saw the fireball and for a group of 45 students and staff from Khartoum to join us a few days later to help comb the desert for meteoroids.
Once you got to the Sudan, was it clear you would find meteorites?
Initially things looked pretty bleak, because the reports we were getting from the observers was that nothing big had came out of the explosion. We didn't know if anything would have survived. Never before has a meteoroid been recovered for something that exploded this high up in the atmosphere. When it's high up it's not appreciably slowed down by the atmosphere, and that makes the explosion very energetic, turning most of the thing into dust.
The few scraps that come out are small pieces and they fall very close to where the explosion happened. The big pieces just keep going. In the end, we had to walk 29 kilometres to cover this debris field.
How did the search work?
On the first day, we spent most of the day driving 28 kilometres inland from the railroad to the area where the smaller pieces would have fallen (see map). Then we basically lined up the students maybe 20 metres apart over the span of a kilometre and started to comb the desert.
We didn't quite know what to look for. Based on the spectra that were obtained of the object in space, there was talk that the rock might have been a C-type asteroid. C-types are linked to carbonaceous chondrites [primitive, unaltered meteorites], so I was looking for something dark. But I didn't know whether the crust would be recognisable, so it was quite difficult to explain what it might look like.
Were the pieces hard to find?
If we didn't have so many eyes and legs to go walk the desert, we would never have found them. [On the first survey] I walked in the desert for three days and I didn't find a single one. We had 45 people and only 15 meteorites were found the first time, and that was after 29 km of hiking and searching. It took a lot of patience.
Students came with various sorts of rocks, none of which were meteorites. As the Sun was low on the horizon, yet again someone came back and said a student had found something. I distinctly remember thinking, "Oh no, not again", and then I was brought to the student and he showed me this meteorite. It had a beautiful fusion crust - a nice layer of glass - and the rock had broken so you could look inside (see meteorite image).
It was still quite possible it was something that had lain in the desert for a long time, but in hindsight it was indeed part of our asteroid.
Very gradually we started finding bigger pieces, and at the end the pieces we were finding were chicken-egg size.
What did you find when you analysed the meteorites?
[The meteorites belong to a known type, but they are] different from the ones that have been recovered before, in the sense that [they're] very fragile and very dark, because there's lots of carbon. It's material that was heated so much that part of the rock became fluid but not the whole rock. It illustrates what happens in a certain phase of planet evolution before things get all molten (see Magma oceans sloshed across early asteroids).
We can now say with certainty that this dark variety corresponds to F-class asteroids. There are many ideas about how these rocks formed, so we're hoping that this meteorite will be able to differentiate between them. That's sort of a next step in the study.
Do you think you'll be able to recover more such meteorites in the future?
I really hope this would happen again sometime somewhere. Asteroids of this size hit the Earth about once a year, but for astronomers to see the object coming in, it has to move through the area of searches [by astronomical surveys], and that's only a small part of the sky, so we have to be lucky for this to happen. In the future, when more [astronomical surveys] come online, maybe our chances will improve.
Solmaz Barazesh
SCience News
Thu, 26 Mar 2009 02:05 UTC
© Nature
A meteorite from an unusually well-tracked asteroid lies in the Nubian Desert in northern Sudan. The deep black color tells researchers that the rock is rich in carbon.
A meteorite from an unusually well-tracked asteroid lies in the Nubian Desert in northern Sudan. The deep black color tells researchers that the rock is rich in carbon.
The car-sized asteroid, dubbed 2008 TC3, landed in northern Sudan on October 7, 2008, scientists report in the March 25 Nature. The study combines for one asteroid data that are usually separate: Comparing data from observations of the asteroid in while it was space with analysis of its meteorite fragments on Earth will yield new insights into asteroids, the scientists say.
Small asteroids like 2008 TC3 are fairly common, with about one asteroid impacting Earth each year. But these small asteroids are usually not spotted until they enter the Earth's atmosphere. "It's like when bugs splatter on the windshield. You don't see the bug until it's too late," says physicist and study coauthor Mark Boslough of Sandia National Laboratories in Albuquerque, N.M. Bigger asteroids are easier to spot but are much less common. "You'd see a baseball coming towards the windshield much sooner," Boslough says. And it's hard to detect the small asteroids because even powerful telescopes can only scan a small portion of the sky each night.
Scientists got lucky when they spotted 2008 TC3 using the Catalina Sky Survey telescope atop Mount Lemmon north of Tucson, Ariz. "It just so happened that the asteroid was coming from the direction that the telescope was pointed in," says astronomer and study coauthor Peter Jenniskens of the SETI Institute in Mountain View, Calif.
As 2008 TC3 hurtled through space, researchers studied the spectra of sunlight reflected from its surface to get information about the asteroid's mineral composition. The spectra showed that the asteroid was likely to come from the mysterious F-class of asteroids, a class only observed in space but not yet found as a meteorite on Earth..
Monitoring 2008 TC3's progress, researchers correctly predicted that it would impact the Nubian Desert of northern Sudan about 19 hours after it was first spotted. Eyewitnesses reported seeing a fireball as the asteroid exploded over the desert.
Jenniskens and 45 students and staff from the University of Khartoum in Sudan searched for remnants along the asteroid's projected path. The recovery team eventually found about 47 meteorites from 2008 TC3.
When the researchers got the meteorites back to the lab, they were in for a surprise. "The recovered meteorites were unlike anything in our collections up to that point," Jenniskens says.
Studying the ratio of oxygen isotopes revealed that the meteorites were of the rare ureilite category. "This is the first time that ureilites were linked to F-class asteroids," comments astronomer David Nesvorny of the Southwest Research Institute in Boulder, Colo. Researchers had previously thought ureilite meteorites came only from S-class asteroids.
Following 2008 TC3 also gave the researchers the opportunity to test their asteroid tracking devices. If a dangerously large asteroid was on a collision course with Earth, scientists would want to know that everything worked, Boslough says.
St. Petersburg Times
Thu, 26 Mar 2009 21:14 UTC
Hudson - The house was shaking.
Tina Newman knew what it was. An earthquake. She's been through them before, while touring Universal Studios in California decades ago and then again recently in Costa Rica.
This time, she was in her house on Donzi Drive in Sea Pines. The walls, the ground, the couch she sat on. They shook. Her dog, a Pomeranian mix named Wyly, jumped straight up. It was about 8:30 Thursday morning. The quaking lasted for about 15 seconds or so, Newman reckons.
She called her fiance, who was driving to work.
"Frank, did you feel that?" she said.
He said no and, to Newman's ire, it seemed like he didn't believe her.
So she began a quest.
"I'm not nuts," she said.
Newman knew she couldn't have been the only person in all of Pasco County to feel it. She called the Sheriff's Office. Officers had gotten another call about it.
"I was so happy," she said.
Newman, 66, talked to neighbors and called friends. Some of them felt it, too. Over in Port Richey, a friend's loose change rattled on her kitchen counter.
Then Newman's fiance called back.
"I guess he had been making fun of me," she said, validated, "and then his secretary piped up and said she felt it, too."
But what exactly caused the tremors isn't certain. The National Weather Service station in Tampa Bay hadn't heard anything about it. Don Blakeman, an earthquake analyst at the National Earthquake Information Center out of Colorado, said there definitely was not an earthquake in this part of Florida.
"Florida has the least amount of earthquakes in the United States," Blakeman said. "It almost never happens."
But he didn't deny the rumblings.
"I don't doubt they felt something," he said.
He said it was most likely an explosion or a military plane.
The Pasco County Sheriff's Office sent a bomb squad to Hudson to investigate, but didn't find anything, said spokesman Kevin Doll.
Staff Sgt. Patrice Clarke with MacDill Air Force Base said there are jets flying into Tampa from all over the country for a large air show this weekend.
So that could have been it.
But people who felt the tremor - sliding glass doors rattling, windows vibrating - said they didn't hear any sound; no sonic boom. Nothing.
Newman said there is a mine close to where she lives, but she checked it out and it isn't active. She thought it could have had something to do with the Space Shuttle returning, but it wasn't scheduled for Thursday. She made calls and researched online and now she thinks what happened is this: There were some earthquakes near Puerto Rico and the Virgin Islands, she said, and believes those vibrations traveled and were felt here.
"I know what an earthquake feels like," she said, sticking firm to her story. "This old lady is NOT losing it."
Tina Newman knew what it was. An earthquake. She's been through them before, while touring Universal Studios in California decades ago and then again recently in Costa Rica.
This time, she was in her house on Donzi Drive in Sea Pines. The walls, the ground, the couch she sat on. They shook. Her dog, a Pomeranian mix named Wyly, jumped straight up. It was about 8:30 Thursday morning. The quaking lasted for about 15 seconds or so, Newman reckons.
She called her fiance, who was driving to work.
"Frank, did you feel that?" she said.
He said no and, to Newman's ire, it seemed like he didn't believe her.
So she began a quest.
"I'm not nuts," she said.
Newman knew she couldn't have been the only person in all of Pasco County to feel it. She called the Sheriff's Office. Officers had gotten another call about it.
"I was so happy," she said.
Newman, 66, talked to neighbors and called friends. Some of them felt it, too. Over in Port Richey, a friend's loose change rattled on her kitchen counter.
Then Newman's fiance called back.
"I guess he had been making fun of me," she said, validated, "and then his secretary piped up and said she felt it, too."
But what exactly caused the tremors isn't certain. The National Weather Service station in Tampa Bay hadn't heard anything about it. Don Blakeman, an earthquake analyst at the National Earthquake Information Center out of Colorado, said there definitely was not an earthquake in this part of Florida.
"Florida has the least amount of earthquakes in the United States," Blakeman said. "It almost never happens."
But he didn't deny the rumblings.
"I don't doubt they felt something," he said.
He said it was most likely an explosion or a military plane.
The Pasco County Sheriff's Office sent a bomb squad to Hudson to investigate, but didn't find anything, said spokesman Kevin Doll.
Staff Sgt. Patrice Clarke with MacDill Air Force Base said there are jets flying into Tampa from all over the country for a large air show this weekend.
So that could have been it.
But people who felt the tremor - sliding glass doors rattling, windows vibrating - said they didn't hear any sound; no sonic boom. Nothing.
Newman said there is a mine close to where she lives, but she checked it out and it isn't active. She thought it could have had something to do with the Space Shuttle returning, but it wasn't scheduled for Thursday. She made calls and researched online and now she thinks what happened is this: There were some earthquakes near Puerto Rico and the Virgin Islands, she said, and believes those vibrations traveled and were felt here.
"I know what an earthquake feels like," she said, sticking firm to her story. "This old lady is NOT losing it."
MIT Technology Review - arXiv Blog
Fri, 27 Mar 2009 18:30 UTC
A better understanding of the chemistry of comets may finally explain the 1908 exposion over an isolated part of Russia.
On
30 June 1908, a bolide streaked across the skies above Lake Baikal near
the border of Russia and Mongolia. Seconds later, a huge explosion
above the taiga some 600 kilometres to the northeast flattened an area
of forest the size of Luxembourg and went on to scorch trees for
hundreds of kilometres around.
The detonation took place in a more or less uninhabited part of Russia called Tunguska but the explosion lit up skies across the northern hemisphere for three nights, interfered with the Earth's magnetic field and triggered strong seismic and acoustic waves that shook the entire planet.
Despite a century of study, many aspects of the Tunguska event are still unexplained. For example, the explosion released more energy than a thousand Hiroshima-type atom bombs and yet left no crater. A similar-sized object is thought to have hit North America some 12 000 years ago, triggering the megafaunal extinction and widespread cooling. And yet the Tunguska event seems to have left our climate intact.
Now a new analysis by Edward Drobyshevski of the Russian Academy of Sciences in St Petersburg Russia claims to have solved these problems. Drobyshevski concludes that the object that hit in 1908 was a comet (as have many scientists before him). But unlike the others, he has been able to calculate that this comet hit the Earth's atmosphere almost at a tangent and broke apart.
The larger part of this comet skipped off the atmosphere, back into an Earth-crossing orbit (we should expect to find it nearby, predicts Drobyshevski).The smaller part rapidly heated up above Russia before exploding in the atmosphere over Tunguska.
The key to why it left so little lasting damage is the nature of the explosion, says Drobyshevski. And the key to that is our improved understanding of the chemical make up of comets. He says the comet would have had a high hydrogen peroxide content and this would have dissociated explosively as it heated up to produce oxygen and water, breaking the comet apart. It was this explosion that devastated Tunguska.
"Significantly, the energy of the chemical explosion is substantially lower than the kinetic energy of the body," says Drobyshevski.
This explains the comet's relatively benign affect on the planet and solves many of mysteries associated with the event, he says.
Interesting idea - why should all cometary impacts be head on affairs? If correct, it looks like we've had a lucky escape, this time.
Reference: Tunguska-1908 and Similar Events in Light of the New Explosive Cosmogony of Minor Bodies, Link.
© Unknown
The detonation took place in a more or less uninhabited part of Russia called Tunguska but the explosion lit up skies across the northern hemisphere for three nights, interfered with the Earth's magnetic field and triggered strong seismic and acoustic waves that shook the entire planet.
Despite a century of study, many aspects of the Tunguska event are still unexplained. For example, the explosion released more energy than a thousand Hiroshima-type atom bombs and yet left no crater. A similar-sized object is thought to have hit North America some 12 000 years ago, triggering the megafaunal extinction and widespread cooling. And yet the Tunguska event seems to have left our climate intact.
Now a new analysis by Edward Drobyshevski of the Russian Academy of Sciences in St Petersburg Russia claims to have solved these problems. Drobyshevski concludes that the object that hit in 1908 was a comet (as have many scientists before him). But unlike the others, he has been able to calculate that this comet hit the Earth's atmosphere almost at a tangent and broke apart.
The larger part of this comet skipped off the atmosphere, back into an Earth-crossing orbit (we should expect to find it nearby, predicts Drobyshevski).The smaller part rapidly heated up above Russia before exploding in the atmosphere over Tunguska.
The key to why it left so little lasting damage is the nature of the explosion, says Drobyshevski. And the key to that is our improved understanding of the chemical make up of comets. He says the comet would have had a high hydrogen peroxide content and this would have dissociated explosively as it heated up to produce oxygen and water, breaking the comet apart. It was this explosion that devastated Tunguska.
"Significantly, the energy of the chemical explosion is substantially lower than the kinetic energy of the body," says Drobyshevski.
This explains the comet's relatively benign affect on the planet and solves many of mysteries associated with the event, he says.
Interesting idea - why should all cometary impacts be head on affairs? If correct, it looks like we've had a lucky escape, this time.
Reference: Tunguska-1908 and Similar Events in Light of the New Explosive Cosmogony of Minor Bodies, Link.
Pilot Online
Mon, 30 Mar 2009 04:13 UTC
Were they meteors? A comet? UFOs?
People from Maryland to Hampton Roads heard loud explosions and saw brilliant, streaking lights in the sky Sunday night.
There was no immediate explanation, the National Weather Service office in Wakefield said. The Virginia Beach 911 center had numerous calls waiting just before 10 p.m., a supervisor said.
The Weather Service said reports were made from Dorchester County, Md., to the Virginia/North Carolina border. People said they saw a streak in the sky and heard an explosion.
"It was orange, like a fireball," said Steve Wagner, who lives in the Great Bridge area of Chesapeake and said what he saw was too close to be a shooting star. Wagner was outside cooking with family when he saw the streak. He said he went inside when his daughter called, then heard an explosion that sounded like thunder.
Chris Wamsley, a meteorologist with the National Weather Service's Wakefield office, said there could be various causes of the explosions and lights. A team of people is looking into what happened, he said.
Lindsey Hosek of the Great Neck area of Virginia Beach was jogging along the water with her dog when the sky lit up, she said.
"The bright light at first terrified me because I thought somebody was shining a light on me, and then I saw it, and I was in complete awe because it was so beautiful," she said.
Then she saw something that looked like a comet moving low toward the ground; it was blue in front followed by orange and appeared to be the shape and size of a refrigerator.
"It was just so low. It was like where a bird should be," she said. "It was definitely heading downward."
She was on the phone with a friend a minute later when she heard an explosion.
Kenneth Martin of Chesapeake's South Norfolk neighborhood said he saw what appeared to be lightning, then the sky turned blue.
Then, he said, a white ball of fire shot close to the ground and appeared to burn out. He said he's sure it was a meteor.
"It was so vivid in the sky, blinking," he said. "It was the strangest thing I've ever seen."
No damage was reported, the Weather Service said.
People from Maryland to Hampton Roads heard loud explosions and saw brilliant, streaking lights in the sky Sunday night.
There was no immediate explanation, the National Weather Service office in Wakefield said. The Virginia Beach 911 center had numerous calls waiting just before 10 p.m., a supervisor said.
The Weather Service said reports were made from Dorchester County, Md., to the Virginia/North Carolina border. People said they saw a streak in the sky and heard an explosion.
"It was orange, like a fireball," said Steve Wagner, who lives in the Great Bridge area of Chesapeake and said what he saw was too close to be a shooting star. Wagner was outside cooking with family when he saw the streak. He said he went inside when his daughter called, then heard an explosion that sounded like thunder.
Chris Wamsley, a meteorologist with the National Weather Service's Wakefield office, said there could be various causes of the explosions and lights. A team of people is looking into what happened, he said.
Lindsey Hosek of the Great Neck area of Virginia Beach was jogging along the water with her dog when the sky lit up, she said.
"The bright light at first terrified me because I thought somebody was shining a light on me, and then I saw it, and I was in complete awe because it was so beautiful," she said.
Then she saw something that looked like a comet moving low toward the ground; it was blue in front followed by orange and appeared to be the shape and size of a refrigerator.
"It was just so low. It was like where a bird should be," she said. "It was definitely heading downward."
She was on the phone with a friend a minute later when she heard an explosion.
Kenneth Martin of Chesapeake's South Norfolk neighborhood said he saw what appeared to be lightning, then the sky turned blue.
Then, he said, a white ball of fire shot close to the ground and appeared to burn out. He said he's sure it was a meteor.
"It was so vivid in the sky, blinking," he said. "It was the strangest thing I've ever seen."
No damage was reported, the Weather Service said.
Wonkette
Mon, 30 Mar 2009 09:50 UTC
What the hell blew up in the skies over the Maryland-to-North Carolina
Atlantic coast last night? Thousands of people supposedly saw
terrifying Light Monsters floating down from the Heavens, and then
heard horrific booms and thunder and such, and ... well it almost
sounds like a summer thunderstorm, SCARY, but it is not summer, or
something? Global Warming? Let's quickly & cheaply examine the
frightful evidence.
* WAVY is investigating the loud boom and bright flash in the sky witnessed by hundreds of thousands of people around 9:40 Sunday night. People from Maryland to North Carolina have called 10 On Your Side and wavy.com reporting the flash. [WAVY.com]
* Reports of a bright light and in some places, an explosion-like sound, poured into law-enforcement offices across eastern Virginia, Maryland and North Carolina last night. "The phone is ringing off the hook," said meteorologist Sonia Mark at the National Weather Service's Wakefield station. She said Suffolk police were looking into "reports of great balls of fire landing on the ground." [Times Dispatch]
* Were they meteors? A comet? UFOs? People from Maryland to Hampton Roads heard loud explosions and saw brilliant, streaking lights in the sky Sunday night. There was no immediate explanation, the National Weather Service office in Wakefield said. The Virginia Beach 911 center had numerous calls waiting just before 10 p.m., a supervisor said. The Weather Service said reports were made from Dorchester County, Md., to the Virginia/North Carolina border. People said they saw a streak in the sky and heard an explosion. [HamptonRoads.com]
* Emergency crews fanned out across the city looking for whatever caused a loud explosion Sunday night. At around 9:45 911 dispatchers started receiving calls from people reporting a light in the sky followed by a loud boom. Some reported that the explosion caused their homes to shake. However, emergency crews could find no evidence of any kind of explosion. No injuries, fires or damage were reported. The National Weather Service had few answers. Jennifer McNatt, a meteorologist said the service had been in touch with the Navy, Air Force and NASA, but none of those organizations had any unusual activity to report. [WVEC.com]
* WAVY is investigating the loud boom and bright flash in the sky witnessed by hundreds of thousands of people around 9:40 Sunday night. People from Maryland to North Carolina have called 10 On Your Side and wavy.com reporting the flash. [WAVY.com]
* Reports of a bright light and in some places, an explosion-like sound, poured into law-enforcement offices across eastern Virginia, Maryland and North Carolina last night. "The phone is ringing off the hook," said meteorologist Sonia Mark at the National Weather Service's Wakefield station. She said Suffolk police were looking into "reports of great balls of fire landing on the ground." [Times Dispatch]
* Were they meteors? A comet? UFOs? People from Maryland to Hampton Roads heard loud explosions and saw brilliant, streaking lights in the sky Sunday night. There was no immediate explanation, the National Weather Service office in Wakefield said. The Virginia Beach 911 center had numerous calls waiting just before 10 p.m., a supervisor said. The Weather Service said reports were made from Dorchester County, Md., to the Virginia/North Carolina border. People said they saw a streak in the sky and heard an explosion. [HamptonRoads.com]
* Emergency crews fanned out across the city looking for whatever caused a loud explosion Sunday night. At around 9:45 911 dispatchers started receiving calls from people reporting a light in the sky followed by a loud boom. Some reported that the explosion caused their homes to shake. However, emergency crews could find no evidence of any kind of explosion. No injuries, fires or damage were reported. The National Weather Service had few answers. Jennifer McNatt, a meteorologist said the service had been in touch with the Navy, Air Force and NASA, but none of those organizations had any unusual activity to report. [WVEC.com]
thisisgrimsby.co.uk
Mon, 30 Mar 2009 10:00 UTC
What were the bizarre domes of light spotted over Grimsby?
The Grimsby Telegraph has been contacted by people eager to find an answer to strange occurrences in the sky.
Two witnesses told similar stories of what they had seen - and both discount familiar lights in the sky, such as the beam being shone from LA's on the Riverhead, Chinese lanterns or fireworks.
Fifteen-year-old Emma Broadbent, a pupil at Hereford School, was visiting a friend's house in Laceby, at about 7.45pm last Monday, when she saw what she describes as a "dome" of light in the sky.
She said: "It was very clear in the sky, and I was pointing out a star in the sky when I saw a flash.
"It was like a dome, protractor shaped, which met the horizon. It was grey on the inside and brighter on the outside. Had I not been looking in that direction I would have missed it.
"It seemed to cover the field behind Morrisons, just off Laceby Road, which was to my left at the time.
"We pulled over and waited for a moment. Then there was this second flash about five minutes later which covered Bradley Woods."
However, this was not Emma's first close encounter - she also saw a strange light in the sky with her mother at Christmas time close to the Bradley Inn.
Mum Sharon (46) said it was unlikely to be a Chinese paper lantern, which often makes headlines as being mistaken for alien craft.
She said, "It was definitely much bigger than that. It was salmon coloured, and at first seemed to move across the sky slowly. Then it shot upwards into the sky and was gone within seconds!"
Meanwhile, Nige Allison (35), from Grimsby's Wybers Wood, was driving with his four daughters, having visited his mother's house.
He said: "We were close to the Click 'Em Inn, near Brookenby, when we saw the flashes. We don't know what time the first one was, but the second we know was at 8.15pm, and a third at 8.17pm, because my daughter was trying to time them, to see if it was lightning.
"My daughters are aged between six and 15. They were a bit worried at first."
Can you help?
Do you know what the mysterious flashes in the night sky were? Contact Conrad Emmett in the Grimsby Telegraph newsroom on (01472) 372236 or leave a comment on the bottom of this story.
Comment: See also:
Something Weird Explodes Over Virginia, North Carolina, Maryland, DC, Etc.
US: Streaking lights, explosions reported all along East Coast
The Grimsby Telegraph has been contacted by people eager to find an answer to strange occurrences in the sky.
Two witnesses told similar stories of what they had seen - and both discount familiar lights in the sky, such as the beam being shone from LA's on the Riverhead, Chinese lanterns or fireworks.
Fifteen-year-old Emma Broadbent, a pupil at Hereford School, was visiting a friend's house in Laceby, at about 7.45pm last Monday, when she saw what she describes as a "dome" of light in the sky.
She said: "It was very clear in the sky, and I was pointing out a star in the sky when I saw a flash.
"It was like a dome, protractor shaped, which met the horizon. It was grey on the inside and brighter on the outside. Had I not been looking in that direction I would have missed it.
"It seemed to cover the field behind Morrisons, just off Laceby Road, which was to my left at the time.
"We pulled over and waited for a moment. Then there was this second flash about five minutes later which covered Bradley Woods."
However, this was not Emma's first close encounter - she also saw a strange light in the sky with her mother at Christmas time close to the Bradley Inn.
Mum Sharon (46) said it was unlikely to be a Chinese paper lantern, which often makes headlines as being mistaken for alien craft.
She said, "It was definitely much bigger than that. It was salmon coloured, and at first seemed to move across the sky slowly. Then it shot upwards into the sky and was gone within seconds!"
Meanwhile, Nige Allison (35), from Grimsby's Wybers Wood, was driving with his four daughters, having visited his mother's house.
He said: "We were close to the Click 'Em Inn, near Brookenby, when we saw the flashes. We don't know what time the first one was, but the second we know was at 8.15pm, and a third at 8.17pm, because my daughter was trying to time them, to see if it was lightning.
"My daughters are aged between six and 15. They were a bit worried at first."
Can you help?
Do you know what the mysterious flashes in the night sky were? Contact Conrad Emmett in the Grimsby Telegraph newsroom on (01472) 372236 or leave a comment on the bottom of this story.
WAVY.com
Mon, 30 Mar 2009 13:04 UTC
Emails received to the WAVY Newsroom:
9:51 p.m. - Jamie in Virginia Beach: boom heard at 9:42 pm; shook the house
9:55 p.m. - Jim in Virginia Beach: Hello, we heard a loud boom and the ground shook a little at about 21:48, the same noise was heard by my son's friend who lives in Bayside. We have no clue as to the origin of the noise nor it's damage. I pray it is not serious. Respectfully.
10:16 p.m. - Bernard in Virginia Beach: Just wanted to let you guys know that we our house also shook. We live off of centerville in virginia beach on the chesapeake line.
10:28 p.m. - Duane in Williamsburg: Subject- house shaking in williamsburg. I saw a flare flying through the air about 45 minutes ago. It should have landed between big bethel road and Hardy cash drive. Maybe close to comander sheppard/simple farm road. This was unusual. I stayed outside to listen for a noise, but on noise and nothing else.
10:31 p.m. - Carl in Virginia Beach: IS THE WORLD ENDING???
10:41 p.m. - Kelly in Onley: I just saw the newsclip about the bright light in the sky reported by several Hampton Roads and Williamsburg residents. I live on the Eastern Shore of Virginia (Onley, VA) and also witnessed the bright flashes and what appeared to be a fireball falling from the sky. I did not feel any rumble but could see the bright light and fireball very clearly. Since we live in the country with no street lights, I could see it vividly across the field. I saw three bright flashes which appeared to be lightning and then the bright fireball appeared. As it rapidly fell, the fire grew brighter and bigger. I have no idea what I saw, but it sure was scary. My eyes are still hurting from the extreme bright light and I keep seeing spots. I would really like to know what it was I saw. Thank you.
10:44 p.m. - Robert in Sunbury, NC: At 9:38 PM, I watched a meteor cross over Sunbury, NC. It was traveling from the West towards the East. My wife and our friend also saw this event. Very exciting!!!
11:01 p.m. - Alan in Hampton: At approx. 9pm I had just walked up to my kitchen sink and thought I saw lightening outside...I said to my wife, I just saw lightening and a minute later my dog who has a doggie doors comes in and he was spooked! He went directly upstairs which is what he does if he hears a loud noice etc... He is ver skiddish. I thought this was very weird then they said on the news, we do not know what is going on but they were getting reports!
11:06 p.m. - Kel in Norfolk: My Mom & I Both heard a LOUD Bang and felt a vibration or a Shake of the ground and house.
11:08 p.m. - Lou and Bill Pollard: My husband and I both heard a very large boom accompanied by rattling windows for about 10 seconds tonight. At first because of the wind we thought maybe there was a weather related reason, such as thunder. Then we guessed it might be an explosion of some sort or a crash on the highway just outside our neighborhood.
11:09 p.m. - Diana in Virginia Beach: At around 9:45 pm I was driving, almost to my house and saw the bright streak of light. It lit up the whole area. I thought it was just lightening because it branched out in the sky like lightening. Then I arrived at home, put some stuff in the house and went back out to help my roommate who was bringing stuff into the house too and that's when we both heard the explosion, but honestly, the noise was heard about 15 minutes after I saw the streak. In fact I had just finished telling my roommate that I saw some strange lightening when we heard the explosion. We thought it was fireworks or something. But the noise occurred at least 10-15 minutes after the light. Weird!
11:10 p.m. - Richard in Virginia Beach: At some time this evening between about 9 and 10 I was lying in bed ready to go to sleep when I heard a loud bang and my house shook. It felt as if a car had hit the building. I went outside to investigate and the winds had picked up but I couldn't see anything that may have hit the house. I went back to bed. Then, as I was turning the channel at 11 o'clock, I heard your story about the possible meteorite this evening. I wonder if the sound I heard was a sonic boom that shook my house. That certainly would fit with the idea of a meteorite as it slows down through the atmosphere. Anyway, I thought you might like to hear my story. Have a good night.
11:12 p.m. - Mike in Chesapeake: There was a loud boom that literally shook my house Sun evening. It reminded me of several things including; plane crash, sound barrier broke, transformmer blew up. I understand that the noise was heard in a broad area. I just wanted to give my opinion. I was in the Navy, stationed abourd an Air Craft Carrier. I have seen/heard a plane break the sound barrier very close to the ship. So close that windows broke in other airplanes. This sound and subsequent shaking of my house reminded me of this.
11:13 p.m. - Kristine in Newport News: I am a CNU student and around 9:45 or so a friend and I were standing outside of our dorm and we saw a piece of something that was lit flying not far from our building. A few minutes after we saw it, there was a faint boom in the distance.
11:14 p.m. - Peggy in Virginia Beach: We saw a bright light, like a shooting star going across the sky, it appeared to descend into the wooded area between laskin rd and va beach blvd, immediatly followed by a very loud boom that shook our business, quite litterly. Shortly after that, maybe 2 min, their were marine helecopters flying overhead with spotlights. strange huh?
11:16 p.m. - Sandi in Virginia Beach: I am commenting on the flash seen in the sky, my husband and I heard a big bang and our house shook and both our computers went crazy... all these ads and pop ups showed up and started loading web sites on it's own! One of the computers shut down. i live in virginia Beach in the Great neck area!
11:17 p.m. - Lisa in Virginia Beach: I live in Larkspur off Edwin Drive in va beach near Mt. Trashmore and my mom lives 1 mile away, both of our houses shook at the same time, it felt like a tree had fallen on our house. I lived in Japan and it felt like a mini earthquake with a loud boom. I hope this helps I went outside after the sound in fear my childrens room had been hit by a tree due to wind and saw a white light across the sky near the Kempsville Golf Course.
11:19 p.m. - Jamie in Virginia Beach: I live in the Chimney Hill area of Virginia Beach and was on my deck when the yard lit up like a lightening flash so I glance up and saw a huge fireball go from West to East, with a very long tail extending halfway across the sky. About 60 seconds later there was a boom that rattled my house and even shook the chair I was sitting in. As a fan of astronomy, I am thrilled to have been so lucky enough to witness this. It was amazing!
11:19 p.m. - Hoyte in Virginia Beach: I saw the meteor. That is exactly what it was, I have seen video of meteors caught on tape and that is exactly what I saw. Amazingly, there was a "boom" about 1-2 minutes after the sighting. I was in my backyard at the time taking a steak off the grill. The time was approximately 9:30 pm.
11:20 p.m. - Mark in Virginia Beach: We didn't see anything, but heard what was some sort of explosion and our house shook. Our first instinct was that maybe a tree fell on our house, but all was fine outside. We were waiting to hear sirens/firetrucks/etc, assuming something near our house exploded, but never did. We were a little dumbfounded. Then the 11:00 news came on, and lo and behold, we weren't imagining things!
11:28 p.m. - April in Chesapeake: I was driving down Joliff Road in Chesapeake and thought I had seen lightening but as I looked up, beyond the clouds, was a bright orange sky. Then soon after, a bright white light fell down through the clouds and looked as if it was going to hit the ground. Very strange incident. I'm curious to find out what it was!
11:58 p.m. - Viewer in Corolla, NC: From Corolla about 300 ft from the beach. Light seen shortly after 9:30 PM tonight. Looked like debris, the kind seen on 4th of July. Felt nothing, heard nothing, just saw the bright lite which seemed to explode in the end and disappear.
12:07 a.m. - Valerie in Virginia Beach: Hi, Saw the bright flash and then felt the boom. It shook our house. We are in the Pembroke Meadows area off of Indpendence Bllvd. and Witchduck Rd. I called my sister who was on the road coming back from Lusby, Maryland. There were 2 sisters, brother in law, 3 nephews, 2 nieces and my mother on the road. They had just gotten off the I295 bypass and gotten on I64 East heading to Norfolk. They all said they saw a big bluish/white ball with what look like orange sparkling in the sky heading south in front of them falling straight ahead down the highway. Then they saw a bright flash and felt a big boom. They said a few cars swerved in front of them. They said it was going along following the highway heading south.
5:12 a.m. - Becky in Virginia Beach: The time is correct, I was in bed watching House when the whole house shook, including my bed. It woke my husband up who had fell asleep in his chair in the living room. The disturbance freaked out my 16 year old son who was in his room. He said it made his over head light shake. I do not understand why one of the numerous security video cameras throughout Hampton Roads did not catch this? Or, no one has came forward yet. I am waiting to see one!
6:25 a.m. - Michelle in Hampton: As I was doing dishes last night i saw the bright flash out of my kitchen window the noise wasnt really bad all i heard was like thunder, my initial thought was lightning and thunder then i saw what looked like a flare gun went off so i assumed it was just a very bright firework. The fact that it may have been a meteor is very amazing to me!
6:31 a.m. - Laura in Hardyville, Va: Hello, I live in Middlesex County and around 9:37 pm on Sunday March 29, 2009 my husband and I (who were in different parts of our house) saw a bright white flash of light. I was also on the cell phone with our daughter who was in Gloucester VA and she saw the same thing at the same time. At first, we thought it was a power surge or maybe a storm approaching. We really never gave it a second thought until we heard it on your 11:00 evening news. I can't wait to hear more about this.
6:40 a.m. - Beth in Chesapeake: My son and I were inside the house, so we didn't see the light, but we heard it clearly in Great Bridge of Chesapeake, as well. It sounded like a tremendous thunderclap, so I went online to look at the radar. Seeing no clouds near us, I immediately looked outside to see if I saw fire or smoke from an explosion. I saw nothing unusual at that time though, so we were also mystified!
6:40 a.m. - Rashel in Virginia Beach: The walls, the floor, and even the beds shook. I thought a tree had fallen on our home. My son's head was propped up on his headboard and he described how the headboard shook his head. I ran outside thinking there was a tree on the house or something worse only to see my neighbor out doing the same. We were scared. Thanks for covering the story.
6:51 a.m. - Jen in Deltaville: Good Morning, We too heard a loud boom (although distant) last night around 9:30. We were lying in bed so we did not see anything, but we definitely heard something. We live in Deltaville, about an hour and half from your station and main viewing areas. I was glad to hear on your morning report that others also heard the boom. Hopefully we'll soon learn what caused this.
7:32 a.m. - Daniel in Mattaponi: I saw the light in the sky last night, I live in King and Queen County near West Point. I thought it was a thunderstorm! Apparently not. It probably was a relatively large meteor burning up in the atmosphere. If so, let's be glad it wasn't a bigger one.
9:51 p.m. - Jamie in Virginia Beach: boom heard at 9:42 pm; shook the house
9:55 p.m. - Jim in Virginia Beach: Hello, we heard a loud boom and the ground shook a little at about 21:48, the same noise was heard by my son's friend who lives in Bayside. We have no clue as to the origin of the noise nor it's damage. I pray it is not serious. Respectfully.
10:16 p.m. - Bernard in Virginia Beach: Just wanted to let you guys know that we our house also shook. We live off of centerville in virginia beach on the chesapeake line.
10:28 p.m. - Duane in Williamsburg: Subject- house shaking in williamsburg. I saw a flare flying through the air about 45 minutes ago. It should have landed between big bethel road and Hardy cash drive. Maybe close to comander sheppard/simple farm road. This was unusual. I stayed outside to listen for a noise, but on noise and nothing else.
10:31 p.m. - Carl in Virginia Beach: IS THE WORLD ENDING???
10:41 p.m. - Kelly in Onley: I just saw the newsclip about the bright light in the sky reported by several Hampton Roads and Williamsburg residents. I live on the Eastern Shore of Virginia (Onley, VA) and also witnessed the bright flashes and what appeared to be a fireball falling from the sky. I did not feel any rumble but could see the bright light and fireball very clearly. Since we live in the country with no street lights, I could see it vividly across the field. I saw three bright flashes which appeared to be lightning and then the bright fireball appeared. As it rapidly fell, the fire grew brighter and bigger. I have no idea what I saw, but it sure was scary. My eyes are still hurting from the extreme bright light and I keep seeing spots. I would really like to know what it was I saw. Thank you.
10:44 p.m. - Robert in Sunbury, NC: At 9:38 PM, I watched a meteor cross over Sunbury, NC. It was traveling from the West towards the East. My wife and our friend also saw this event. Very exciting!!!
11:01 p.m. - Alan in Hampton: At approx. 9pm I had just walked up to my kitchen sink and thought I saw lightening outside...I said to my wife, I just saw lightening and a minute later my dog who has a doggie doors comes in and he was spooked! He went directly upstairs which is what he does if he hears a loud noice etc... He is ver skiddish. I thought this was very weird then they said on the news, we do not know what is going on but they were getting reports!
11:06 p.m. - Kel in Norfolk: My Mom & I Both heard a LOUD Bang and felt a vibration or a Shake of the ground and house.
11:08 p.m. - Lou and Bill Pollard: My husband and I both heard a very large boom accompanied by rattling windows for about 10 seconds tonight. At first because of the wind we thought maybe there was a weather related reason, such as thunder. Then we guessed it might be an explosion of some sort or a crash on the highway just outside our neighborhood.
11:09 p.m. - Diana in Virginia Beach: At around 9:45 pm I was driving, almost to my house and saw the bright streak of light. It lit up the whole area. I thought it was just lightening because it branched out in the sky like lightening. Then I arrived at home, put some stuff in the house and went back out to help my roommate who was bringing stuff into the house too and that's when we both heard the explosion, but honestly, the noise was heard about 15 minutes after I saw the streak. In fact I had just finished telling my roommate that I saw some strange lightening when we heard the explosion. We thought it was fireworks or something. But the noise occurred at least 10-15 minutes after the light. Weird!
11:10 p.m. - Richard in Virginia Beach: At some time this evening between about 9 and 10 I was lying in bed ready to go to sleep when I heard a loud bang and my house shook. It felt as if a car had hit the building. I went outside to investigate and the winds had picked up but I couldn't see anything that may have hit the house. I went back to bed. Then, as I was turning the channel at 11 o'clock, I heard your story about the possible meteorite this evening. I wonder if the sound I heard was a sonic boom that shook my house. That certainly would fit with the idea of a meteorite as it slows down through the atmosphere. Anyway, I thought you might like to hear my story. Have a good night.
11:12 p.m. - Mike in Chesapeake: There was a loud boom that literally shook my house Sun evening. It reminded me of several things including; plane crash, sound barrier broke, transformmer blew up. I understand that the noise was heard in a broad area. I just wanted to give my opinion. I was in the Navy, stationed abourd an Air Craft Carrier. I have seen/heard a plane break the sound barrier very close to the ship. So close that windows broke in other airplanes. This sound and subsequent shaking of my house reminded me of this.
11:13 p.m. - Kristine in Newport News: I am a CNU student and around 9:45 or so a friend and I were standing outside of our dorm and we saw a piece of something that was lit flying not far from our building. A few minutes after we saw it, there was a faint boom in the distance.
11:14 p.m. - Peggy in Virginia Beach: We saw a bright light, like a shooting star going across the sky, it appeared to descend into the wooded area between laskin rd and va beach blvd, immediatly followed by a very loud boom that shook our business, quite litterly. Shortly after that, maybe 2 min, their were marine helecopters flying overhead with spotlights. strange huh?
11:16 p.m. - Sandi in Virginia Beach: I am commenting on the flash seen in the sky, my husband and I heard a big bang and our house shook and both our computers went crazy... all these ads and pop ups showed up and started loading web sites on it's own! One of the computers shut down. i live in virginia Beach in the Great neck area!
11:17 p.m. - Lisa in Virginia Beach: I live in Larkspur off Edwin Drive in va beach near Mt. Trashmore and my mom lives 1 mile away, both of our houses shook at the same time, it felt like a tree had fallen on our house. I lived in Japan and it felt like a mini earthquake with a loud boom. I hope this helps I went outside after the sound in fear my childrens room had been hit by a tree due to wind and saw a white light across the sky near the Kempsville Golf Course.
11:19 p.m. - Jamie in Virginia Beach: I live in the Chimney Hill area of Virginia Beach and was on my deck when the yard lit up like a lightening flash so I glance up and saw a huge fireball go from West to East, with a very long tail extending halfway across the sky. About 60 seconds later there was a boom that rattled my house and even shook the chair I was sitting in. As a fan of astronomy, I am thrilled to have been so lucky enough to witness this. It was amazing!
11:19 p.m. - Hoyte in Virginia Beach: I saw the meteor. That is exactly what it was, I have seen video of meteors caught on tape and that is exactly what I saw. Amazingly, there was a "boom" about 1-2 minutes after the sighting. I was in my backyard at the time taking a steak off the grill. The time was approximately 9:30 pm.
11:20 p.m. - Mark in Virginia Beach: We didn't see anything, but heard what was some sort of explosion and our house shook. Our first instinct was that maybe a tree fell on our house, but all was fine outside. We were waiting to hear sirens/firetrucks/etc, assuming something near our house exploded, but never did. We were a little dumbfounded. Then the 11:00 news came on, and lo and behold, we weren't imagining things!
11:28 p.m. - April in Chesapeake: I was driving down Joliff Road in Chesapeake and thought I had seen lightening but as I looked up, beyond the clouds, was a bright orange sky. Then soon after, a bright white light fell down through the clouds and looked as if it was going to hit the ground. Very strange incident. I'm curious to find out what it was!
11:58 p.m. - Viewer in Corolla, NC: From Corolla about 300 ft from the beach. Light seen shortly after 9:30 PM tonight. Looked like debris, the kind seen on 4th of July. Felt nothing, heard nothing, just saw the bright lite which seemed to explode in the end and disappear.
12:07 a.m. - Valerie in Virginia Beach: Hi, Saw the bright flash and then felt the boom. It shook our house. We are in the Pembroke Meadows area off of Indpendence Bllvd. and Witchduck Rd. I called my sister who was on the road coming back from Lusby, Maryland. There were 2 sisters, brother in law, 3 nephews, 2 nieces and my mother on the road. They had just gotten off the I295 bypass and gotten on I64 East heading to Norfolk. They all said they saw a big bluish/white ball with what look like orange sparkling in the sky heading south in front of them falling straight ahead down the highway. Then they saw a bright flash and felt a big boom. They said a few cars swerved in front of them. They said it was going along following the highway heading south.
5:12 a.m. - Becky in Virginia Beach: The time is correct, I was in bed watching House when the whole house shook, including my bed. It woke my husband up who had fell asleep in his chair in the living room. The disturbance freaked out my 16 year old son who was in his room. He said it made his over head light shake. I do not understand why one of the numerous security video cameras throughout Hampton Roads did not catch this? Or, no one has came forward yet. I am waiting to see one!
6:25 a.m. - Michelle in Hampton: As I was doing dishes last night i saw the bright flash out of my kitchen window the noise wasnt really bad all i heard was like thunder, my initial thought was lightning and thunder then i saw what looked like a flare gun went off so i assumed it was just a very bright firework. The fact that it may have been a meteor is very amazing to me!
6:31 a.m. - Laura in Hardyville, Va: Hello, I live in Middlesex County and around 9:37 pm on Sunday March 29, 2009 my husband and I (who were in different parts of our house) saw a bright white flash of light. I was also on the cell phone with our daughter who was in Gloucester VA and she saw the same thing at the same time. At first, we thought it was a power surge or maybe a storm approaching. We really never gave it a second thought until we heard it on your 11:00 evening news. I can't wait to hear more about this.
6:40 a.m. - Beth in Chesapeake: My son and I were inside the house, so we didn't see the light, but we heard it clearly in Great Bridge of Chesapeake, as well. It sounded like a tremendous thunderclap, so I went online to look at the radar. Seeing no clouds near us, I immediately looked outside to see if I saw fire or smoke from an explosion. I saw nothing unusual at that time though, so we were also mystified!
6:40 a.m. - Rashel in Virginia Beach: The walls, the floor, and even the beds shook. I thought a tree had fallen on our home. My son's head was propped up on his headboard and he described how the headboard shook his head. I ran outside thinking there was a tree on the house or something worse only to see my neighbor out doing the same. We were scared. Thanks for covering the story.
6:51 a.m. - Jen in Deltaville: Good Morning, We too heard a loud boom (although distant) last night around 9:30. We were lying in bed so we did not see anything, but we definitely heard something. We live in Deltaville, about an hour and half from your station and main viewing areas. I was glad to hear on your morning report that others also heard the boom. Hopefully we'll soon learn what caused this.
7:32 a.m. - Daniel in Mattaponi: I saw the light in the sky last night, I live in King and Queen County near West Point. I thought it was a thunderstorm! Apparently not. It probably was a relatively large meteor burning up in the atmosphere. If so, let's be glad it wasn't a bigger one.
Comment: See also:
Something Weird Explodes Over Virginia, North Carolina, Maryland, DC, Etc.
US: Streaking lights, explosions reported all along East Coast
The Virginia-Pilot
Mon, 30 Mar 2009 17:59 UTC
If the fireball and explosion witnessed by residents along the
mid-Atlantic coast Sunday night was a meteor, it's likely that it
survived to hit the ground, an astronomy expert says.
The explosions occurred one to two minutes after the fireball disappeared, which means that a meteor penetrated deep into the atmosphere, said Alan MacRobert, senior editor of Sky and Telescope magazine. That makes it more likely that meteorites survived to hit the ground, although it is not certain.
MacRobert encouraged eyewitnesses to report what they saw at American Meteor Society, or at Spaceweather.com. Scientists can predict where to look for meteorites on the ground "if enough people can accurately reconstruct the flight path that they saw in the sky, or if they can simply say 'It went behind that tree,' " he said.
S. Kent Blackwell, an amateur astronomer, was sky-watching in Pungo when the explosion occurred around 10 p.m. Sunday.
"This brilliant green meteor was probably two or three times brighter than the full moon," Blackwell said. "Then it turned orange with a white core and disappeared."
One to two minutes later, a loud low-frequency noise shook houses in Norfolk and Virginia Beach.
"It was a very ominous, low-frequency rumble," said Robert Hitt, director of the Chesapeake planetarium, who lives in the Acredale section of Virginia Beach. "The sound was quite different from what you hear from thunder."
Sound is quite rare with fireballs, according to a fact sheet from the American Meteor Society, but there can be two kinds. One is a sonic boom one to two minutes after the visible light, created by fireballs usually brighter than magnitude -8. In comparison, the meteor society says the North Star is magnitude 2.1 and a bright Venus is -4.4. The full moon is -12.6 and the sun is -26.7.
The other kind of sound that can accompany fireballs is called electrophonic. It occurs at the same time as the flash is seen and may sound like a hiss, a sizzle or popping noise.
"Often, the witness of such sounds is located near some metal object when the fireball occurs," according to the meteor society fact sheet. "Additionally, those with a large amount of hair seem to have a better chance of hearing these sounds."
These sounds may be radio waves, but they have not been scientifically identified, it says.
Many Hampton Roads residents heard a boom, even though they were inside and did not see the flash. One viewer, in an online comment to the newspaper, reported thinking a tree had hit the house. Another said window blinds rattled with the boom.
Most reports place the fireball and noise at around 9:50 p.m., but one local viewer reported seeing a brilliant flash of light at 2:30 a.m. while traveling between Elizabeth City and Virginia Beach.
No meteor showers are taking place at the moment. The next one is predicted for April 21-22.
The Virginia Beach 911 center had numerous calls waiting just before 10 p.m., a supervisor said.
The National Weather Service said reports were made from Dorchester County, Maryland., to the Virginia/North Carolina border.
Chris Wamsley, a meteorologist with the National Weather Service's Wakefield office, said a team is looking into what happened.
Lindsey Hosek of the Great Neck area of Virginia Beach was jogging along the water with her dog when the sky lit up, she said.
"The bright light at first terrified me because I thought somebody was shining a light on me, and then I saw it, and I was in complete awe because it was so beautiful," she said.
Then she saw something that looked like a comet moving low toward the ground; it was blue in front followed by orange and appeared to be the shape and size of a refrigerator.
"It was just so low. It was like where a bird should be," she said. "It was definitely heading downward."
In an e-mail to The Pilot, a reader reported seeing something similar at 2:30 a.m. "The sky turned brilliant blue," wrote Bobby Smith. "I've never seen anything like it. Here's the catch: I saw it at approximately 2:30 a.m. on Sunday morning on Route 17 coming to Virginia Beach from Elizabeth City."
The American Meteor Society seeks as much information as possible about brightness, length across the sky, color, how long it lasted, direction of travel and position in the sky as compared to constellations or even trees and buildings. Although the sight was unusual, the American Meteor Society reports that thousands of fireballs occur in Earth's atmosphere each day, many during daylight when they cannot be easily seen, others in remote locations.
Blackwell said the meteor was moving north-northeast between the constellations Ursa Minor and Ursa Major. "I've been observing more than 40 years but have never seen a meteor this bright," he said. "It was absolutely spectacular!"
Mark Ost of Pungo, who was observing with Blackwell, posted this report on spaceweather.com:
The explosions occurred one to two minutes after the fireball disappeared, which means that a meteor penetrated deep into the atmosphere, said Alan MacRobert, senior editor of Sky and Telescope magazine. That makes it more likely that meteorites survived to hit the ground, although it is not certain.
MacRobert encouraged eyewitnesses to report what they saw at American Meteor Society, or at Spaceweather.com. Scientists can predict where to look for meteorites on the ground "if enough people can accurately reconstruct the flight path that they saw in the sky, or if they can simply say 'It went behind that tree,' " he said.
S. Kent Blackwell, an amateur astronomer, was sky-watching in Pungo when the explosion occurred around 10 p.m. Sunday.
"This brilliant green meteor was probably two or three times brighter than the full moon," Blackwell said. "Then it turned orange with a white core and disappeared."
One to two minutes later, a loud low-frequency noise shook houses in Norfolk and Virginia Beach.
"It was a very ominous, low-frequency rumble," said Robert Hitt, director of the Chesapeake planetarium, who lives in the Acredale section of Virginia Beach. "The sound was quite different from what you hear from thunder."
Sound is quite rare with fireballs, according to a fact sheet from the American Meteor Society, but there can be two kinds. One is a sonic boom one to two minutes after the visible light, created by fireballs usually brighter than magnitude -8. In comparison, the meteor society says the North Star is magnitude 2.1 and a bright Venus is -4.4. The full moon is -12.6 and the sun is -26.7.
The other kind of sound that can accompany fireballs is called electrophonic. It occurs at the same time as the flash is seen and may sound like a hiss, a sizzle or popping noise.
"Often, the witness of such sounds is located near some metal object when the fireball occurs," according to the meteor society fact sheet. "Additionally, those with a large amount of hair seem to have a better chance of hearing these sounds."
These sounds may be radio waves, but they have not been scientifically identified, it says.
Many Hampton Roads residents heard a boom, even though they were inside and did not see the flash. One viewer, in an online comment to the newspaper, reported thinking a tree had hit the house. Another said window blinds rattled with the boom.
Most reports place the fireball and noise at around 9:50 p.m., but one local viewer reported seeing a brilliant flash of light at 2:30 a.m. while traveling between Elizabeth City and Virginia Beach.
No meteor showers are taking place at the moment. The next one is predicted for April 21-22.
The Virginia Beach 911 center had numerous calls waiting just before 10 p.m., a supervisor said.
The National Weather Service said reports were made from Dorchester County, Maryland., to the Virginia/North Carolina border.
Chris Wamsley, a meteorologist with the National Weather Service's Wakefield office, said a team is looking into what happened.
Lindsey Hosek of the Great Neck area of Virginia Beach was jogging along the water with her dog when the sky lit up, she said.
"The bright light at first terrified me because I thought somebody was shining a light on me, and then I saw it, and I was in complete awe because it was so beautiful," she said.
Then she saw something that looked like a comet moving low toward the ground; it was blue in front followed by orange and appeared to be the shape and size of a refrigerator.
"It was just so low. It was like where a bird should be," she said. "It was definitely heading downward."
In an e-mail to The Pilot, a reader reported seeing something similar at 2:30 a.m. "The sky turned brilliant blue," wrote Bobby Smith. "I've never seen anything like it. Here's the catch: I saw it at approximately 2:30 a.m. on Sunday morning on Route 17 coming to Virginia Beach from Elizabeth City."
The American Meteor Society seeks as much information as possible about brightness, length across the sky, color, how long it lasted, direction of travel and position in the sky as compared to constellations or even trees and buildings. Although the sight was unusual, the American Meteor Society reports that thousands of fireballs occur in Earth's atmosphere each day, many during daylight when they cannot be easily seen, others in remote locations.
Blackwell said the meteor was moving north-northeast between the constellations Ursa Minor and Ursa Major. "I've been observing more than 40 years but have never seen a meteor this bright," he said. "It was absolutely spectacular!"
Mark Ost of Pungo, who was observing with Blackwell, posted this report on spaceweather.com:
"The fireball was approximately 36 to 40 degrees above the horizon ... Assuming the speed of sound at 600 mph, I calculated the distance to be 20 to 30 miles away."Pilot writer Patrick Wilson contributed to this report.
Blackwell suspects that meteorites, if there were any, fell into the ocean, which would be disappointing.
"Heck, I wish it had landed in my driveway!" he said.
Peter Davenport
NUFORC
Sun, 29 Mar 2009 17:11 UTC
NUFORC has received a number of telephone calls, as well as written
reports, of a dramatic fireball that was seen at approximately 21:44
hrs. (EDT) on Sunday night, March 29, 2009.
One witness in South Hill, Virginia, reported having been witness to a large fireball, its apparent size larger than the apparent size of the full Moon, in the eastern sky, which lasted for a few seconds.
The object generated a visible tail, according to this witness.
Other reports from Indianapolis, Indiana; White Lake, North Carolina; Virginia Beach, Virgina; and Annapolis, Maryland. I suspect that more reports
My first guess would be that the object may have been a dramatic meteor, but that is pure surmise, at this point. No "terminal burst" has been reported for the object, yet, which is somewhat unusual for a meteor that was as dramatic as reported, based on my experience.
One witness in South Hill, Virginia, reported having been witness to a large fireball, its apparent size larger than the apparent size of the full Moon, in the eastern sky, which lasted for a few seconds.
The object generated a visible tail, according to this witness.
Other reports from Indianapolis, Indiana; White Lake, North Carolina; Virginia Beach, Virgina; and Annapolis, Maryland. I suspect that more reports
My first guess would be that the object may have been a dramatic meteor, but that is pure surmise, at this point. No "terminal burst" has been reported for the object, yet, which is somewhat unusual for a meteor that was as dramatic as reported, based on my experience.
Space Weather
Mon, 30 Mar 2009 19:42 UTC
Last night, March 29th around 9:45 pm EDT, people along the Atlantic
coast of the USA from Maryland to North Carolina witnessed bright
lights in the sky and heard thunderous booms. It was probably a
meteoritic bolide--a random asteroid hitting Earth's atmosphere and
exploding in flight.
Another possibility is being discussed as well: A spent Russian rocket body reentered the atmosphere on March 29th. According to data published by US Strategic Command, the rocket reentry happened near Taiwan (24° N, 125° E) more than two hours after the Atlantic Coast event.
Stay tuned for updates and more eyewitness reports.
Comment: See: Atlantic Coast Fireball could not have been body of Russian Rocket?
Impacts
are the most ubiquitous geologic features in our solar system. Roughly
1600 named craters (and countless lesser pits) scar the Moon's ancient
surfaces. On Earth, where wind and water continually wear down the
land, the census of confirmed impact craters stands at just 176.
Mars, a mixed bag of ancient and modern terrains, lies somewhere in between. Over the years spacecraft have glimpsed ever-finer features in the Martian landscape. These days, the HiRISE camera aboard NASA's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO) can pick out objects only 0.3 metres in size; the High Resolution Stereo Camera on the European Space Agency's Mars Express is no slouch either, with a ground resolution of 2 metres.
So HiRISE researchers were elated, but not particularly surprised, to discover some small, freshly gouged craters in images taken in 2008. Seen at five sites over a latitude range of 43° to 56° north, the excavations are typically 3 to 6 metres across and a third to two-thirds of a metre deep. One cluster must have appeared sometime between June and August, and a somewhat larger pit showed up between January and September.
What did astound the team
were splashes of white seen in and around a handful of these
craterlets. Could it be water ice? Colleagues operating the
spacecraft's CRISM instrument soon confirmed, for the one case large
enough to yield a spectrum, that it was! Apparently fist-sized
impactors had punched into a layer of ice hidden by a topping of dust
about a third of a metre deep.
Disappearing act
In the months that followed, these snowy splashes gradually faded from view. Water ice isn't stable at the craters' latitudes, so most likely it gradually sublimated, or vaporised, into the atmosphere, leaving behind a veneer of any dust that had been mixed with it.
The disappearing act might also be due in part to a coating of dust blown in from the atmosphere. Either way, notes HiRISE investigator Shane Byrne of the University of Arizona, the icy deposits had to be at least a couple of inches (several centimetres) thick, and they couldn't have been unearthed from more than a foot or two (0.3-0.6 m) down.
Byrne announced these findings on Friday at the Lunar and Planetary Science Conference in The Woodlands, Texas. He points out that prior surveys, particularly one done by the neutron spectrometer aboard NASA's Mars Odyssey orbiter, show that vast reservoirs of ice lay barely buried across most of the planet's polar and mid-latitude regions.
So close
But scientists are only now realising just how near the surface the ice lies - and how easily it can be reached. When NASA's Phoenix lander dropped onto a northern polar plain last May, its braking engine blew off a few inches of loose dirt and revealed slabs of nearly pure ice.
The irony in all this is that the Viking 2 lander, which arrived in September 1976, sits just 800 km southeast of the ice-splashed craterlet shown above, and scientists now realise that a layer of water ice almost certainly lies not far beneath its footpads.
"It's probably just tens of centimetres down," says HiRISE team leader Alfred McEwen. Had Viking's sampling scoop been able to dig a little deeper, he adds, "we might have sampled ice on Mars 30 years ago."
Courtesy of Sky and Telescope magazine
The big bang theory's back. But this time the theory doesn't involve the cosmos, just a comet.
Some scientists hypothesize that relatively recently in our geological history a comet collided with Earth. And they're not talking about the collision 65 million years ago that did in the dinosaurs. They're talking about a collision 12,900 years ago, which did away with woolly mammoths, saber-tooth tigers and giant sloths, among some three dozen large mammals.
Tuesday, at 8 p.m., PBS, Channel 2 airs Last Extinction. The hour-long NOVA-produced program features commentary from several scientists, including Peter Schultz, professor of geological sciences at Brown.
"This is like a CSI mystery," he says. "We're still picking up pieces and analyzing them. We think something happened and it's still a debate what exactly happened."
Scientists postulate that a comet struck Earth, probably in North America. The impact would have been equivalent to several nuclear bombs. There would have been widespread fire, the destruction of many plants and the death of animals that lived off them. Then, scientists say, there was a small ice age.
There's "a major climate change and some animals don't make the change," the show reports. Humans, obviously, made the change, but needed to bundle up. The temperature on Earth, according to geologic records, dropped 18 degrees in two years.
The basis for the show and its theory is scientific research, coupled with scientific interpretation.
"It has generated quite a bit of controversy in the field, some of it not necessarily polite," says David Fastovsky, a professor of sciences at URI, who specializes in the study of dinosaur extinction. "But that's OK."
Fastovsky is not a participant in the show. However, he is receptive to what it says.
"I don't reject the theory out of hand. As a scientist, I am interested. But I can't say the theory is without criticism."
As a basis for their theory, scientists used the Greenland ice sheet, which the show calls "a frozen library of information of the Earth's history." Snow captured in a glacier, scientists say, reflects the atmospheric conditions of a given year, including temperature and particulate matter.
And what's discovered in the ice in Greenland is also discovered in the ground of North America, a geological layer known as the "Black Mat." In it, scientists found iridium, an element rarely found on earth, yet found in elevated levels in the Black Mat at some 50 sites across North America. Iridium, which is often an indicator of meteors and comets, is the same element that was found in the geological layer correlating with the extinction of the dinosaurs 65 million years ago.
And, more tellingly, the Black Mat also contains hexagonally shaped microscopic diamonds, which don't occur naturally on earth, scientists say. These diamonds are formed only by a high-pressure blast caused by an extraterrestrial force, such as a comet collision.
"This raises the bar a bit," Schultz says. "The discovery of hexagonal nanodiamonds softens the criticism and makes the story much more interesting."
The comet-collision theory was first formally presented two years ago. Before that, some scientists theorized that humans, namely the Clovis people who used stone-tipped spears, may have hunted woolly mammoths and other large mammals to extinction. But the Last Extinction show dismisses that idea. The number of humans was too few and the size of North America was too great. And the hunting theory doesn't explain the temperature change in the earth and the sudden appearance of iridium and nanodiamonds.
The comet-collision theory offers an explanation, but it has a shortcoming: Where's the crater?
Answering this question is Schultz's primary role in the program. He offers two theories why there's no12,900-year-old crater on Earth.
Well, the comet could have broken up upon entering the earth's atmosphere, Schultz says. A big comet could become millions of small fragments, which would have relatively little impact on the Earth.
"The Earth would recover from this very easily, just a little bit of rain and a little bit of weather and you'd lose the evidence," Schultz says in the program.
The second explanation Schultz offers is that the comet collided with a glacier. The comet broke up on impact, and so did the glacier.
"You lose the evidence," Schultz says in the program. "The ice acted as this flak jacket."
All scientists aren't completely embracing either explanation, according to Fastovsky. The comet break-up theory has a weakness.
"If you destroy the comet too much, then its catastrophic effect becomes undone," Fastovsky says. "You can't break it up too small."
And the glacier explanation defies science, according to Fastovsky.
"Science has to be testable. That is a fundamental criterion in science. If this impact occurred on land, but all traces of it are gone, then it can't be supported and it's not science."
This is not to say that Fastovsky doesn't like the comet-collision theory, just that it needs more research.
"The theory that an asteroid killed the dinosaurs was first seen as implausible or absurd. But as time went on, the data showed the theory was correct. So, right now we're at 'Wow, that's interesting. Let's get more data.' "
So that's what scientists are doing, Schultz says, gathering more data. A scientific theory, he says, must be based on indisputable proof, not popularity.
"This isn't American Idol. This is a case of investigation."
And further investigation will take time. In the meantime, Schultz says the scientific suspicion that a comet collided with the Earth relatively recently should give us pause.
"If this was a comet and it was big, it would suggest we need to worry about comets as well. Comets are like a long-distance relative coming to your house unannounced. They are hiding out there in the solar system."
Maybe the next time a comet makes an unwelcome visit to earth, Schultz says, scientists may have developed some sort of defensive response to keep it from entering our atmosphere. But right now, we don't know when the next comet could come.
"It won't be tomorrow. But maybe that's what the dinosaurs said the day before. This means a sudden self-awareness of the human race. We can't control the weather on Earth or in the solar system. In this case, it would be hard rain. Objects from space hitting the earth I'd call hard rain."
Another possibility is being discussed as well: A spent Russian rocket body reentered the atmosphere on March 29th. According to data published by US Strategic Command, the rocket reentry happened near Taiwan (24° N, 125° E) more than two hours after the Atlantic Coast event.
Stay tuned for updates and more eyewitness reports.
Space Weather
Mon, 30 Mar 2009 19:45 UTC
Summary:
On March 29th, 2009, at approximately 9:45 pm EDT, people along the
Atlantic coast of the USA between Maryland and North Carolina witnessed
bright lights in the sky and heard thunderous rumbles. It was probably
a meteoritic fireball--a small, random asteroid entering Earth's
atmosphere and exploding. Although the event was widely seen (and even
more widely heard), it was not widely photographed. Onlookers did not
have time to grab their cameras before the meteor disappeared.
Eyewitness Accounts:
Location: Virginia Beach, Virginia
Comments: Mark Ost: "I am an amateur astronomer. I witnessed the fireball last night during an observing session. At approximately 2130 I witnessed the entry and what appeared to be an explosion of the bolide. The fireball was approximately 36 to 40 degrees above the horizon. I know this due to my telescope alignment and familiarity with the location of Polaris. The bolide was traveling in a north east direction. Initially the trace was the bright green of an ionization trail. The bolide then turned brilliant white fringed with an orange rim. I timed the arrival of the sound to two minutes after seeing the object explode and extinguish itself. I am located in southern Virginia Beach, Back Bay. Assuming the speed of sound at 600 mph, I calculated the distance to be 20 to 30 miles (direct line of sight) away. The event was also witnessed by Kent Blackwell, a very experienced amateur astronomer."
Location: Virginia Beach, Virginia
Comments: Kent Blackwell: "At precisely 9:50pm EDT on Sunday, March 29, 2009 Mark Ost and I were observing the night sky with our telescopes. Suddenly, the ground lit up a bright green color. Gazing skyward we saw what appeared to be brilliant fireball meteor. As it moved across the sky NNE between Ursa Minor and Ursa Major it turned from a green color to a brilliant orange, with a white core. Two and a half minutes later we heard a low pitch rumbling sound, which was more than likely from the bolide meteor just witnessed. Many reports have come in from the Tidewater, Virginia area residents who also saw the meteor. I've been observing more than forty years but have never seen a meteor this bright. It was absolutely spectacular!"
Location: on the Virginia-North Carolina state line
Comments: Ryan Rhodes: "I live on the VA/NC state line 27 km from the coast in Chesapeake, VA. I am also a JPL Solar System Ambassador. I both heard and the felt the explosion explosion last evening. There were many calls to a local radio morning call in show (WNIS, Norfolk, VA:). Reports from witnesses who actually saw the object agree that it was and object in the sky which at first appeared yellow/orange then turned blue. It was lost from sight as it went over the southern horizon. The sky lit up shortly thereafter in a manner best described as a lightning flash."
Location: Norfolk, Virginia
Comments: Ryan Rhodes: "I Live in Norfolk, VA right near the Hampton Blvd Bridge. Last night around 9:45pm I was riding my bike over the bridge when I saw an extremely bright light flashing across the sky. My initial thought was that it was a flare or a meteor but it was at too low an altitude. It looked like it was right over the tree tops. The color of the light was White Blue and it was very much thicker than any meteor I have ever seen. The light was flashing and flickering and then it looked like it just burned out or disappeared. It was very strange and still has me wondering."
Location: near Hampton Roads, Virginia
Comments: Joseph M Zawodny : "Sorry no photos or video, but I did hear it. At first it sounded like distant thunder. With essentially clear skies that was unlikely though. Thinking about it a bit more, I concluded it sounded more like a sonic boom - the usual double boom-boom. With so many military aircraft in the area around Hampton Roads VA , I thought someone got a little careless too close to land."
Location: Chespeake, Virginia
Comments: Phyllis Goldstein: "I was riding in my car on my way to work, riding on Moses Gramby Trail in Chespeake, Virginia, in the direction of Dominion Road when something made me turn and look over my left shoulder. I had the radio on so I did not hear any sound. What I saw was a rapidly expanding bright red light (fireworks red) behind (from my perspective) a long cloud. The edges were white and the major part of the expanding red light rose toward the sky. The time was 9:43 PM. Because the road winds, I am not completely sure of exactly what direction I saw the light, just generally also toward the North East. It was instantaneous, and there were no lingering lights.
"Just a few minutes earlier I had just been admiring the night when I walked out the door at 9:30 PM Eastern Daylight Savings Time. The area where I live is extremely light polluted, and I was really admiring the fact that I could actually see the Big Dipper toward the North East, and the moon was illuminated partially by Earth Shine, toward the West. There were a few very scattered clouds toward the East. I could also see many more stars than usual, but being en route to work, could not admire them for long.
"My daughter also saw the explosion toward the North East, she states she saw a dark yellow flash of light and heard a rumble, like that of cloud to cloud lightning. I theorized it was either a meteor, or some sort major land explosion, like that of a volcano. But there are no active volcanoes around here!!"
Location: Virginia Beach, Virginia
Comments: Stephen Spencer: "Last night my wife and I happened to be outside when there were about three bright flashes of light that lit up the neighborhood here in Virginia Beach. Naturally the flashes made us look up and we saw a bright bluish ball with a firey tail streaking in an easterly direction. A few seconds later there was a tremendous boom and long rumble that shook the ground. I don't think it was military, I believe it was a meteor. It scared the dickens out of our dogs one of the which is deaf."
Eyewitness Accounts:
Location: Virginia Beach, Virginia
Comments: Mark Ost: "I am an amateur astronomer. I witnessed the fireball last night during an observing session. At approximately 2130 I witnessed the entry and what appeared to be an explosion of the bolide. The fireball was approximately 36 to 40 degrees above the horizon. I know this due to my telescope alignment and familiarity with the location of Polaris. The bolide was traveling in a north east direction. Initially the trace was the bright green of an ionization trail. The bolide then turned brilliant white fringed with an orange rim. I timed the arrival of the sound to two minutes after seeing the object explode and extinguish itself. I am located in southern Virginia Beach, Back Bay. Assuming the speed of sound at 600 mph, I calculated the distance to be 20 to 30 miles (direct line of sight) away. The event was also witnessed by Kent Blackwell, a very experienced amateur astronomer."
Location: Virginia Beach, Virginia
Comments: Kent Blackwell: "At precisely 9:50pm EDT on Sunday, March 29, 2009 Mark Ost and I were observing the night sky with our telescopes. Suddenly, the ground lit up a bright green color. Gazing skyward we saw what appeared to be brilliant fireball meteor. As it moved across the sky NNE between Ursa Minor and Ursa Major it turned from a green color to a brilliant orange, with a white core. Two and a half minutes later we heard a low pitch rumbling sound, which was more than likely from the bolide meteor just witnessed. Many reports have come in from the Tidewater, Virginia area residents who also saw the meteor. I've been observing more than forty years but have never seen a meteor this bright. It was absolutely spectacular!"
Location: on the Virginia-North Carolina state line
Comments: Ryan Rhodes: "I live on the VA/NC state line 27 km from the coast in Chesapeake, VA. I am also a JPL Solar System Ambassador. I both heard and the felt the explosion explosion last evening. There were many calls to a local radio morning call in show (WNIS, Norfolk, VA:). Reports from witnesses who actually saw the object agree that it was and object in the sky which at first appeared yellow/orange then turned blue. It was lost from sight as it went over the southern horizon. The sky lit up shortly thereafter in a manner best described as a lightning flash."
Location: Norfolk, Virginia
Comments: Ryan Rhodes: "I Live in Norfolk, VA right near the Hampton Blvd Bridge. Last night around 9:45pm I was riding my bike over the bridge when I saw an extremely bright light flashing across the sky. My initial thought was that it was a flare or a meteor but it was at too low an altitude. It looked like it was right over the tree tops. The color of the light was White Blue and it was very much thicker than any meteor I have ever seen. The light was flashing and flickering and then it looked like it just burned out or disappeared. It was very strange and still has me wondering."
Location: near Hampton Roads, Virginia
Comments: Joseph M Zawodny : "Sorry no photos or video, but I did hear it. At first it sounded like distant thunder. With essentially clear skies that was unlikely though. Thinking about it a bit more, I concluded it sounded more like a sonic boom - the usual double boom-boom. With so many military aircraft in the area around Hampton Roads VA , I thought someone got a little careless too close to land."
Location: Chespeake, Virginia
Comments: Phyllis Goldstein: "I was riding in my car on my way to work, riding on Moses Gramby Trail in Chespeake, Virginia, in the direction of Dominion Road when something made me turn and look over my left shoulder. I had the radio on so I did not hear any sound. What I saw was a rapidly expanding bright red light (fireworks red) behind (from my perspective) a long cloud. The edges were white and the major part of the expanding red light rose toward the sky. The time was 9:43 PM. Because the road winds, I am not completely sure of exactly what direction I saw the light, just generally also toward the North East. It was instantaneous, and there were no lingering lights.
"Just a few minutes earlier I had just been admiring the night when I walked out the door at 9:30 PM Eastern Daylight Savings Time. The area where I live is extremely light polluted, and I was really admiring the fact that I could actually see the Big Dipper toward the North East, and the moon was illuminated partially by Earth Shine, toward the West. There were a few very scattered clouds toward the East. I could also see many more stars than usual, but being en route to work, could not admire them for long.
"My daughter also saw the explosion toward the North East, she states she saw a dark yellow flash of light and heard a rumble, like that of cloud to cloud lightning. I theorized it was either a meteor, or some sort major land explosion, like that of a volcano. But there are no active volcanoes around here!!"
Location: Virginia Beach, Virginia
Comments: Stephen Spencer: "Last night my wife and I happened to be outside when there were about three bright flashes of light that lit up the neighborhood here in Virginia Beach. Naturally the flashes made us look up and we saw a bright bluish ball with a firey tail streaking in an easterly direction. A few seconds later there was a tremendous boom and long rumble that shook the ground. I don't think it was military, I believe it was a meteor. It scared the dickens out of our dogs one of the which is deaf."
Comment: See: Atlantic Coast Fireball could not have been body of Russian Rocket?
Kelly Beatty, The Woodlands, SkyandTelescope.com
New Scientist
Mon, 30 Mar 2009 21:02 UTC
© Data: Shane Byrne; base map: MOLA team
A map of mid-northern plains on Mars shows five sites where craters have excavated ice from a shallow subsurface layer.
A map of mid-northern plains on Mars shows five sites where craters have excavated ice from a shallow subsurface layer.
Mars, a mixed bag of ancient and modern terrains, lies somewhere in between. Over the years spacecraft have glimpsed ever-finer features in the Martian landscape. These days, the HiRISE camera aboard NASA's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO) can pick out objects only 0.3 metres in size; the High Resolution Stereo Camera on the European Space Agency's Mars Express is no slouch either, with a ground resolution of 2 metres.
So HiRISE researchers were elated, but not particularly surprised, to discover some small, freshly gouged craters in images taken in 2008. Seen at five sites over a latitude range of 43° to 56° north, the excavations are typically 3 to 6 metres across and a third to two-thirds of a metre deep. One cluster must have appeared sometime between June and August, and a somewhat larger pit showed up between January and September.
© NASA/JPL/University of Arizona
Formed sometime between January and September 2008, this fresh crater has dredged up barely buried water ice and splashed it onto the Martian surface. The HiRISE camera aboard NASA's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter recorded this colour close-up image on 1 November 2008. The scene is about 30 metres across.
Formed sometime between January and September 2008, this fresh crater has dredged up barely buried water ice and splashed it onto the Martian surface. The HiRISE camera aboard NASA's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter recorded this colour close-up image on 1 November 2008. The scene is about 30 metres across.
Disappearing act
In the months that followed, these snowy splashes gradually faded from view. Water ice isn't stable at the craters' latitudes, so most likely it gradually sublimated, or vaporised, into the atmosphere, leaving behind a veneer of any dust that had been mixed with it.
The disappearing act might also be due in part to a coating of dust blown in from the atmosphere. Either way, notes HiRISE investigator Shane Byrne of the University of Arizona, the icy deposits had to be at least a couple of inches (several centimetres) thick, and they couldn't have been unearthed from more than a foot or two (0.3-0.6 m) down.
Byrne announced these findings on Friday at the Lunar and Planetary Science Conference in The Woodlands, Texas. He points out that prior surveys, particularly one done by the neutron spectrometer aboard NASA's Mars Odyssey orbiter, show that vast reservoirs of ice lay barely buried across most of the planet's polar and mid-latitude regions.
So close
But scientists are only now realising just how near the surface the ice lies - and how easily it can be reached. When NASA's Phoenix lander dropped onto a northern polar plain last May, its braking engine blew off a few inches of loose dirt and revealed slabs of nearly pure ice.
The irony in all this is that the Viking 2 lander, which arrived in September 1976, sits just 800 km southeast of the ice-splashed craterlet shown above, and scientists now realise that a layer of water ice almost certainly lies not far beneath its footpads.
"It's probably just tens of centimetres down," says HiRISE team leader Alfred McEwen. Had Viking's sampling scoop been able to dig a little deeper, he adds, "we might have sampled ice on Mars 30 years ago."
Courtesy of Sky and Telescope magazine
Bryan Rourke
Projo.com
Tue, 31 Mar 2009 03:57 UTC
Some scientists hypothesize that relatively recently in our geological history a comet collided with Earth. And they're not talking about the collision 65 million years ago that did in the dinosaurs. They're talking about a collision 12,900 years ago, which did away with woolly mammoths, saber-tooth tigers and giant sloths, among some three dozen large mammals.
Tuesday, at 8 p.m., PBS, Channel 2 airs Last Extinction. The hour-long NOVA-produced program features commentary from several scientists, including Peter Schultz, professor of geological sciences at Brown.
"This is like a CSI mystery," he says. "We're still picking up pieces and analyzing them. We think something happened and it's still a debate what exactly happened."
Scientists postulate that a comet struck Earth, probably in North America. The impact would have been equivalent to several nuclear bombs. There would have been widespread fire, the destruction of many plants and the death of animals that lived off them. Then, scientists say, there was a small ice age.
There's "a major climate change and some animals don't make the change," the show reports. Humans, obviously, made the change, but needed to bundle up. The temperature on Earth, according to geologic records, dropped 18 degrees in two years.
The basis for the show and its theory is scientific research, coupled with scientific interpretation.
"It has generated quite a bit of controversy in the field, some of it not necessarily polite," says David Fastovsky, a professor of sciences at URI, who specializes in the study of dinosaur extinction. "But that's OK."
Fastovsky is not a participant in the show. However, he is receptive to what it says.
"I don't reject the theory out of hand. As a scientist, I am interested. But I can't say the theory is without criticism."
As a basis for their theory, scientists used the Greenland ice sheet, which the show calls "a frozen library of information of the Earth's history." Snow captured in a glacier, scientists say, reflects the atmospheric conditions of a given year, including temperature and particulate matter.
And what's discovered in the ice in Greenland is also discovered in the ground of North America, a geological layer known as the "Black Mat." In it, scientists found iridium, an element rarely found on earth, yet found in elevated levels in the Black Mat at some 50 sites across North America. Iridium, which is often an indicator of meteors and comets, is the same element that was found in the geological layer correlating with the extinction of the dinosaurs 65 million years ago.
And, more tellingly, the Black Mat also contains hexagonally shaped microscopic diamonds, which don't occur naturally on earth, scientists say. These diamonds are formed only by a high-pressure blast caused by an extraterrestrial force, such as a comet collision.
"This raises the bar a bit," Schultz says. "The discovery of hexagonal nanodiamonds softens the criticism and makes the story much more interesting."
The comet-collision theory was first formally presented two years ago. Before that, some scientists theorized that humans, namely the Clovis people who used stone-tipped spears, may have hunted woolly mammoths and other large mammals to extinction. But the Last Extinction show dismisses that idea. The number of humans was too few and the size of North America was too great. And the hunting theory doesn't explain the temperature change in the earth and the sudden appearance of iridium and nanodiamonds.
The comet-collision theory offers an explanation, but it has a shortcoming: Where's the crater?
Answering this question is Schultz's primary role in the program. He offers two theories why there's no12,900-year-old crater on Earth.
Well, the comet could have broken up upon entering the earth's atmosphere, Schultz says. A big comet could become millions of small fragments, which would have relatively little impact on the Earth.
"The Earth would recover from this very easily, just a little bit of rain and a little bit of weather and you'd lose the evidence," Schultz says in the program.
The second explanation Schultz offers is that the comet collided with a glacier. The comet broke up on impact, and so did the glacier.
"You lose the evidence," Schultz says in the program. "The ice acted as this flak jacket."
All scientists aren't completely embracing either explanation, according to Fastovsky. The comet break-up theory has a weakness.
"If you destroy the comet too much, then its catastrophic effect becomes undone," Fastovsky says. "You can't break it up too small."
And the glacier explanation defies science, according to Fastovsky.
"Science has to be testable. That is a fundamental criterion in science. If this impact occurred on land, but all traces of it are gone, then it can't be supported and it's not science."
This is not to say that Fastovsky doesn't like the comet-collision theory, just that it needs more research.
"The theory that an asteroid killed the dinosaurs was first seen as implausible or absurd. But as time went on, the data showed the theory was correct. So, right now we're at 'Wow, that's interesting. Let's get more data.' "
So that's what scientists are doing, Schultz says, gathering more data. A scientific theory, he says, must be based on indisputable proof, not popularity.
"This isn't American Idol. This is a case of investigation."
And further investigation will take time. In the meantime, Schultz says the scientific suspicion that a comet collided with the Earth relatively recently should give us pause.
"If this was a comet and it was big, it would suggest we need to worry about comets as well. Comets are like a long-distance relative coming to your house unannounced. They are hiding out there in the solar system."
Maybe the next time a comet makes an unwelcome visit to earth, Schultz says, scientists may have developed some sort of defensive response to keep it from entering our atmosphere. But right now, we don't know when the next comet could come.
"It won't be tomorrow. But maybe that's what the dinosaurs said the day before. This means a sudden self-awareness of the human race. We can't control the weather on Earth or in the solar system. In this case, it would be hard rain. Objects from space hitting the earth I'd call hard rain."
Richard Sanner
Pittsburgh UFO Examiner
Tue, 31 Mar 2009 16:49 UTC
A mysterious flash of light, followed by a loud boom was reported by
thousands of people from Maryland through North Carolina, prompting
many calls to local 911 centers. The event also received massive media
attention. So far, authorities have only been able to rule out that it
wasn't a meteorological event. The following are some of the reports
that were coming into the Mutual UFO Network headquarters:
Richmond, Virginia - 9:45-10:05 p.m. - Two witnesses observed what they described as resembling a green meteor shoot down from the sky toward the ground. The first witness' husband came outside to see what she was looking at. He looked in the opposite direction from where his wife had spotted the object, but nothing was seen. He continued to scan the night sky when he saw a bright white orb appear in the western sky, shooting horizontally from right to left for a couple of seconds, before vanishing.
Chesapeake, Virginia - 9:30 p.m. - Witness observed a flash in the sky followed with a loud boom unlike the jets they have in the area. Within a few seconds a second boom was heard, but it was not as loud as the first. The witness indicated he later heard several similar reports over his local television news.
Virginia Beach, Virginia - (time not provided) - Witness was driving home when he noticed what appeared to be lightning-like flashes in the sky above his car. He stopped the car to get out to have a better look. The whole night sky lit up a bluish color and he saw something burning, followed by large orange sparks falling from behind the object's path of travel. It was followed by a large boom, then disappeared.
Other reports from Sunday evening
Martinsburg, WV - 3/29/2009 - A hospital employee had just stepped outside, with a co-worker, for a cigarette break. Both noticed what looked like a "falling star". However, the object was brilliant and illuminated the parking lot. The object was described as having a blue/green trail following behind it. The witness estimated the object to be the size of a small car and brilliant white in color, with a blue "aura" around it. The witness claimed it flew extremely close to the ground with absolutely no sound.
Chicago, Illinois - 3/29/2009 - A father and son were driving home at approximately 11:30 p.m. (CST), when the noticed a bright circular light in the western sky. The object had a red pulsating light, and was not moving when first observed. They drove to a different location to get a better look, and indicated the object moved very little. The witness observed the light for approximately 45 minutes before it moved further west until vanishing from sight.
Richmond, Virginia - 9:45-10:05 p.m. - Two witnesses observed what they described as resembling a green meteor shoot down from the sky toward the ground. The first witness' husband came outside to see what she was looking at. He looked in the opposite direction from where his wife had spotted the object, but nothing was seen. He continued to scan the night sky when he saw a bright white orb appear in the western sky, shooting horizontally from right to left for a couple of seconds, before vanishing.
Chesapeake, Virginia - 9:30 p.m. - Witness observed a flash in the sky followed with a loud boom unlike the jets they have in the area. Within a few seconds a second boom was heard, but it was not as loud as the first. The witness indicated he later heard several similar reports over his local television news.
Virginia Beach, Virginia - (time not provided) - Witness was driving home when he noticed what appeared to be lightning-like flashes in the sky above his car. He stopped the car to get out to have a better look. The whole night sky lit up a bluish color and he saw something burning, followed by large orange sparks falling from behind the object's path of travel. It was followed by a large boom, then disappeared.
Other reports from Sunday evening
Martinsburg, WV - 3/29/2009 - A hospital employee had just stepped outside, with a co-worker, for a cigarette break. Both noticed what looked like a "falling star". However, the object was brilliant and illuminated the parking lot. The object was described as having a blue/green trail following behind it. The witness estimated the object to be the size of a small car and brilliant white in color, with a blue "aura" around it. The witness claimed it flew extremely close to the ground with absolutely no sound.
Chicago, Illinois - 3/29/2009 - A father and son were driving home at approximately 11:30 p.m. (CST), when the noticed a bright circular light in the western sky. The object had a red pulsating light, and was not moving when first observed. They drove to a different location to get a better look, and indicated the object moved very little. The witness observed the light for approximately 45 minutes before it moved further west until vanishing from sight.
Saskatoon Star Phoenix
Tue, 31 Mar 2009 18:02 UTC
People across western Canada - including in Saskatoon - saw an unknown
bright object fly through the sky early Tuesday morning.
The object appeared at around 6:30 a.m., according to one witness who was out for a jog on Saskatoon streets. He said it looked like a "lit match" going across the sky from east to west.
Another witness, Cheryl Cook-Taylor, was on her way to work in North Battleford when she saw it.
"It kind of glowed green, and it looked like it was falling very, very quickly," she said. "It just kind of reminded me of a falling star or something."
Cook-Taylor said she was sorry to have missed the meteor that made national headlines last November when it streaked across the prairie sky, "so it's kind of neat I saw it this time. I guess it's good to be up that early in the morning."
The object was also seen in Calgary, where witness Donna Thompson described what she saw as "a meteor breaking up" in an e-mail sent to the Calgary Herald.
Thompson, who said she was driving on Highway 2 southbound between Olds and Calgary, said she saw the object at about 6:33 a.m. east of the highway. The flash lasted for about two seconds, Thompson said in her e-mail, before dispersing "like fireworks going off."
One account said the object was travelling roughly in a north-to-south direction east of the downtown core.
The object appeared at around 6:30 a.m., according to one witness who was out for a jog on Saskatoon streets. He said it looked like a "lit match" going across the sky from east to west.
Another witness, Cheryl Cook-Taylor, was on her way to work in North Battleford when she saw it.
"It kind of glowed green, and it looked like it was falling very, very quickly," she said. "It just kind of reminded me of a falling star or something."
Cook-Taylor said she was sorry to have missed the meteor that made national headlines last November when it streaked across the prairie sky, "so it's kind of neat I saw it this time. I guess it's good to be up that early in the morning."
The object was also seen in Calgary, where witness Donna Thompson described what she saw as "a meteor breaking up" in an e-mail sent to the Calgary Herald.
Thompson, who said she was driving on Highway 2 southbound between Olds and Calgary, said she saw the object at about 6:33 a.m. east of the highway. The flash lasted for about two seconds, Thompson said in her e-mail, before dispersing "like fireworks going off."
One account said the object was travelling roughly in a north-to-south direction east of the downtown core.
Krista Sylvester
Metro Calgary
Tue, 31 Mar 2009 19:11 UTC
At first he thought it was a UFO, then he thought it was a meteor, but
whatever it was Vernon Chiefmoon has never seen anything like it.
Chiefmoon was driving to work Tuesday morning around 6:30 a.m. and caught a white flash through the sky out of the corner of his eye.
"It looked like it was heading over downtown. I wanted to take a picture but suddenly it turned into a green fireball and suddenly exploded into pieces and disappeared," he told Metro.
"I have never seen anything like it."
Chiefmoon said he has seen meteors and shooting stars before but this was different.
"It gave me an eerie feeling. I thought I was the only one who seen it but the traffic on Crowchild sort of came to a halt and it seemed everyone was watching," he added.
There has been no confirmation of what the object was at this time.
Chiefmoon was driving to work Tuesday morning around 6:30 a.m. and caught a white flash through the sky out of the corner of his eye.
"It looked like it was heading over downtown. I wanted to take a picture but suddenly it turned into a green fireball and suddenly exploded into pieces and disappeared," he told Metro.
"I have never seen anything like it."
Chiefmoon said he has seen meteors and shooting stars before but this was different.
"It gave me an eerie feeling. I thought I was the only one who seen it but the traffic on Crowchild sort of came to a halt and it seemed everyone was watching," he added.
There has been no confirmation of what the object was at this time.
Chelsea Coupal
Edmonton Journal
Tue, 31 Mar 2009 19:19 UTC
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