Fireballs and Meteorites - SOTT.NET

January 2012

2012-01-05T18:47:00.001Z

New Year's Fireball

Space Weather
Sun, 01 Jan 2012 12:24 CST

The first bright fireball of the New Year streaked over the southwestern USA on Jan. 1st at 03:15 UT. It was visible from Arizona, Colorado and New Mexico. "I was able to see it out my window," reports amateur astronomer Thomas Ashcraft from his rural observatory outside of Santa Fe. "It was brilliant turquoise blue." Ashcraft operates a combination all-sky camera/forward-scatter meteor radar system, which captured the fireball's flight. Click here to play the movie--and don't forget to turn up the volume to hear the ghostly radar echo:

Cameras belonging to NASA's All-Sky Fireball Network also recorded the fireball from multiple locations. An orbit calculated from those data show that the fireball was a random meteoriod hailing from the asteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter. It hit Earth's atmosphere at 26 km/s (58,000 mph), which is relatively slow compared to other meteoroids, and disintegrated 82 km above Earth's surface.

"This was an auspicious start to 2012," says Ashcraft. "Clear skies and Happy New Year!"

Space mountain produces terrestrial meteorites

Dauna Coulter
Physorg
Mon, 02 Jan 2012 07:51 CST

© NASA
A side view of Vesta's great south polar mountain.

When NASA's Dawn spacecraft entered orbit around giant asteroid Vesta in July, scientists fully expected the probe to reveal some surprising sights. But no one expected a 13-mile high mountain, two and a half times higher than Mount Everest, to be one of them.

The existence of this towering peak could solve a longstanding mystery: How did so many pieces of Vesta end up right here on our own planet?

For many years, researchers have been collecting Vesta meteorites from "fall sites" around the world. The rocks' chemical fingerprints leave little doubt that they came from the giant asteroid. Earth has been peppered by so many fragments of Vesta, that people have actually witnessed fireballs caused by the meteoroids tearing through our atmosphere. Recent examples include falls near the African village of Bilanga Yanga in October 1999 and outside Millbillillie, Australia, in October 1960.

"Those meteorites just might be pieces of the basin excavated when Vesta's giant mountain formed," says Dawn PI Chris Russell of UCLA.

Russell believes the mountain was created by a 'big bad impact' with a smaller body; material displaced in the smashup rebounded and expanded upward to form a towering peak. The same tremendous collision that created the mountain might have hurled splinters of Vesta toward Earth.

"Some of the meteorites in our museums and labs," he says, "could be fragments of Vesta formed in the impact -- pieces of the same stuff the mountain itself is made of."

To confirm the theory, Dawn's science team will try to prove that Vesta's meteorites came from the mountain's vicinity. It's a "match game" involving both age and chemistry.

© Russell/Earth and Planetary Sciences

Cross-section of the south polar mountain on Vesta with the cross sections of Olympus Mons on Mars, the largest mountain in the solar system, and the Big lsland of Hawaii as measured from the floor of the Pacific, the largest mountain on Earth. These latter two mountains are both shield volcanoes.

"Vesta formed at the dawn of the solar system," says Russell. "Billions of years of collisions with other space rocks have given it a densely cratered surface."

The surface around the mountain, however, is tellingly smooth. Russell believes the impact wiped out the entire history of cratering in the vicinity. By counting craters that have accumulated since then, researchers can estimate the age of the landscape.

"In this way we can figure out the approximate age of the mountain's surface. Using radioactive dating, we can also tell when the meteorites were 'liberated' from Vesta. A match between those dates would be compelling evidence of a meteorite-mountain connection."

For more proof, the scientists will compare the meteorites' chemical makeup to that of the mountain area.

"Vesta is intrinsically but subtly colorful. Dawn's sensors can detect slight color variations in Vesta's minerals, so we can map regions of chemicals and minerals that have emerged on the surface. Then we'll compare these colors to those of the meteorites."

Could an impact on Vesta really fill so many museum display cases on Earth? Stay tuned for answers.

Quadrantid Meteor Shower

Space Weather
Tue, 03 Jan 2012 12:19 CST

Earth is about to pass through a stream of debris from 2003 EH1, a comet fragment that produces the annual Quadrantid meteor shower. Forecasters expect the shower to peak around 07:20 UT (02:20 am EST) on Wednesday morning, January 4th. At maximum, as many as 100 meteors/hour could emerge from a radiant near Polaris, the north star.

Brian Emfinger of Ozark, Arkansas, photographed this one on Jan. 2nd:

"Wow! What a really nice fireball," says Emfinger. "It emerged very very close to the Quadrantid radiant, but I'm not 100% sure it is indeed an early Quadrantid."

Even among professional researchers there is a lot of uncertainty about the Quadrantids. Because the shower occurs during the deep cold of northern winter, and because its peak is brief (often no longer than a couple of hours), this strong shower is seldom observed. Bill Cooke of NASA's Meteoroid Environment Office hopes 2012 will be different. "We encourage sky watchers to be alert for Quadrantids and send their observations to NASA using the Meteor Counter app," he says. "With a little help, we just might learn something new about this intriguing shower."

Bizarre Crystal Hitched Ride on Meteorite

Jeanna Bryner
Live Science
Tue, 03 Jan 2012 10:04 CST

© Paul Steinhardt, Princeton University
A rock sample containing quasicrystals unearthed in the Koryak Mountains in Russia.

A rock fragment containing a previously unidentified natural quasicrystal may be the remnant of a meteorite that originated in the early solar system more than 4.5 billion years ago before Earth even existed.

Until now, researchers had assumed such quasicrystals, whose atoms are arranged in a quasi-regular pattern rather than the regular arrangement of atoms inside a crystal, were not feasible in nature. In fact, until now the only known quasicrystals were synthetic, formed in a laboratory under carefully controlled conditions. (This year's Nobel Prize in chemistry honored Dan Shechtman for his 1982 discovery of quasicrystals, which at the time were thought to break the laws of nature.)

"Many thought it had to be that way, because they thought quasicrystals are too delicate, too prone to crystallization, to form naturally," researcher Paul Steinhardt of Princeton University said. The new finding, described this week in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, suggests "quasicrystals are much more common in the universe than we thought," Steinhardt added.

The rock was discovered in the Koryak Mountains of Russia. Various features of the quasicrystal suggest a meteorite origin, including the shapes of the grains and its chemical composition of metallic copper and aluminum that resemble those found in so-called carbonaceous chondrites; these are primitive meteorites that scientists think were remnants shed from the original building blocks of planets. Most meteorites found on Earth fit into this group.

Analysis of the quasicrystals revealed they were intermeshed with silicates and crystalline metals, with one quasicrystalline grain encased in a silica mineral called stishovite.

"Stishovite is silicon dioxide, the same chemical that makes quartz and sand, but here it forms a different structure that only occurs at high pressures achieved in meteorite collisions and impacts," wrote Steinhardt in an email to LiveScience.

The fact that the metallic aluminum was found in its unoxidized form was also surprising, since the metal has such a strong affinity for oxygen and couldn't have remained in that form here on Earth, Steinhardt said.

"So, we have learned that extraterrestrial conditions enable a phase of matter not likely possible on Earth. This raises the question: What other materials have been made in space that would not form naturally on Earth. In particular, are there other quasicrystals?" Steinhardt said.

Fantastic Quadrantids

Space Weather
Wed, 04 Jan 2012 13:27 CST

This morning, Jan. 4th, Earth passed through a stream of debris from shattered comet 2003 EH1. The encounter produced a strong display of Quadrantid meteors over the Atlantic side of our planet, as many as 80 per hour according to the International Meteor Organization. Fredrik Broms caught this one streaking over his home in Kvaløya, Norway:

"The Quadrantids of 2012 were fantastic," says Broms. "The display was dominated by fairly bright and fast meteors."

NASA's All-Sky Fireball Network recorded 20 fireballs during the outburst. Data from multiple cameras allowed the orbits of the meteoroiuds to be calculated, and they are shown here in a diagram of the inner solar system:

More Images:

From Pete Lawrence of Selsey, West Sussex, UK; from Didier Schreiner of Wormhout, France; from Renata Arpasova of Avebury, Wiltshire, UK; from Glenn Wester of Smithtown, New York; from Yu Jun of Beijing, China; from Sylvain Weiller of Saint Rémy lès Chevreuse, France; from Fredrik Broms of Kvaløya, Norway; from Pete Glastonbury of Devizes, Wiltshire, UK; from Samuel Todd of Madison, Alabama; from Richard Hay of Green Cove Springs, Florida; from Amirreza Kamkar of Qayen, Iran

Great fireball spotted over southern Finland

YLE.fi
Wed, 04 Jan 2012 12:05 CST

A large fireball was seen over southern Finland on Tuesday evening, reports a magazine published by the Ursa Astronomical Association. The ball, shining brighter than the moon, was visible for about ten seconds.

Ursa received numerous sightings of the fireball from various parts of southern and central Finland after 8:18pm on Tuesday.

The trajectory of the fireball is still being investigated. A mathematician of Ursa's fireball research group, Esko Lyytinen, gives a preliminary estimate that the phenomenon appeared over Narva in Estonia at the height of about 95km and vanished from sight around Heinola in southern Finland at the height of about 45-50km.

"We've had very good luck as the skies happened to clear at exactly the right moment and our automatic cameras recorded such a wonderful fireball. Otherwise, the whole night in Mikkeli was mostly cloudy," says Aki Taavitsainen, head of Ursa's Mikkeli office.

December 2011

2011-12-06T17:27:00.004Z

US: Rainbow-Colored, Exploding Meteor Appears Just South of D.C.

WJLA
Thu, 01 Dec 2011 05:00 CST

Hordes of incandescent meteors have ripped across U.S. skies this past week. According to alert skywatchers, the nation's capital got in on the stellar action in a big way.

The delightful blog Lunar Meteorite Hunters carries two reports of a glowing nightly visitor that appeared between 40 and 60 miles south of D.C. on Monday, Nov. 28. The first account is from Patrick in Leonardtown, Md., who caught a bright object whizzing by overhead around 9:20 p.m. The flaming flier lasted about 2 seconds, cycling like an angry squid from red to blue to green. Says Patrick, with minor spelling/grammar errors fixed:

No discernible sound. Very bright, same as the moon. Not blinding, but quite noticeable. Not sure, [but it looked like it had] only one tail. I'm not sure if it was when it entered the atmosphere, but I saw almost an explosion or halo form around it about halfway through its travel before it disappeared.

A meteor that was hoisted with its own petard, you say? Go on!

The next account of Monday's space shenanigans comes from an unnamed observer in Stafford, Va., at approximately the same time of evening. This witness also says the object flamed out in a spectacular fashion:

Two seconds left to right. White, reddish. Brightest thing in the sky.... I thought it was a falling star but then it exploded with a bright flash of light. It look like it hit something and disintegrated. There was a big puff of what look like smoke.

The forums of the American Meteor Society bear no similar reports of a Monday-night fireball near D.C., but resident site expert Robert Lunsford notes a number of minor meteor showers that might account for the sparking skies. The Andromedid shower is still ongoing with "low, but detectable" and slow-moving meteors, and the November Orionids reached their anthill peak on Nov. 30. A dimmed, crescent moon is allowing amateur astronomers in the Northern Hemisphere to see as many as four shooting stars an hour, Lunsford says.

So keep your eyes open and you might just see one of these eerie travelers from the beyond. However, best know how to distinguish between a meteor and a helicopter, first.

US: Mysterious Debris Crashes Through Plymouth Warehouse Roof

CBS Boston
Thu, 01 Dec 2011 23:20 CST

Plymouth - A solid piece of metal crashed through the roof of a Plymouth furniture warehouse on Thursday. Investigators say the debris appears to have fallen from the sky, but it did not come from a plane.

Michael Facchini, the owner of Michael's Wholesale Furniture Distributors found the 3-5 lb. chunk of debris on the floor of his building off Camelot Drive.

Facchini also discovered a hole in the roof of the building.

"Looked up, the ceiling had a big hole," he told WBZ-TV's Kathy Curran. "One of the workers came by and noticed the office was a mess and asked if I knew what happened then I looked and saw metal and figured it came from high above."

No one was hurt by the falling debris.

The FAA has sent an inspector to Plymouth to help investigators.

© David G. Curran/SatelliteNewsService.com
A hole can be seen through the roof of a Plymouth business after a mystery object crashed through.

They are now tasked with trying to figure out where the metal came from.

Officials originally suspected that it could have fallen off of a passing plane, but they have since ruled out that possibility.

"We have no idea what it is. At this point, we can only speculate. No clue," said Plymouth police Capt. John Rogers. "This would have had to come through with some significant force or velocity to get through the warehouse roof and cause damage."

At Michael's Wholesale Furniture Distributors, the fact no one was hurt has employees counting their lucky stars. In fact, they say they're going to play the lottery tonight after surviving this strange event.

The Great "Birthday Comet" of 2011

SOHO
Sat, 03 Dec 2011 02:05 CST

SOHO's 16th Birthday gift is on it's way, and the tracking number states delivery by midnight on December 15th!

On December 2nd, 2011, newly discovered Kreutz-group comet C/2011 W3 (Lovejoy) was announced. SOHO discovers these objects on average every three days, but this one is different... it was found from a ground based telescope, and marks the first such discovery in over 40yrs. It also marks a significant achievement for Australian astronomer Terry Lovejoy, who as an early pioneer of discovering SOHO comets over the internet, can now claim to be the first person to discover a Sungrazer from both ground and space-based telescopes!

Traditionally, and with little exception, ground-discovered Kreutz-group comets have gotten bright. Very bright! In 1965, Kreutz-comet Ikeya-Seki was so bright, it could be seen by the naked eye by blocking the Sun out with your hand. We do not expect C/2011 W3 to get this bright, so reserve your seat next to your computer and stay tuned to the SOHO, STEREO and Sungrazer websites as we prepare for this rare and potentially spectacular object to enter our cameras around Dec 12, meeting its fiery demise late on Dec 15.

We will have more information on this site over the coming week. In the meantime, updates will occasionally be posted at the Sungrazer site.

Stay tuned!

Super Fireball Lights Up Night Sky in Northern China

Sun Chi
China Daily/Asia News Network
Sat, 03 Dec 2011 23:59 CST

China's Xinhua News Agency reported a golden UFO appeared in the northwestern sky and was seen by some citizens in Beijing, Tianjin and Hebei on the evening of Nov 30. Astronomers said it was a super fireball that is rarely seen.

Ma Qiang is an amateur astronomer living in Tianjin who witnessed the flying fireball.

He said the fireball glittered and flew from northwest to the west around 5:25 pm and disappeared after two seconds.

Its golden lights were brighter than the moon.

Some citizens in Beijing also saw the fireball and reported the incident.

Director of Beijing Planetarium Zhu Jin said the glittering object is a super bright fireball that is rarely seen, according to descriptions given by the witnesses.

Astronomers say a fireball is a kind of meteor that has seldom been observed.

Flying in the aerosphere, the fireball sometimes sounds like a pen scratching on paper. It is brighter than Venus at night.

New Views of Giant Asteroid Vesta Reveal it Could be 'More like a Planet' Say Scientists

Rob Waugh
The Mail Online
Tue, 06 Dec 2011 10:05 CST

Vesta is the second-largest object in the asteroid belt - 320 miles across - and is being probed by a hi-tech robot 'surveyor' that will then move on to its bigger 'sister' asteroid Ceres.

New views sent back by the probe, Dawn, this week, reveal an object more like a planet than an asteroid - and scientists say they now consider it a 'transitional body' between the two.

The Dawn spacecraft has been beaming back images since July - the latest show a rugged surface is unique compared to the solar system's much smaller and lightweight asteroids.

Impact craters dot Vesta's surface along with grooves, troughs and a variety of minerals.

'Vesta is unlike any other asteroid,' said mission co-scientist Vishnu Reddy of the Max Planck Institute for Solar System Research in Germany. The new findings were presented at a meeting of the American Geophysical Union in San Francisco.

This image using color data obtained by the framing camera aboard NASA's Dawn spacecraft shows Vesta's southern hemisphere in color, centered on the Rheasilvia formation - the different colours reflect different minerals in the surface.

© NASA
The latest pictures from Nasa's Dawn probe show that the moon is 'more like a planet' than an asteroid, scientists revealed on Monday

Rheasilvia is an impact basin measured at about 290 miles (467 kilometers) in diameter with a central mound reaching about 14 miles (23 kilometers) high. The black hole in the middle is data that have been omitted due to the angle between the sun, Vesta and the spacecraft.

Most asteroids resemble potatoes, but Vesta is more like an avocado with its iron core, Reddy said.

Asteroids are remnants from the birth of the solar system some 4.5 billion years ago around the same time as the formation of the rocky planets including Earth. Studying asteroids can offer clues about how our planetary system began.

© NASA
David Williams of Arizona State University considers Vesta a 'transitional body' between rocky planets and the thousands of asteroids floating between Mars and Jupiter

Instead of returning to the moon, NASA has decided to land astronauts on a yet-to-be determined asteroid as a stepping stone to Mars.

David Williams of Arizona State University considers Vesta a 'transitional body' between rocky planets and the thousands of asteroids floating between Mars and Jupiter.

The mission has yielded a mystery. Before Dawn arrived at Vesta, scientists predicted that the surface would harbor a volcano. There's a hill on Vesta, but researchers said there's no evidence of lava flow or volcanic deposits.

Williams said it's possible the volcanic materials are buried, so the team will keep looking.

Powered by ion propulsion instead of conventional rocket fuel, Dawn will study Vesta for several more months before cruising to an even bigger asteroid, Ceres, where it will arrive in 2015.

Japan: Fireball/Meteor Over the Moon, 4 December 2011

YouTube
Mon, 05 Dec 2011 12:54 CST

Not very many of these lately.

I personally think it was a meteor or space junk burning up in the atmosphere, FYI.

Source

"The Moon looks full in the video, but it was not full last night!"

That's just a trick of the camera.

Think of it as a light bulb -- if you take a picture of a dimly lit room with a visible light bulb, the room will be exposed normally, while the light bulb will be overexposed. If the camera measured exposure on the light bulb, the room would be completely dark, while the light bulb is properly exposed. The same thing happens with the moon -- it works just like the light bulb at night and it will always be overexposed.

Try it yourself sometime.

Earth Hit By Fireball Storm

Space Weather
Thu, 08 Dec 2011 14:24 CST

Ranging in size from microscopic space dust to mountainous asteroids, trillions of meteoroids zing through the inner solar system on a daily basis. What are the odds that five of them would cross the same point in space? Pretty good, actually. In fact, it happened just last night. Regard the following orbit diagram, then read on for an explanation:

These are the orbits of five objects that hit Earth on the night of Dec. 7/8. NASA's All Sky Fireball Network recorded the meteoroids as they disintegrated in the atmosphere over the United States, each one producing a bright fireball. Note how all the orbits converge on a single point--our planet.

Every night the network's cameras scan the skies over the United States, forming an inventory of what hits the atmosphere. Combining images from multiple cameras, network software rapidly calculates the basic parameters of each interloper: orbit, speed, disintegration height, and more. At the moment, cameras are located in only four states (New Mexico, Alabama, Georgia, Tennessee), but the network is expanding to provide even better coverage. Soon we'll see just how congested our intersection in space really is.

Stay tuned.

Meteor Crater Helps Unlock Planetary History

Leonard David
Space.com
Fri, 09 Dec 2011 00:00 CST

© The Associated Press/Meteor Crater, Northern Arizona
Picture shows an aerial view of Meteor Crater, near Winslow, Ariz.

The Barringer meteorite crater - known popularly as "Meteor Crater" - near Winslow, Ariz., was formed some 50,000 years ago in the flat-lying sedimentary rocks of the Southern Colorado Plateau in Arizona. Now, scientists are using the crater to study mysteries near and far.

This out-of-the-blue geological feature is considered a prime example of a young, well-preserved and well-documented simple impact crater.

That means it represents one of the most common morphological features on planetary surfaces, both on Earth, and elsewhere in our solar system. Scientists are using this crater to probe not just our own planetary history, but the mechanics of space rock impacts throughout the universe.

Meteor Crater is one of very few impact sites on our planet where the geologic details of crater excavation and ejecta emplacement are preserved. While the outline of most simple craters is circular, the shape of Arizona's Meteor Crater strongly deviates from a circle and resembles a quadrangle.

"Hole Earth" catalog

The bowl-shape crater is surprisingly well preserved by terrestrial standards. That makes it a "kiss and tell" terrestrial feature that is being plumbed by researchers far and wide.

The crater is roughly 0.75 miles (1.2 kilometers) in diameter. That giant hole in the ground sports a rim that rises up to 196 feet (60 meters) above the surrounding landscape. The crater floor falls to a depth of 590 feet (180 meters).

The upper crater walls have average slopes of 40 to 50 degrees, although they also include vertical to near-vertical cliffs. The rock ejected from the crater forms a debris blanket that slopes away from the crater rim out to a distance of 0.6 miles (1 km).

This impact crater is viewed as a treasured scientific site, not only here on Earth but in shaping future moon and Mars exploration plans. It has become a training ground for astronauts and robot hardware as well as a learning lab for planetary geologists who are investigating impact cratered terrains on other planets.

Indeed, it's a "hole Earth catalog" of processes that keeps on giving.

Honing exploration skills

When a cosmic interloper slammed into Earth tens of thousands of years ago, more than 175 million metric tons of rock were excavated and deposited on the crater rim and the surrounding terrain in a matter of a few seconds, said David Kring, a senior staff scientist and geologist at the Lunar and Planetary Institute in Houston.

Kring has been engaged in studies of the crater for decades. He uses the site as a teaching tool for students, as well as a locale for honing the exploration skills to lunge beyond Earth.

"Those rocks and the processes they record remain the focus of our studies next year," Kring told SPACE.com. "At the same time, we will conduct training activities that are designed to enhance the success of exploration of the moon and planetary surfaces throughout the solar system."

There are a lot of activities at the crater, Kring said. He made two trips there in October alone, he added.

Training ground

First of all, the crater is being used to instruct postdoctoral researchers in the field of lunar science, as well as educate graduate students who are studying impact craters on the moon, Mars, and elsewhere.

Furthermore, Kring added, Meteor Crater is being used to tutor astronauts for planetary surface operations, which require different talents than those needed for past space shuttle flights and work on the International Space Station.

In terms of active research, the crater is telling the story of how material is ejected and deposited after a space rock impact. Its revelations have implications for craters on all planetary surfaces.

Moreover, research at the site is being conducted to determine how water produces gullies and otherwise erodes the crater. This could help scientists interpret observations of Mars.

Research is also being conducted at Meteor Crater, Kring said, to refine the age of the impact event itself. This work will help calibrate isotopic systems to date geologic events that occur elsewhere in the world.

Lastly, the crater is providing an on-the-spot opportunity for evaluating the design of traverses and geologic station activities on the moon, Mars and other exploration destinations.

New questions

There are still many open scientific questions about the crater itself.

Kring said that an important remaining problem is that the trajectory of the impacting iron asteroid and the damage it caused to Earth's crust beneath the crater floor remain a mystery.

"Both might be solved with a shallow drilling campaign," Kring said.

Overall, there is still much work to do, Kring said.

"As we push farther into the solar system, new questions are constantly being developed and require an assessment of new ideas at the world's best preserved impact crater," he said. "Thus, the crater is important for what it can tell us now, but is also important for what it will tell us as we continue to explore beyond low-Earth orbit."

According to Brad Andes, president of Meteor Crater Enterprises, Inc., this year the crater attracted roughly 225,000 visitors.

"We are excited about the fact that Meteor Crater has had a very important role as a science research laboratory in the past, but what is even more exciting is that almost every year, researchers request a visit to the crater because of a 'new' question that has been asked," Andes told SPACE.com. "And the answer to that question may live in the crater. This has been happening for decades. I am sure it will continue to happen for many more decades and possibly even centuries."

There's also potential research at Meteor Crater investigating historical weather events. That information could even have a voice in the global warming debate, Andes said.

"It is humbling to consider the fact that every day researchers get to work at a place that may be viewed as the Rosetta Stone for astrogeological research," he said. "This clearly illustrates the need to preserve it to the greatest degree possible while allowing legitimate research to happen here."

Newfound Comet to Dive Through Sun Next Week

Joe Rao
SPACE.com
Tue, 06 Dec 2011 11:14 CST

A newly discovered comet is racing toward a mid-December rendezvous with the sun - a rendezvous that it will likely not survive.

The comet is categorized by astronomers as a "sungrazer" and it is destined to do just that; literally graze the surface of the sun (called the photosphere) and pass through the sun's intensely hot corona, where temperatures have been measured at upwards of 3.6-million degrees Fahrenheit (2-million degrees Celsius).

While the comet will not collide with the sun, most astronomers say the odds are rather long that it will remain intact after its closest pass by the sun. The most exciting aspect of the event is that the comet's expected destruction should be visible on your computer monitor.

And there is a very slight chance that, should the comet somehow manage to survive, it might briefly become visible in broad daylight.

Discovery

The comet was discovered by Australian amateur astronomer Terry Lovejoy Nov. 27 using a C8 Schmidt-Cassegrain telescope, working with a QHY9 CCD camera.

At first, Lovejoy believed that the rapidly moving fuzzy image he saw was nothing more than a camera reflection. But two nights later, despite clouds and haze, he managed to find the fuzzy object again and take several new images.

Lovejoy then put out a call to some trusted observers to confirm his observations. He received that confirmation Dec. 1 from Mount John Observatory, based in the Mackenzie Basin on the South Island of New Zealand. By then, 31 separate observations of the comet had been collected to determine an orbit, and the first announcement of Lovejoy's discovery was made this past Friday (Dec. 2) by the Minor Planet Center of the International Astronomical Union.

Its official title is C/2011 W3 (Lovejoy). It is Terry Lovejoy's third comet discovery.

Grazing the sun

Astronomer Gareth V. Williams computed a preliminary orbit for the comet, which indicates that perihelion (closest approach to the sun) will occur at 7 p.m. EST Dec. 15 (00:00 GMT on Dec. 16) at a distance of 548,000 miles (882,000 km) from the center of the sun, meaning that the comet will skim a mere 115,000 miles (186,000 km) above the solar surface, putting it into the special classification of a "Kreutz Sungrazer."

"I'm still quite stunned by the fact that W3 is a Kreutz Sungrazing comet," Lovejoy said. "This is a very special discovery to me as I have long been fascinated by the Kreutz Sungrazing comets; it has been over four years since my last discovery and I do hope the next one comes a lot sooner!"

Lovejoy's discovery is rather special since it marks the first time that a Kreutz Sungrazer has been discovered from a ground-based telescope in over 40 years. Usually, such comets are discovered only within a few days of their closest approach to the sun, from satellite imagery.

Kreutz

In the year 1888, astronomer Heinrich Kreutz (1854-1907) noted that sungrazing comets all followed along approximately the same orbit.

Astronomers now think they were once all bits of a single giant comet that fragmented in the distant past. And it's quite probable that these fragments have themselves broken up repeatedly as they've orbited the sun, resulting in different comets at periods ranging from about 500 to 800 years.

In honor of Kreutz's work, this special group of comets is named the Kreutz Sungrazers.

Two of these sungrazers (seen in 1843 and 1882) not only developed very long tails but also achieved the rare distinction of having been bright enough to be seen in broad daylight with the unaided eye.

And the brightest comet of the 20th century appeared in the autumn of 1965: Comet Ikeya-Seki. On Oct. 21, 1965, many could easily view this comet with the naked eye if the sun was hidden behind the side of a house or just an outstretched hand. In Japan the comet was described as appearing about 10 times brighter than the full moon.

Tiny grazers

Until 1978, only about a dozen sungrazing comets had been positively identified.

Beginning in 1979, orbiting space observatories began to detect sungrazing comets using instruments called coronagraphs. A coronagraph is designed to look at the solar atmosphere by blocking out the bright disk of the sun. Tiny sungrazing comets, which normally would be too faint and too near to the glare of the sun, can be picked up using a coronagraph.

In fact, sungrazers are now routinely being discovered using the Large Angle Spectrometric Coronagraph on the Solar and Heliospheric Observatory (SOHO) satellite. In fact, SOHO is the most successful comet discoverer in history, having found 2,110 comets over 16 years of operation - an average of one about every three days.

What's even more impressive is that the majority of these comets have been found by amateur astronomers and enthusiasts from all over the world, scouring the SOHO images for likely comet candidates from the comfort of their own homes.

Absolutely anyone can join this project - all you need is an Internet connection and some free time. If you want to join the hunt, go to here.

Some of these are probably just a few meters across; none have survived their sweep around the sun.

The fate of Comet Lovejoy

In a way, Kreutz comets are like trains of all sizes moving along the same railroad track while passing our station (Earth) in space. And like impatient commuters, we can only watch and wonder what awaits us up the track. As we noted earlier, literally thousands of sungrazers have flicked past the sun as tiny objects briefly visible via satellite imagery.

Some Kreutz comets are very bright and spectacular.

Given that at least 10 have reached naked-eye visibility over the last 200 years, another could be just around the corner. The last Kreutz Sungrazer to become bright was Comet White-Ortiz-Bolelli in May 1970. Before that was the dazzling Comet Ikeya-Seki in 1965.

Since Comet Lovejoy is the first sungrazer in over-40 years to be discovered en route to the sun with an Earth-based telescope, one might wonder if it will evolve into a memorable spectacle.

Unfortunately, while Lovejoy is probably many times larger than the vast majority of the Kreutz Sungrazers that sweep to their ultimate solar demise, it is likely many times smaller than the spectacular Kreutz comets of the past. In fact, when at the same distance from the sun that Comet Lovejoy is now, Comet Ikeya-Seki appeared over-1,000-times brighter.

Ikeya-Seki and the nine other naked-eye sungrazers that have appeared over the last two centuries managed to survive their close shaves with the sun because they were physically large as well as moving with tremendous speed. Indeed, at perihelion, sungrazing comets literally describe a hairpin turn around the sun at over-a-million miles per hour.

But even those larger Kreutz specimens sometimes emerge from their solar meetings in shambles. The nucleus of Ikeya-Seki fractured into at least three pieces; the Great Comet of 1882 may have broken into six or eight pieces.

According to John Bortle of Stormville, N.Y., who has observed several hundred comets in his more-than-50 years as an assiduous amateur astronomer, Comet Lovejoy, "appears to be only modestly condensed, at best, and lacking in any obvious stellar nucleus, even a very faint one. In my mind this does not bode particularly well for this diminutive object. If it already may be seriously depleted in its meager reserves of volatiles, how much will be left available for its final death plunge into the solar corona?"

Bortle adds that another comet (du Toit in 1945) reportedly exhibited a similar physical appearance to Comet Lovejoy en route to the sun and was of a similar brightness.

Ultimately, du Toit totally faded away before ever reaching the sun. Is this Comet Lovejoy's future? "I hope not, but I really have to wonder," Bortle said.

Death of a comet . . . on your computer!

To get a good view of Comet Lovejoy, reserve a seat next to your computer and stay tuned to the SOHO website.

Comet Lovejoy (if it hasn't faded completely away) is expected to enter camera range beginning next Monday (Dec. 12), appearing to move rapidly up from the south, then rapidly curve up and around the sun in what may prove to be a fiery demise Dec. 16.

There is also the ever-so-slight chance that this comet might briefly become visible in broad daylight around that time as well.

But that's only assuming the comet somehow survives its close brush with the sun, which doesn't look very likely. Then again, you never know.

Joe Rao serves as an instructor and guest lecturer at New York's Hayden Planetarium. He writes about astronomy for The New York Times and other publications, and he is also an on-camera meteorologist for News 12 Westchester, New York.

The Great "Birthday Comet" of 2011

SOHO
Sat, 03 Dec 2011 02:05 CST

Super Fireball Lights Up Night Sky in Northern China

Sun Chi
China Daily/Asia News Network
Sat, 03 Dec 2011 23:59 CST

US: Mysterious Explosion and Fireballs Seen as Homes Shaken in Rural Kentucky

Katie Roach
WYMT TV News
Mon, 12 Dec 2011 23:36 CST

There are still no answers as to what caused an apparent explosion in Perry County Sunday night.

Crews spent hours searching Sunday night after initial reports of a possible plane crash, but they gave up the search around 1:00 a.m. and said it was probably an explosion at an abandoned mine.

Now officials with the Division of Abandoned Mine Lands are saying there is no evidence at the mine that would support an explosion.

Some say they felt their homes shaking, others say they saw a fireball, but as of now no one can say for sure what happened in Perry County Sunday night.

Preliminary reports of possible plane crash were ruled out after searching for hours and finding no crash scene, that led officials to this explanation.

"There is a mine break up there. It happens in eastern Kentucky with a lot with old abandoned mines. They catch fire, smoke real bad, and sometimes they flame up. It does kill the trees around and that is possibly what could be seen from the air," said Lotts Creek Fire Chief Chris Engle.

Officials from the Division of Abandoned Mine Lands were called Monday to investigate and found that there is a coal seam fire that is causing the smoke and the burned trees, but that's all they are able to confirm.

"My investigators found no evidence of an explosion or a fire ball. There was no crater no debris that they could ascertain," said the Director of the Division of Abandoned Mine Lands Steve Hohmann.

So until more information can be found, that leaves no explanation for the shaking houses and what appeared to be a fireball in the sky, but some in the area have their own explanation for what happened.

"If there is no plane missing I think it probably could be a U.F.O. If there is no debris, it probably burned before it hit the ground," said Perry County resident Kathy Collins.

For now, it remains a mystery.

Officials with the Division of Abandoned Mine Lands say they are planning to go back up to the mine site on Wednesday.

Significant Comet Plunges in the Sun

Space Weather
Tue, 13 Dec 2011 10:34 CST

A comet nearly as wide as two football fields (200m) is plunging toward the sun where it will most likely be destroyed in a spectacular light show on Dec. 15/16. Although Comet Lovejoy (C/2011 W3) could become as bright as Jupiter or Venus when it "flames out," the glare of the sun will hide the event from human eyes. Solar observatories in space, however, will have a grand view. Yesterday the brightening comet entered the field of view of NASA's STEREO-B spacecraft.

"You can clearly see the comet heading diagonally through the images," says Karl Battams of the Naval Research Lab who prepared the animation. "During the 16-hour sequence, the comet brightens from magnitude +8 to +6.5, approximately."

It will soon grow much brighter. "This comet is a true sungrazer, and will skim approximately 140,000 km (1.2 solar radii) above the solar surface on Dec. 15/16," notes Battams. At such close range, solar heating will almost certainly destroy the icy interloper,creating a cloud of vapor and comet dust that will reflect lots of sunlight. The Solar and Heliospheric Observatory (SOHO) will have a particularly good view.

Discovered on Dec. 2nd by amateur astronomer Terry Lovejoy of Australia, the comet is an unusually large member of the Kreutz family. Kreutz sungrazers are fragments of a single giant comet (probably the Great Comet of 1106) that broke apart back in the 12th century. SOHO sees one plunging into the sun every few days, but most are small, no more than 10 meters wide. Comet Lovejoy is at least ten times larger than usual.

Click here for animation:

Canada: Meteorite Alert! Remote Cameras Capture Slow-Moving Fireball near Toronto

Nancy Atkinson
Universe Today
Wed, 14 Dec 2011 12:02 CST

In newly released footage from the University of Western Ontario, a bright, slow-moving fireball was captured in the skies near Toronto, Canada on December 12, 2011 by remote cameras watching for meteors. Although this meteor looks huge as it burns up in Earth's atmosphere, astronomers estimate the rock to have been no bigger than a basketball. Footage reveals it entered the atmosphere at a shallow angle of 25 degrees, moving about 14 km per second. It first became visible over Lake Erie then moved toward the north-northeast.

See below for the video.

But in a meteorite-hunter alert, Peter Brown, the Director of Western's Centre for Planetary & Space Exploration said that data garnered from the remote cameras suggest that surviving fragments of the rock are likely, with a mass that may total as much as a few kilograms, likely in the form of many fragments in one gram to hundreds of a gram size range.

"Finding a meteorite from a fireball captured by video is equivalent to a planetary sample return mission," said Brown. "We know where the object comes from in our solar system and can study it in the lab. Only about a dozen previous meteorite falls have had their orbits measured by cameras so each new event adds significantly to our understanding of the small bodies in the solar system. In essence, each new recovered meteorite is adding to our understanding of the formation and evolution of our own solar system."

Brown and his team are interested in hearing from anyone who may have witnessed or recorded this event, or who may have found fragments of the freshly fallen meteorite. See UWO's website for contact information.

Another camera view of the meteor:

Western Meteor Group's Southern Ontario Meteor Network sensor suite has seven all-sky video systems designed to automatically detect bright fireballs.

At 6:04 p.m. on December 12, six of the seven cameras of Western's Southern Ontario Meteor Network recorded this meteor. In a press release, UWO said the fireball's burned out at an altitude of 31 km just south of the town of Selwyn, Ontario. It is likely to have dropped small meteorites in a region to the east of Selwyn near the eastern end of Upper Stony Lake. See the map of the projected path below.

Although this bright fireball occurred near the peak of the annual Geminid meteor shower, the astronomers say it is unrelated to that shower.

Comet Lovejoy update - will it miss the sun?

MrCometwatch
YouTube
Thu, 15 Dec 2011 09:53 CST

Geminid Fireballs

Space Weather
Thu, 15 Dec 2011 12:51 CST

On the night of Dec. 13/14, NASA's All-Sky Meteor Network recorded 35 fireballs streaking over the southern USA. Twenty-two of them had remarkably similar orbits:

The clustered green orbits match the trajectory of near-Earth asteroid 3200 Phaethon, source of the annual Geminid meteor shower. The Geminids have been active this week as Earth passes through the asteroid's mysterious debris stream. The other, non-Geminid orbits correspond to random meteoroids. Not belonging to any organized debris stream, random meteoroids litter the inner solar system and produce a daily drizzle of "sporadic" fireballs.

NASA's fireball network, which connects multiple cameras in New Mexico, Alabama, Georgia and Tennessee, is a "smart" system. It rapidly and autonomously calculates meteoroid orbits from the fireballs it records. Another orbit diagram is just hours away; stay tuned.

More Images:
From Fredrik Broms of Kvaløya, Norway; from Paul Martin of Omagh, Co Tyrone N.Ireland; from Salvador Aguirre of Hermosillo, Sonora, Mexico; from Mike Hankey of Freeland, Maryland; from Ugur Ikizler of Kirazlı - Uludag - Bursa / Turkey

Comet Lovejoy Has a Friend!

Karl Battams
Sungrazer Blog
Thu, 15 Dec 2011 12:58 CST

This is too cute: Comet Lovejoy has a friend! Look in the upper-half of the animation opposite, starting at center and moving diagonally up and to the left, perfectly in step with Lovejoy... It's another Kreutz-group comet! (if you can't see it, here's a hint)

As nice as this is, I am not in the least surprised. SOHO's Kreutz-group comets are very "clumpy", for want of a better word. We frequently see them arrive in pairs or sometimes trios, and the big bright ones in particular will often have a companion comet. I suspected we would get at least one with Comet Lovejoy and indeed we do. It's much more typical of the size and brightness of Kreutz comets we see, and offers a wonderful comparison to highlight just how special Comet Lovejoy is.

So what is this new comet called? Is it another "Comet Lovejoy"? Sadly not. It looks to me like it was actually spotted in the LASCO C3 images by seasoned comet hunter Zhijian Xu at Dec 14 2011 11:48:48. So will it be Comet Xu?? No again. It will be Comet SOHO, number 2190-something, I think. Oh, and notice how it's orbit is obviously slightly different from Lovejoy's? That's also something we see all the time; the companion comets are frequently in slightly different orbits. They are obviously closely related though and the smaller one must have fragmented from Lovejoy some significant time ago, and with some slight (non-gravitational) force between them to "push" them apart like this. These kinds of break-ups are theorized to happen decades before they reach the Sun in order for them to have this kind of separation in space, though this process is not well-known or well-understood at all. It one reason that studying these Kreutz comets is so important, as this knowledge can be applied to all comets and solar system bodies, and give a broader understanding of their orbital and physical evolution.

Comet Lovejoy Survives

Space Weather
Fri, 16 Dec 2011 12:36 CST

Incredibly, sungrazing Comet Lovejoy appears to have survived its close encounter with the sun. Lovejoy flew only 140,000 km over the stellar surface during the early hours of Dec. 16th. Experts expected the icy sundiver to be destroyed. Instead, NASA's Solar Dynamics Observatory caught the comet emerging from perihelion (closest approach) at least partially intact:

SDO also recorded Comet Lovejoy's entry into the sun's atmosphere: movie.

Comet Lovejoy began the week as a chunk of dusty, rocky ice some 200 meters in diameter. No one can say how much of the comet's core remains intact or how long it will hang together after the searing heat of perihelion.

New images received on Dec. 16th from the Solar and Heliospheric Observatory confirm that Comet Lovejoy survived perihelion and is now receding from the sun:

Curiously, the comet seems to have lost its tail in transit through the sun's hot corona. A decapitated remnant tail can still be seen tracing Comet Lovejoy's path into the sun, but the exiting comet has no obvious trail of dust behind it. One possibility has to do with geometry: The comet's tail might be pointing away from Earth, temporarily invisible due to foreshortening. Another possibility: The comet's store of volatile materials was "baked-out" by the fiery transit and now the comet is not jetting much dust and gas into space.

Discovered on Dec. 2nd by amateur astronomer Terry Lovejoy of Australia, the comet is an unusually large member of the Kreutz family. Kreutz sungrazers are fragments of a single giant comet (probably the Great Comet of 1106) that broke apart back in the 12th century. SOHO sees one plunging into the sun every few days, but most are small, no more than 10 meters wide. Comet Lovejoy is at least ten times larger than usual.

Continued Adventures of Comet Lovejoy

Space Weather
Sat, 17 Dec 2011 14:27 CST

The scorched core of sungrazing Comet Lovejoy is still intact as it recedes from the sun. Even the comet's flamboyant tail, temporarily lost in transit through the solar corona, has regrown. Click here to view the last 24 hours of coronagraph images from the Solar and Heliospheric Observatory (SOHO).

SOHO images show two tails: the ion tail and the dust tail. The ion tail is made of gas and is blown directly away from the sun by the solar wind. The heavier dust tail is curved and more closely traces the comet's orbit.

Now that the comet is more than five degrees from the sun, it is possible (albeit still not easy) for amateur astronomers to photograph it just before sunrise. A team led by Czech astronomer Jan Ebr captured this image at sunrise on Dec. 17th:

"We used a remotely-controlled 12-inch telescope in Malargue, Argentina," says Ebr. "The sun was below horizon at the time we took the picture, but just barely. There was only a 30 minute window between the rise of the comet and that of the sun "

Russia's Failed Mars Probe Will Come Crashing Down to Earth Next Month, Space Agency Says

Vladimir Isachenkov
The Associated Press
Fri, 16 Dec 2011 00:00 CST

© The Associated Press/The Canadian Press/Russian Roscosmos space agency/HO
In this Nov.2, 2011 file photo distributed by Russian Roscosmos space agency shows technicians working on the Phobos-Ground probe.

A Russian spacecraft bound for a moon of Mars and stuck in Earth's orbit will come crashing back next month, but its toxic fuel and radioactive material on board will pose no danger of contamination, the Russian space agency said Friday.

Between 20 and 30 fragments of the probe with a total weight of up to 200 kilograms (440 pounds) will survive the fiery plunge and shower the Earth's surface, Roscosmos warned in a statement.

The agency said the unmanned Phobos-Ground spacecraft will plummet to Earth between Jan. 6 and Jan. 19, and the rough area of where the fragments could fall could only be calculated a few days ahead of its plunge.

As of now, it said only that the probe's fragments could rain down anywhere along a broad swath between 51.4 degrees north to 51.4 degrees south, which would include most of land surface.

While the agency had lost contact with the probe following its launch on Nov. 9, this was the first time acknowledged that the $170-million craft has been lost and will come crashing down.

Since its November launch the engineers in Russia and at the European Space Agency have attempted unsuccessfully to propel it away from Earths orbit and toward its target.

Phobos-Ground weighs 13.2 metric tons (14.6 tons), which includes 11 metric tons (12 tons) of highly toxic fuel. Experts had warned that if the fuel has frozen, some could survive entry into Earth and pose a serious threat if it falls over populated areas.

But Roscosmos said it is sure that all fuel will burn on re-entry some 100 kilometres (330,000 feet) above the ground and pose no danger. It said that 10 kilograms (22 pounds) of Cobalt-57, a radioactive metal contained in one of the craft's instruments, will not pose a threat of radioactive contamination.

The Phobos-Ground was Russia's first interplanetary mission since a botched 1996 robotic mission to Mars, which failed when the probe crashed shortly after the launch due to an engine failure. Mars has two moons, Phobos and Deimos, and the latest spacecraft aimed to take ground samples on Phobos.

It was one of the most challenging unmanned interplanetary mission ever. Scientists had hoped that studies of Phobos' surface could help solve the mystery of its origin and shed more light on the genesis of the solar system. Some believe the crater-dented moon is an asteroid captured by Mars' gravity, while others think it's a piece of debris from when Mars collided with another celestial object.

The failed mission was the latest in a series of recent Russian launch failures that have raised concerns about the condition of the country's space industries. Officials have blamed the failures on obsolete equipment and an aging workforce.

Source: The Canadian Press

Comment: SOTT wonders what is UP with all the recent alleged man-made space objects falling out of the sky? We've gone for years and years without this repeated showering of space-junk and now, all of a sudden, in just the past year, there have been at least three, and now four raining debris down on our heads? Is it possible that it is not really man-made and these explanations are being offered to cover up the fact that the planet is already being subjected to cometary fragment bombardment? Just asking.

Update: Comet Lovejoy in the morning

Space Weather
Tue, 20 Dec 2011 12:00 CST

Noted astronomer John Bortle urges observers (especially in the southern hemisphere) to "begin searching for Comet Lovejoy's bright tail projecting up out of the morning twilight beginning at dawn. The tails of some of the major sungrazing comets have been extraordinarily bright. Comet Lovejoy's apparition has been so bizarre up to this point that it is difficult to anticipate just what might happen next ... [including] the exact sort of tail it might unfurl in the morning sky."

UPDATE: This morning in New Zealand, Minoru Yoneto photographed the ghostly tail of Comet Lovejoy shining through the twilight:

"I couldn't see the comet with my naked eye, but a 1.3 sec exposure with my Canon Kiss X2 digital camera revealed Lovejoy's long tail." In the clearer skies of Devonport, Tasmania, amateur astronomer Peter Sayers did see the tail with his unaided eyes--"but just barely," he says. "The tail was just naked-eye and perhaps a degree long in our Tasmanian summer early morning twilight." [image]

The visibility of the tail could improve in the days ahead as the comet moves away from the sun and the background sky darkens accordingly. Early-rising sky watchers should be alert for this rare apparition. [finder chart]

Surprising Comet Lovejoy Now Becoming Merry and Bright

Nancy Atkinson
Universe Today
Mon, 19 Dec 2011 16:36 CST

© kommet.cz
Comet Lovejoy photographed remotely with the FRAM telescope in Argentina on Dec. 17 by a Czech team of Jakub Cerny, Jan Ebr, Martin Jelinek, Petr Kubanek, Michael Prouza and Michal Ringes.

It was almost a pre-holiday miracle that Comet Lovejoy survived its close encounter with the Sun on Dec. 15, 2011. But now, the feisty comet is making a 'merry and bright' comeback, re-sprouting its tail and showing up brilliantly with binoculars and in telescopic images from southern hemisphere skywatchers.

"It was a big surprise that after going through the solar atmosphere it re-emerged with a beautiful tail," Karl Battams told Universe Today. Battams is with Naval Research Laboratory and has been detailing the Comet Lovejoy's incredible journey on the Sungrazing Comets website. "And basically within a day it was as bright after the encounter as it was before."

The beautiful image above was taken on Dec. 17, 2011, clearly showing two gorgeous tails on Comet Lovejoy. See more from the Czech team that took the image at their website, Kommet.cz.

As much as this comet has surprised everyone, no one is going out on a limb and predicting it will become visible with the naked eye. But who knows? The comet's discoverer, Austrailian amateur astronomer Terry Lovejoy was able to image the comet in the day time! " I am hopeful of a nice binocular comet low in the dawn around Christmas time," Lovejoy said on the Ice in Space website.

"Southern hemisphere viewers can see it now early in the morning," Battams said via phone this morning. "It is going to become increasingly easy for them to see as it moves away from the Sun. I'm not sure it will increase in brightness anymore, as it has leveled off a little bit now. Odds are stacked in the favor of a nice nighttime show for southern viewers, and gradually it will fade away."

Of course, Comet Lovejoy isn't the only comet that has survived a close encounter with the Sun; in fact, some comets have even brightened to naked eye visibility after surviving a scorching from the Sun. The "Great Comets" of 1843 and 1882, and Comet Ikeya-Seki of 1965 were all Kreutz sungrazers - like Comet Lovejoy - and they all became brilliant after their solar encounters, with extraordinarily long tails.

Normally these comets don't survive and are completely obliterated by the Sun. But the few that do - only 2 or 3 a century - can be very bright.

I had asked Battams on Friday - just after the comet emerged from behind the Sun - his thoughts on Comet Lovejoy and if it might follow the example of those previous surviving sungrazers.

"All bets are off as far as I'm concerned," he wrote via email. "We thought this was a relatively small one - maybe a hundred or two meters in diameter. Clearly it can't be. I did not expect it to survive perihelion as anything more than a diffuse blob that would rapidly dissipate. Instead it is pretty much as bright as it was before, just with less of a tail now."

So keep a lookout for the holiday comet of 2011, the merry and bright Comet Lovejoy!

The Amazing Tail of Comet Lovejoy

Space Weather
Wed, 21 Dec 2011 14:28 CST

Widespread reports of Comet Lovejoy's tail are being received from around the southern hemisphere. The ghostly plume emerges just before sunrise, jutting vertically upward into the eastern sky ahead of the sun.

"I observed the comet with my unaided eye for 55 minutes this morning," says Colin Legg of Mandurah, Western Australia. "I also captured a timelapse sequence of the comet rising as twilight progressed."

Comet Lovejoy (2011 W3) rising over Western Australia from Colin Legg on Vimeo.

"In the image you can see 2 tails," notes Clegg. These are the dust and ion tails. The gaseous ion tail is blow almost directly away from the sun by the solar wind, while the heavier, brighter dust tail more closely follows the comet's orbit.

The visibility of both tails could improve in the days ahead as the comet moves away from the sun and the background sky darkens accordingly. Early-rising sky watchers should be alert for this rare apparition. [finder chart]

More Images:
From Steve Chadwick of Himatangi Beach, New Zealand; from Chris Picking of Wellington, New Zealand; from Paulo Morales Valdebenito of San Francisco de Mostazal, Chile; from Kosma Coronaios of Louis Trichardt, Limpopo Province, South Africa; from Willian Souza of Sao Paulo, Brazil; from Grahame Kelaher of Perth, Western Australia; from Minoru Yoneto of Queenstown, New Zealand;

Another Stunning Image of Comet Lovejoy

Fraser Cain
Universe Today
Thu, 22 Dec 2011 12:23 CST

It's been one more day since Colin Legg posted his previous amazing photos and videos of Comet Legg. This new version is even better, especially with it reflecting off the water.

Here's what Colin had to say about it on IceinSpace:

Had another lovely view of the comet last night wandering the shore of the Estuary. It's quite unique down there. The Perth and Mandurah sky domes light up the northern half of the sky, while the east and south east are pitch black (except for a couple of small towns). The north glow is enough to walk by once dark adapted.

Anyway, while wandering I came across a small embayment with still water and nice reflections of the comet. Used the same settings as last night to get the attached shot.

Check out some of Colin's videos over on Vimeo.

Astronaut Photographs Comet Lovejoy - from Space

Ian O'Neill
Discovery News
Thu, 22 Dec 2011 15:19 CST

Images of space observations from the Hubble Space Telescope often leave me speechless. Pictures taken by amateur astronomers in their backyards also leave me speechless. Space, in general, has that effect -- peering deep into alien space-scapes, views that are very rarely experienced by our terrestrial existence, can be an incredible eye-opener.

However, if you put an astronaut into space, with a camera, often those photographs have the most profound impact. Sometimes you just need a human to compose the best pictures.

Take this beautiful view of the "sungrazing" Comet Lovejoy for example.

NASA astronaut and Expedition 30 Commander Dan Burbank photographed the dazzling comet as it hung above the Earth's horizon yesterday (Dec. 21). The green haze is known as "airglow."

Wow.

Comet Lovejoy became quickly famous when it skimmed above the sun's surface last week, diving deep into the the corona. It was assumed the icy body would vaporize. This in itself is a great discovery -- it was the first time a sungrazer had been spotted by a ground observer before a space observatory. But against all the odds, NASA's Solar Dynamics Observatory spotted the tenacious comet zoom behind the sun after swinging through the solar atmosphere.

It has since put on a wonderful cometary show for astronomers as it flies back into deep space.

Fortunately, the show wasn't just for ground-based observers, it just so happened that Burbank had the best (off-world) seat in the house.

Special thanks to Carolyn Porco, Cassini imaging science team leader, for directing me to this incredible photograph. Download hi-res version.

Failed Mars Probe To Crash Back To Earth Mid January 2012

Sky News
Fri, 16 Dec 2011 15:19 CST

A Russian space probe that failed in its attempt to reach one of Mars' moons will crash back to Earth next month, officials have said.

The unmanned Phobos-Grunt craft was successfully launched from the Baikonur cosmodrome in Kazakhstan in November.

However, the probe got stuck in Earth's orbit after its engines failed to fire up - quickly ending its planned journey toward the Red Planet.

Russia's space agency said it expects the Phobos-Grunt to plummet back through our atmosphere between January 6 and 19.

Toxic fuel from the craft will burn on its fiery re-entry, but several dozen fragments weighing up to 200kg (440lbs) will crash into the Earth's surface, officials said.

Where it will all land is not yet known however - with the agency explaining that the rough area where the probe's fragments will fall can only be calculated a few days ahead of its plunge.

The embarrassing failure of the probe was the latest in a series of problems that have raised concerns about the condition of Russia's space industries.

The £105m Phobos-Grunt would have been the country's first interplanetary mission since Soviet times.

It was originally set to blast off in October 2009, but its launch was postponed because the craft was not ready.

Scientists had hoped that studies of the moon's soil could help solve the mystery of its origin and shed more light on the genesis of the solar system.

Comment: There has been an alarming number of alleged defunct space debris falling to earth of late. See Here We Go Again! Another Dead Satellite to Fall From Space in November

Unidentified comet inbound towards the Sun

yamkin1
YouTube
Tue, 27 Dec 2011 09:33 CST

With thanks and gratitude for Suspicious0bservers's dedicated time and effort in producing this video.

5 Hours of Beautiful Comet Lovejoy in 30 Seconds

Nancy Atkinson
Universe Today
Thu, 29 Dec 2011 15:15 CST

Comet Lovejoy (C/2011 W3) Esperance WA (27-12-2012) from Colin Legg on Vimeo.

Colin Legg from Esperance, Australia has been documenting Comet Lovejoy's holiday gift to the southern hemisphere, and this is his latest - and possibly last - timelapse, as the comet has started to fade. This one covers almost 5 hours of Legg's Comet Lovejoy views as seen during the early morning hours of December 27, 2011. "I used a tracking device to track in azimuth only to maximize coverage," Legg said. "If you look closely at the head in the 2nd half you can see it moving against the stars."

US: Green Light Streaks Across Arizona Night Sky

KOLD News 13
Sat, 31 Dec 2011 23:35 CST

Tucson, Arizona - A streaking green light across the Arizona sky Saturday night created a stir among KOLD News 13 viewers and Facebook friends.

Around 8:15 p.m., viewers called to ask about the light, wondering if it were a meteor, an asteroid or fireworks.

"I would guess it's a meteor, but that's only a guess without actually seeing it," said Stephen Pompea, public information officer for Kitt Peak Observatory.

Pompea, who was traveling this weekend in Colorado, said a meteor shower will be visible in the Southern Arizona sky Wednesday morning,

"The Quadrantid meteor shower, one of the best displays of 'shooting stars' all year, will
peak in the hours before dawn," Pompea said. "If you get up early, bundle up warmly, and find dark site with a wide-open view of the clear sky, you might see 1 or 2 meteors per minute during the shower's brief but intense performance."

The light could be seen as far northwest as Prescott in Yavapai County and as far southeast as Douglas in Cochise County, according to News 13 Facebook friends.

"Thought I was seeing things at first, it was amazing!" Suzanne Pickering wrote.

Denise Goldman wrote: "My family and I were enjoying camp fire in Sahuarita. Meteor went from east to west. Very big ... and a beautiful green."

&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;lt;br&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;gt;

Italy: Meteor Fireball Photographed 27 December 2011

lunarmeteoritehunters.blogspot.com
Tue, 27 Dec 2011 12:26 CST

This is a photo of the fireball that Maurizio Eltri captured from Lido, Venice, Italy on 27 December 2011 at 02:24.

The fireball was very low in the east.

Japan: Bolide Meteor Fireball, 27 December 2011

http://lunarmeteoritehunters.blogspot.com
Wed, 28 Dec 2011 12:45 CST

Uploaded to YouTube by Sheilaaliens 2011/12/28
Source: sonotaco.jp

Japan, 11 - 15 December 2011: Bolide Meteor Fireballs Captured on Video

lunarmeteoritehunters.blogspot.com
Thu, 29 Dec 2011 12:37 CST

Uploaded to YouTube by Sheilaaliens 2011/12/15
Recorded from Japan. Source: sonotaco.jp

November 2011

2011-11-14T15:35:00.002Z

US: Did Meteor Fall from Sky in Pell City, Alabama?

David Atchison
The Daily Home
Tue, 01 Nov 2011 13:51 CDT

Bill Watts is shown at a possible meteor impact site in his backyard.

Where are FBI special agents Fox Mulder and Dana Scully when you need them?

The two X-Files characters would come in handy helping a local man figure out what in the world, or maybe out of this world, caused a large, black hole to appear in his backyard, setting nearby woods on fire.

"I think it was a meteor," Bill Watts, 54, of Pell City said as he moved the wooden plywood board lying on the ground, revealing a dark, black crater at the edge of some woods on his property.

Watts admits he doesn't know exactly what made the large, round crater and caused a fire Friday at about 8 p.m.

"It had to be so hot and moving so fast to do that," he said. "This ground is pretty hard."

He gripped a post hole digger with both hands and drove it into the ground.

"See," he said.

The post hole digger barely made a mark on the hard ground.

The walls inside the crater are charred, obviously burned. A fine ash covers the bottom of the hole.

Watts took the post hole digger and carefully removed some of the burnt ashes from the bottom of the hole.

He piled the ashes next to the hole and knelt down, gently scooping up a handful.

"It's all burnt up," Watts said.

He said if a meteorite made the crater it is possible it is buried at the bottom of the hole.

Right now, Watts is careful not to disturb the site too much so an expert can take a look at it and explain to him exactly what it is and how it got there.

Henry Graves, Watts' brother-in-law who lives next door, may have witnessed the impact.

"All at once flames shot up 5 to 6 feet into the air," Graves said. "The flames went higher than the fence."

Watts' wooden fence is about 6 feet tall.

Graves was standing on the porch of his home, waiting for his daughter and grandchild to arrive for a visit, when he saw flames shooting up into the air.

He said the fire lit the entire back area behind the wooden partition.

"It was like daylight," Graves said. "It was like someone throwing gas on a brush pile. ... You wouldn't believe the light it put out."

Graves said he did not hear any type of explosion or see a shooting flame across the sky. He just saw the flames shooting up from the ground and into the sky.

He watched the fire for a few minutes and decided to call his neighbors.

"I said, 'What in the world are ya'll burning up there?'" Graves recalled.

His neighbors told him they weren't burning anything.

"We first thought our boats blew up. Then we thought someone built a big fire," Watts said. "All sorts of things go through your head."

He said they went out to the site "expecting to see someone fooling around."

There was nobody on the property, just a small fire that was burning fallen leaves and, of course, the charred crater.

Watts said they were able to stomp out the ground fire.

He said the fire appeared to have originated from the crater. A burned path led from the hole to the woods.

The crater is about 3 feet deep and measures 13-15 inches across. There are a couple of smaller, softball or football size holes next to the bigger hole, measuring 5-6 inches across.

Watts hopes a geologist or someone with expertise in meteorites will take a closer look at what he thinks is a meteor impact site, and dig up a meteor that is possibly buried beneath the crater.

But until then, the black hole on Watts' property remains a mystery.

Quarter-mile-wide asteroid coming close to Earth

Physorg
Sat, 05 Nov 2011 17:48 CDT

An asteroid bigger than an aircraft carrier will dart between the Earth and moon on Tuesday - the closest encounter by such a huge rock in 35 years.

But scientists say not to worry. It won't hit.

"We're extremely confident, 100 percent confident, that this is not a threat," said the manager of NASA's Near Earth Object Program, Don Yeomans. "But it is an opportunity."

© NASA/Cornell/Arecibo

This image made from radar data taken in April 2010 by the Arecibo Radar Telescope in Puerto Rico and provided by NASA/Cornell/Arecibo shows asteroid 2005 YU55.

The asteroid named 2005 YU55 is being watched by ground antennas as it approaches from the direction of the sun. The last time it came within so-called shouting distance was 200 years ago.

Closest approach will occur at 6:28 p.m. EST Tuesday when the asteroid passes within 202,000 miles of Earth. That's closer than the roughly 240,000 miles between the Earth and the moon.

The moon will be just under 150,000 miles from the asteroid at the time of closest approach.

Both the Earth and moon are safe - "this time," said Jay Melosh, professor of Earth and atmospheric sciences at Purdue University.

If 2005 YU55 were to plow into the home planet, it would blast out a crater four miles across and 1,700 feet deep, according to Melosh's calculations. Think a magnitude-7 earthquake and 70-foot-high tsunami waves.

Scientists have been tracking the slowly spinning, spherical, dark-colored object since its discovery in 2005, and are positive it won't do any damage.

"We know the orbit of this object very well," Yeomans said.

The asteroid stretches a quarter-mile across. Smaller objects come close all the time, Yeomans noted, but nothing this big will have ventured so close since 1976. And nothing this large will again until 2028.

Radar observations from California and Puerto Rico will help scientists ascertain whether the asteroid is pockmarked with craters and holds any water-bearing minerals or even frozen water.

Amateur astronomers would need a 6-inch-or-bigger telescope and know exactly where to look to spot it.

Astronomers consider 2005 YU55 a C-type asteroid - one containing carbon-based materials. "It's not just a whirling rock like most of them," Yeomans said.

Such objects are believed to have brought carbon-based materials and water to the early Earth, planting the seeds for life. The discovery of water-bearing minerals or ice would support that theory, Yeomans said.

This is the type of asteroid that NASA would want to aim for, with astronauts, Yeomans said, especially if frozen water is found. Such asteroids could serve as watering holes and fueling stations for future explorers, he said.

An asteroid is actually on NASA's short list for destinations.

President Barack Obama wants astronauts headed to an asteroid and then Mars in the coming decades. That's why the 30-year space shuttle program ceased this summer - so NASA could have enough money to get cracking on these new destinations.

As for an actual strike by an asteroid this size, that's estimated to occur once every 100,000 years or so.

An asteroid named Apophis - estimated to be 885 feet across - will venture extremely close on April 13, 2029 - but will not strike. It has a remote chance of hitting Earth when it comes around again on April 13, 2036.

Scientists said information gleaned from 2005 YU55, as well as other asteroids, will prove useful if and when it becomes necessary to deflect an incoming Armageddon-style rock.

Source: AP

Deflecting Killer Asteroids Away From Earth: How We Could Do It

Mike Wall
Space.com
Mon, 07 Nov 2011 15:52 CST

A huge asteroid's close approach to Earth tomorrow (Nov. 8) reinforces that we live in a cosmic shooting gallery, and we can't just sit around waiting to get hit again, experts say.

Asteroid 2005 YU55, which is the size of an aircraft carrier, will zip within the moon's orbit tomorrow, but it poses no danger of hitting us for the foreseeable future. Eventually, however, one of its big space rock cousins will barrel straight toward Earth, as asteroids have done millions of times throughout our planet's history.

If we want to avoid going the way of the dinosaurs, which were wiped out by an asteroid strike 65 million years ago, we're going to have to deflect a killer space rock someday, researchers say. Fortunately, we know how to do it.

"We have the capability - physically, technically - to protect the Earth from asteroid impacts," said former astronaut Rusty Schweickart, chairman of the B612 Foundation, a group dedicated to predicting and preventing catastrophic asteroid strikes. "We are now able to very slightly and subtly reshape the solar system in order to enhance human survival."

In fact, we have several different techniques at our disposal to nudge killer asteroids away from Earth. Here's a brief rundown of the possible arrows in our planetary defense quiver.

The Gravity Tractor

If researchers detect a potentially dangerous space rock in plenty of time, the best option may be to send a robotic probe out to rendezvous and ride along with it.

The spacecraft's modest gravity would exert a tug on the asteroid as the two cruise through space together. Over months or years, this "gravity tractor" method would pull the asteroid into a different, more benign orbit.

"You can get a very precise change in the orbit for the final part of the deflection using a technology of this kind," Schweickart said in late September, during a presentation at Caltech in Pasadena, Calif., called "Moving an Asteroid."

Humanity has already demonstrated the know-how to pull off such a mission. Multiple probes have met up with faraway asteroids in deep space, including NASA's Dawn spacecraft, which is currently orbiting the huge space rock Vesta.

And in 2005, the Japanese Hayabusa probe even plucked some pieces off the asteroid Itokawa, sending them back to Earth for analysis.

Smash 'Em Up

We could also be more aggressive with our asteroid rendezvous craft, relying on brute force rather than a gentle gravitational tug. That is, we could simply slam a robotic probe into the threatening space rock to change its orbit.

We know how to do this, too. In 2005, for example, NASA sent an impactor barreling into the comet Tempel 1 to determine the icy object's composition.

The impactor approach would not be as precise as the gravity tractor technique, Schweickart said, but it could still do the job.

There's also the possibility of blowing the asteroid to smithereens with a nuclear weapon. The nuclear option could come into play if the dangerous space rock is too big to knock around with a kinetic impactor, but it would likely be a weapon of last resort.

For one thing, blasting an asteroid to bits might end up doing more harm than good, said fellow presentation panelist Bill Nye, executive director of the Planetary Society.

"Momentum is conserved," Nye said. "If you blow it up, then the whole giant spray of rocks is coming at the Earth instead of one."

The politics involved in mobilizing use of a nuke could also be a cause for concern, Schweickart said. It will likely be hard enough to convince the world to mount any sort of asteroid-deflection mission in time, and adding nuclear missiles to the equation would make things much stickier.

"The potential use of nuclear explosives for deflection cannot currently be ruled out," Schweickart said. "But it is an extremely low probability that they will be needed."

'Mirror Bees' and Foil Wrap

While we're pretty sure that gravity tractors and kinetic impactor probes would work, researchers are also looking into several other ideas.

There's the "mirror bee" concept, for example, which would launch a swarm of small, mirror-bearing spacecraft to a dangerous asteroid. These mini-probes would aim reflected sunlight at one spot on the space rock, heating it up so much that rock is vaporized, creating propulsive jets.

"The reaction of that gas or material being ejected from the asteroid would nudge it off-course," Nye said.

The Planetary Society is helping fund research into mirror bees, Nye said. And while he said the concept isn't yet ready for deployment or demonstration, he stressed that it's not too far off, either.

"Maybe five years," Nye told SPACE.com. "It's not 30 years."

Nye also floated another, more speculative idea. It might be possible to move an asteroid, he said, by wrapping it in reflective foil, like a giant baked potato. Photons from the sun might then nudge the space rock away from Earth, in much the same way they propel spacecraft equipped with solar sails.

"This might work, even if the thing is rotating," Nye said. "OK, make no promises. But it's something to invest in."

Passing the Intelligent Life Test

The biggest key to deflecting dangerous asteroids, researchers say, is detecting them with plenty of lead time to take appropriate action. We'd like to have a least a decade of notice, NASA scientists have said.

It'll take awhile, after all, to mobilize and launch a deflection mission, and for that mission to do its job, especially if we go the gravity tractor route.

We need to make sure we can rise to the challenge when a big, threatening asteroid shows up on our radar, Schweickart and Nye said. Civilization's very survival depends on it.

"If there is a community of intelligent life out in the universe ... those intelligent beings will have already conquered this challenge," Schweickart said. "Our entrance exam to that community of intelligent life is to pass this test."

Two fireballs seen over Poland on successive nights, including very bright one observed from Berlin to Czech Republic

Translated by SOTT.net
Polish Fireball Network
Tue, 08 Nov 2011 07:31 CST

On Sunday a record-breaking fireball appeared over Poland. Its visible trail was as long as 254 km, reports the Polish Fireball Network (PFN - PKiM in Polish).

This phenomenon took place on 6 November at 5:38:19 p.m. local time. The fireball flew nearly directly south from the region of Poznan toward the Czech Republic. It reached its maximum brightness over a village of Lukova in the Czech Republic. Average brightness was of -3 magnitude and in outbursts it reached up to -5.5. The meteor appeared at an altitude of 130 km and burnt up at 95 km. Its flight lasted almost 4 seconds.

It was a sporadic meteor of cometary origin and was travelling very fast. Its velocity was up to 65 km/sec.

The phenomenon was registered by the Polish Fireball Network in Chelm, Otwock, Twardogora, Urzedowo and Krakow.

A comment left on the PKiN website:

Confirmed in Berlin
Submitted by amoeller on wt., 2011-11-08 09:19.

Hi guys,

I can confirm a seeing this from Berlin (Germany).

My exact location was: Motorway A10 - East Berlin ring (direction south).

Excactly at 16:38 UT a fireball dived the earth from south to north. It passed the moon from the right site.

Greetings from Germany,

Andreas

The following day, 7 November, saw another interesting phenomenon picked up by the Polish Fireball Network.

Due to its early timing, some cameras were not yet working, however three stations (PFN20, PFN24 and PFN37) registered the visitor. The fireball was not travelling very fast and had an initial velocity of 25.1 km/s, flying between Lodz and Warsaw. The length of the fireball track was 75 km, with the maximum brightness reached over Zyrardow.

The phenomenon was somewhat unusual. A number of flashes indicates its cometary nature, the orbit was clearly elliptical with aphelion between Jupiter and Saturn. On the other hand, its initial and final altitudes (87 km and 57 km) indicate a body of a slightly bigger density. It could have been a carbonaceous chondrite.

More pictures can be seen on the PKiM website:
Meteor of November 6
Meteor of November 7

Passing asteroid 2005 YU55 puts on a show

Alan Boyle
Cosmic Log / MSNBC
Wed, 09 Nov 2011 08:24 CST

Astronomers watched the asteroid 2005 YU55 spin as it zoomed harmlessly past Earth, and everybody else was looking over their shoulders. You can expect to see a huge pile of pictures now that the coal-dark space rock has passed by.

Even before the closest pass, NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory provided a six-frame "movie" based on radar data acquired by the Goldstone radio telescope on Monday. This sequence was captured from a distance of 860,000 miles (1.38 million kilometers).

The closest approach to Earth came at 6:28 p.m. ET Tuesday, when the quarter-mile-wide (400-meter-wide) asteroid slipped just barely within the orbit of the moon at a distance of 198,000 miles (319,000 kilometers). YU55 is due to come closest to the moon at 2:14 a.m. ET Wednesday, NASA said.

Neither the moon nor Earth was at risk during this flyby, but the information gathered this time around could help astronomers know what they're dealing with during potentially riskier encounters.

Here's a parting shot of YU55 from the 25-inch telescope at the Clay Center Observatory in Massachusetts, which tracked the asteroid as it swept past at 29,000 mph:

© Clay Center Observatory

The speck near the center of this image is 2005 YU55 at the time of closest approach. The bright streaks are background stars.

In a Twitter update, NASA said that YU55 will make its next Earth flyby in 2015, "but at a greater distance than today." Today's encounter wasn't close enough to perturb the near-Earth asteroid's orbit, but experts are wondering whether a close flyby of Venus in 2029 will change its orbital path slightly.

Even if that Venus encounter does cause a change, Earth is in no danger from this particular space rock, at least for the next 100 years or so. Which is a good thing. If an object the size of YU55 were to hit land, experts say it would blast a 4-mile-wide, 1,700-foot-deep crater and set off a 7.0 earthquake. If it hit at sea, it would create a catastrophic tsunami with 70-foot-high waves.

The last time an asteroid as big as YU55 came this close was in 1976, and the next time will be in 2028 - or could it be sooner? Scientists recently estimated that thousands of asteroids around the size of YU55 remain to be discovered, so learning about this rock's composition and motion could help us deal with many other rocks to come.

YU55 is particularly interesting because it has a high carbon content, which makes it coal-black. Such carbonaceous chondrites have been found to contain amino acids, and may have played a role in the origin of life on Earth. NASA's Osiris-Rex mission, due for launch in 2016, will target a carbonaceous asteroid called 1999 RQ36 and try to bring a sample back to Earth for study.

NASA's current space vision calls for sending astronauts to a near-Earth asteroid sometime in the mid-2020s, and the head of NASA's Near Earth Object Program, Don Yeomans, said that if he got the chance to decide the destination, he'd pick a carbon-bearing rock like YU55.

"This would be an ideal object," he told The Associated Press.

US: Dalton, Georgia Reacts to 2.7 'Tremor' - 'explosion, came from the air'

Natalie Jenereski
News Channel 9
Wed, 09 Nov 2011 15:46 CST

A 2.7 magnitude quake rocked the Dalton area just before noon Wednesday. While some people in Dalton were pretty sure the rumble was an earthquake, others were convinced it was something else.

"Chances are it might have been an earthquake, but maybe it was some big monster outside that's coming to get us all," Jonathan Marks jokes about the magnitude 2.7 quake, but he wasn't the only one who was curious about what caused the ground to shake beneath his feet. The US Geological Survey didn't officially deem the shake, a quake until 2 hours after people say they felt the ground rattle and heard a loud boom in the air.

"I thought it was kind of like a huge explosion or a sonic boom because there was a little noise at first and then a loud explosion and I felt it right between my shoulders it was like it came from the air," said Mary Ellen Gurley, an employee at Dalton State College.

The USGS says Northwest Georgia is not an area prone to quakes. The largest earthquake in our seismic zone was on April 29th, 2003. It was a 4.6 magnitude near Fort Payne, Alabama. So if you had never felt one until Wednesday, you probably wouldn't have known what it was.

"I lived in North Carolina several years ago and felt one there. I guess it's not that different from a sonic boom or an explosion or something but to me, I thought this one was an earthquake, I guess having felt it before," said Mike Brown from Dalton.

Though the Dalton Police Department was flooded with calls, luckily no one was injured in the quake.

According to the USGS, the closest, most recent earthquake besides this one, happened Tuesday. A 2.0 magnitude earthquake hit Maryville, Tennessee around 8:30 p.m.

Listen to 911 calls placed immediately following the quake:

Comment: Sounds more like another meteorite exploding in the atmosphere overhead.

US: Another mystery rumble felt in Hampton Roads, Virginia

Mike Hixenbaugh
The Virginian-Pilot
Thu, 10 Nov 2011 16:47 CST

Boom, it happened again.

Residents at the Oceanfront reported hearing a strange explosion around 9 p.m. Wednesday that rattled windows, shook foundations and startled babies out of their sleep.

It was the second time this year coastal residents have flooded emergency lines and online social networking sites after hearing and feeling ... well, something.

As with a previous mystery disturbance in May, nobody seems to know what happened, yet theories abound.

It wasn't another earthquake like the one that shook the East Coast in August, according to geologists. A NASA scientist said it could have been caused by a meteor crashing through the atmosphere, but there's no way of knowing without photographic proof. And military officials said don't blame them.

Oceana Naval Air Station spokeswoman Kelly Sterling felt and heard the boom at her home in Virginia Beach but said in an email it had nothing to do with jet noise or off-shore military exercises.

Beach middle school students made headlines last spring when they theorized the boom felt in May was a curious and little-understood phenomenon known as Seneca Guns. But the term was invented centuries ago to describe mysterious coastal sounds and offers no actual explanation.

On Facebook, several Beach residents wondered if the disturbance had anything to do with alien invaders. Others blamed Congress or chalked it up to a top-secret government operation.

"There's no easy way of knowing," said NASA scientist Joe Zawodny, who heard the boom at his home in Poquoson. "There are a million things you could blame this on."

Comment: Sounds like yet another meteor exploding overhead.

Scientists spot strange structures surface of asteroid as it passes by

BBC
Thu, 10 Nov 2011 16:43 CST

An asteroid that is 400m (1,300ft) wide has passed by Earth, much to the delight of astronomers.

Although invisible to the naked eye, scientists said they spotted strange structures on its surface as it spun past at 30,000mph (48 280.32 km/h).

Asteroid 2005 YU55's was the closest an asteroid has been to Earth in 200 years, according to Nasa.

It is also the largest space rock fly-by Earth has seen since 1976; the next visit by a large asteroid will be 2028.

The aircraft-carrier-sized asteroid was darkly coloured in visible wavelengths and nearly spherical, lazily spinning about once every 20 hours as it raced through our neighbourhood of the Solar System.

Ron Dantowitz, the director of the Clay Centre Observatory in Massachusetts, followed the asteroid through a telescope.

"We're tracking the asteroid itself, so the stars are moving by in the background and the asteroid is actually streaking by at about 30,000mph," he said.

"As we track it, it looks like the stars are moving in the background and the asteroid is locked on in the centre view.

"It's not so much that we can see it tumbling like a rock in space, we're examining it for the brightness and colour."

'Closest approach'

Nasa said it had been no closer than 201,700 miles (324,600km), as measured from the centre of the Earth. The rock reached its closest point to Earth at 23:28 GMT on Tuesday.

It will now trace a path across the whole sky through to Thursday.

The asteroid often travels in the vicinity of Earth, Mars and Venus, but Nasa said this fly-by had been the closest the asteroid had come to Earth in at least 200 years.

"This is the closest approach by an asteroid that large that we've ever known about in advance," said Lance Benner of Nasa's Jet Propulsion Laboratory.

But he stressed that there had been no chance that the pass would be anything other than a close encounter.

"2005 YU55 cannot hit Earth, at least over the interval that we can compute the motion reliably - which extends for several hundred years," he said.

Instead, the pass gave astronomers a rare opportunity to study the asteroid in detail.

In particular, two radio telescopes - the Goldstone Observatory in California, US and the Arecibo Observatory in Puerto Rico, US - tracked radio echoes off it in a bid to understand better what it is made of and how it is shaped.

The precise details of the asteroid's path will also help scientists to predict where it will go much further into the future.

Earth has several regular visitors like 2005 YU55 - most famously the Apophis asteroid. Apophis has in the past been claimed as a possible future impactor when it returns to our neighbourhood in 2029 and again in 2036.

There is, according to the latest calculations, no danger from Apophis either. However, it will pass much closer to Earth on 13 April 2029 - at a distance of 18,300 miles (29,500km).

Comment: The above video is not the BBC's of course, it's taken from this YouTube channel.

We think that image is far too grainy to tell if we're looking at 'a structure' (in the sense that it's 'unnatural').

The narrator does make a good point however about the poor quality images they made available to the public. They can take fabulous photographs of other galaxies, but can't do better than this for "the closest asteroid fly-by in 200 years"?

It could be that by "strange structures", they meant naturally occurring structures they weren't expecting to see, such as the clear signs of electrical arc discharges on comets Wild 2 and Tempel 1 (which completely discounted the 'dirty snowball' theory of comets, by the way).

Then there's this:

Asteroid Vesta Has Mountain Three Times as Tall as Everest

And then, if we put our conspiracy-minded hats on for a minute, it could be that they're deliberately feeding the 'comets and space rocks as UFOs and motherships' disinformation.

Asteroid Lutetia... A Piece Of Earth?

Tammy Plotner
Universe Today
Sat, 12 Nov 2011 21:07 CST

© ESA 2010 MPS for OSIRIS Team MPS/UPD/LAM/IAA/RSSD/INTA/UPM/DASP/IDA
This image of the unusual asteroid Lutetia was taken by ESA’s Rosetta probe during its closest approach in July 2010. Lutetia, which is about 100 kilometres across, seems to be a leftover fragment of the same original material that formed the Earth, Venus and Mercury. It is now part of the main asteroid belt, between the orbits of Mars and Jupiter, but its composition suggests that it was originally much closer to the Sun. Credit:

According to data received from ESA's Rosetta spacecraft, ESO's New Technology Telescope, and NASA telescopes, strange asteroid Lutetia could be a real piece of the rock... the original material that formed the Earth, Venus and Mercury! By examining precious meteors which may have formed at the time of the inner Solar System, scientists have found matching properties which indicate a relationship. Independent Lutetia must have just moved its way out to join in the main asteroid belt...

A team of astronomers from French and North American universities have been hard at work studying asteroid Lutetia spectroscopically. Data sets from the OSIRIS camera on ESA's Rosetta spacecraft, ESO's New Technology Telescope (NTT) at the La Silla Observatory in Chile, and NASA's Infrared Telescope Facility in Hawaii and Spitzer Space Telescope have been combined to give us a multi-wavelength look at this very different space rock. What they found was a very specific type of meteorite called an enstatite chondrite displayed similar content which matched Lutetia... and what is theorized as the material which dates back to the early Solar System. Chances are very good that enstatite chondrites are the same "stuff" which formed the rocky planets - Earth, Mars and Venus.

"But how did Lutetia escape from the inner Solar System and reach the main asteroid belt?" asks Pierre Vernazza (ESO), the lead author of the paper.

It's a very good question considering that an estimated less than 2% of the material which formed in the same region of Earth migrated to the main asteroid belt. Within a few million years of formation, this type of "debris" had either been incorporated into the gelling planets or else larger pieces had escaped to a safer, more distant orbit from the Sun. At about 100 kilometers across, Lutetia may have been gravitationally influenced by a close pass to the rocky planets and then further affected by a young Jupiter.

"We think that such an ejection must have happened to Lutetia. It ended up as an interloper in the main asteroid belt and it has been preserved there for four billion years," continues Pierre Vernazza.

Asteroid Lutetia is a "real looker" and has long been a source of speculation due to its unusual color and surface properties. Only 1% of the asteroids located in the main belt share its rare characteristics.

"Lutetia seems to be the largest, and one of the very few, remnants of such material in the main asteroid belt. For this reason, asteroids like Lutetia represent ideal targets for future sample return missions. We could then study in detail the origin of the rocky planets, including our Earth," concludes Pierre Vernazza.

How I Missed the Great Leonid Meteor Shower of 1966

Joe Rao
msnbc.com
Tue, 15 Nov 2011 14:20 CST

Clouds ruined the party for this young boy, but for some the show was utterly spectacular.

The annual Leonid meteor shower will peak this week, and every year, skywatchers hope to catch stunning displays of ultrafast meteors streak across the sky. This year is no different, but it comes on a special anniversary - the 45th anniversary of the Great Leonid Meteor Storm of 1966.

Forty-five years have come and gone and it still hurts.

In 1966, one of the most stupendous Leonid meteor displays ever witnessed took place over central and western North America. The Leonids occur every year on or around Nov. 18, when Earth glides through a diaphanous trail of dust left behind by the comet Tempel-Tuttle. Each year, stargazers are tempted with a drizzle of maybe a dozen ultrafast meteors streaking across the sky every hour.

But, every 33 years or so, a rare and dazzling Leonid storm can occur after the comet swoops near the sun, closely followed by thicker concentrations of dusty, icy particles no larger than the size of Rice Krispies. Earth then plows straight through the comet's refreshed wake, producing a stupendous meteor display.

1966 was one of those special years. And I missed it!

There I was forty-five Novembers ago, standing in my backyard late on a Wednesday night in the Throggs Neck section of The Bronx, cursing the heavens. My grandfather stood at my side, just shaking his head and murmuring two words over and over: "Too bad."

Clouds covered the midnight sky like a fresh coat of plaster, smearing my view of the Leonids. My mom, sister and grandmother, as well as my neighbors had long since trudged to bed, leaving only Grandpa and I to gaze at a charcoal gray sky totally devoid of stars.

Excitement turns to crushing disappointment

The previous weekend, we had visited the Hayden Planetarium in New York where Dr. Fred C. Hess, an astronomer, who was also a powerful orator, urged us to be sure to look skyward after midnight on Wednesday for - potentially - a spectacular display of "shooting stars."

In the "pretend universe" of the planetarium's domed sky theater, we were told that given reasonably clear skies, we might see hundreds, or maybe even thousands, of meteors per hour. We then were treated, using Hayden's famous Zeiss star projector, to a re-enactment of the stupendous 1833 Leonid storm, where in the span of a single night over North America, an estimated 250,000 meteors rained down from the sky.

Needless to say, I couldn't wait for Wednesday to come; I was "wired" for the Leonids.

So, after coming home from school that afternoon, I did all of my homework, had an early dinner and then, before getting a few hours of sleep, watched the local TV weather reports, which were all promising no worse than "partly cloudy" weather for prospective skywatchers.

When my alarm clock rang at the stroke of midnight, I bundled up and, with my grandfather in tow, anxiously ran outside to watch the promised celestial pyrotechnics display. But, I was met instead with cloud-filled skies and not a star to be seen. After a few minutes, I sobbed to my grandfather, "But they promised it was only going to be partly cloudy tonight." To which he sadly replied, "I guess the party is over."

That night at Central Park, at a midnight meteor watch, an estimated 10,000 people were looking at the same cloud cover.

False alarm?

Grandpa and I trudged back inside. He went to straight to bed, but I stayed up for the rest of the night, hoping for a break in the clouds that never came. I was 10 years old and it was the first time I had ever pulled an all-nighter.

I went back to my room and tuned in WNBC radio, where an all-night talk show, hosted by a chap named Long John Nebel, was in progress. Nebel was immensely popular, with millions of regular listeners and a fanatically loyal following to his nightly program, which dealt mainly with anomalous phenomena, UFOs and other offbeat topics.

It was announced in the newspapers that on the night of the Leonid shower, Nebel would be talking to the chief astronomer at New York's Hayden Planetarium, Dr. Kenneth Franklin, who had the foresight to be above the clouds in an aircraft. Franklin planned to report on the Leonids to a New York radio audience. But, as the hours passed, it appeared that even from the plane, the Leonids were not very active.

Finally, around 4 a.m., Dr. Franklin announced that his plane was returning to La Guardia Airport and that he was calling it a night. And so did I.

Ironically, right after that, the fireworks began! Eyewitness accounts can be found here.

Dozens, then hundreds, then thousands

Beginning at around 5 a.m. Eastern Time, Leonid activity suddenly began to ramp up. Along the Eastern Seaboard, the dawn sky was brightening, and where clear skies prevailed, viewers were able to see Leonids falling at rates of up to six per minute before it finally became too bright to see the stars.

Farther west, where it still dark, Leonids were falling at a rate described by many as "too numerous to count." One observer stationed north of Mission, Texas, said that meteors falling in all directions gave the impression of a "gigantic umbrella," appearing to "waterfall" out of the head of Leo.

Perhaps the best views were from California and Arizona. At the Table Mountain Observatory, near Wrightwood, California, one resident astronomer commented that he and a colleague, "... watched a rain of meteors turn into a hail of meteors and finally a storm of meteors, too numerous to count by 3:50 a.m. Pacific Time. Instinctively, we sought to shield our upturned faces from imagined celestial debris."

From 6,850-foot Kitt Peak in southern Arizona, 13 amateur astronomers were trying to guess how many could be seen by a sweep of their heads in one second. The consensus of the group was that the peak occurred at 4:54 a.m. Mountain Time, when the staggering rate of 40 per second (144,000 per hour) was reached!

What happened?

Today, we know that a dusty trail of debris shed by comet Tempel-Tuttle back in 1899 was what caused the Great 1966 Leonid Storm. The dusty material had made two revolutions around the sun before colliding head-on with the Earth on that memorable night 45 years ago.

Because such a trail of cosmic flotsam and jetsam is invisible until it enters our atmosphere, astronomers were, in essence, playing a game of blind man's bluff, not knowing exactly if or when we might encounter it.

Today, with computer technology, it's a much different situation: Now, astronomers can readily locate the position of Leonid dust trails from the distant past or far into the future. Indeed, the Leonids will periodically shower our planet in the years to come; in the year 2034, Earth is forecast to move through several clouds of dusty debris shed by comet Tempel-Tuttle from the years 1699, 1767, 1866 and 1932. If we're lucky, we might see Leonids fall at the rate of hundreds per hour, perhaps briefly reaching "storm" rates of 1,000 per hour, experts have estimated.

But sadly, in the year 2028, Jupiter is expected to throw comet Tempel-Tuttle off from its current path through space, making it all but impossible - at least through the beginning of the 22nd century - to see a repeat of the Great Leonid Storm of 1966.

Joe Rao serves as an instructor and guest lecturer at New York's Hayden Planetarium. He writes about astronomy for The New York Times and other publications, and he is also an on-camera meteorologist for News 12 Westchester, N.Y.

Australia: Large Shooting Star Dazzles Southeast Queensland

Suzanne Dorfield
Courier Mail, Australia
Sun, 20 Nov 2011 23:11 CST

A blazing object blasted through the Earth's atmosphere over Queensland on Sunday night, leaving some witnesses startled by its size.

Reports of a slow-moving double-headed meteor with an orange tail have been reported from Redcliffe to the Gold Coast on an astronomy blog.

But others think it was more likely man-made space junk.

Donna O'Kearney had been driving north from Canungra on the Gold Coast when about 7:37pm she saw a huge flaming object soaring through the sky.

"I thought it was a plane coming down and I couldn't understand why there was no noise," she said, saying it looked as big as a 747.

"All I could see was a blinding white light at the front going back to orange.

"You just couldn't take your eyes off it, it was a once-in-a-lifetime thing."

She said it took as long as 10 seconds to make its way across the sky before burning out in the distance.

Meteors are not uncommon sights in Australia, with more than 500 being found on our soil in the past 40 years and even more passing overhead, but the massive size of last night's one was an unusual sight for many.

South East Queensland Astronomical Society vice-president Julie Straayer said her club had been observing the object from Bracken Ridge last night.

"It's more than likely a piece of space junk because of the colour, but it was a sizeable piece and it took a long time to move," she said.

"Most meteors that you see in the sky are only about the size of your fingernail.

"More than likely it would've burned up before it hit the ground, if it did land it would go in the ocean anyway."

She added that it was likely a single piece of junk that had fallen from the heavens, rather than two.

"Because it was low in the sky you get atmospheric effects with it, that's why it looked like it had two heads. If it were two paths it would've had two trains," she said.

"It's like how the moon looks bigger when it's rising, the atmosphere can do funny things like that."

Comet Garradd Still Going Strong

astrobob
Astro Bob
Wed, 23 Nov 2011 18:20 CST

© Michael Jaeger
Comet Garradd on November 19 shows a classic dual tail. The longer, blue streak is the ion tail. The dust tail is shorter and glows pale yellow from reflected sunlight.

Remember Comet Elenin? Hopes were high it would become the best comet of 2011, but instead it dissolved into a cloud of dust. Amateur astronomers are still tracking its fading remnants as the comet passes the Pleiades star cluster in Taurus this week.

The brightest comet of the year never received the dire publicity that stuck with Elenin to the end. Comet Garradd was well-placed and easily visible in binoculars this summer as it crossed the Milky Way en route to its current residence in the sprawling constellation Hercules. Underdog Garradd remains a 7th magnitude fuzzball in binoculars this month. I looked it up recently on one of the few clear nights we've had in November and was thrilled to see two tails sticking out of the comet's bright, fuzzy head or coma. Both show wonderfully in Michael Jaeger's photo and were just as pretty in my 15-inch scope though much more subtle.

Comet Garradd is 195 million miles away or about twice our Earth's distance from the sun. That gap will close to 118 million miles by early next March, when the comet will brighten by a magnitude, placing it within naked-eye range from the countryside. Take a look now before it drops too low in the western sky and the moon returns. The best viewing time is right at the end of evening twilight as soon as the sky gets dark.

© AstroBob/Created with Chris Marriott's SkyMap software

Use this finder chart to track down Comet Garradd. It inches slowly northward only a few degrees in the coming month. The map shows Hercules at around 6 p.m. at the end of evening twilight in the western sky. M13 is a bright globular cluster and stars are shown to 7th magnitude.

Binoculars still show a soft, puffy glow and perhaps a hint of a tail. A modest-sized telescope will show the dust tail and maybe even a hint of the ion tail. Dust tails are formed of smoke-sized particles of dust embedded in cometary ice. Heat from the sun vaporizes the ice and releases the particles which fall behind the comet in the form of a tail measuring between 600,000 and 6 million miles long. Comet dust reflects light just like good old house dust or cigarette smoke. Ion tails fluoresce blue when ultraviolet light in sunlight breaks down carbon monoxide jetted by the comet and are often much longer - up to 100 million miles.

US: Baffling fireball reported overhead in Richland County, Ohio

Jami Kinton
Mansfield News Journal
Thu, 24 Nov 2011 15:28 CST

[File image]

A bright fireball in the sky got Rick Beverly's attention at 1:30 a.m. Wednesday.

"I was headed north on Graham Road and was right about in front of my house when it happened," said the 1431 Graham Road, Lexington, man. "I was looking toward the east and noticed a big ball of fire fall from the sky. It was cruising."

Beverly said a red glow lit up a large section of woods behind his home. He thinks the fireball may have landed there.

Lt. Michael Vinson, of the Mansfield post of the Ohio Highway Patrol, said several agencies, including the Lexington Police Department, Troy Township Fire Department, the Richland County Sheriff's Office and the Air National Guard, responded.

"We were told that it may have been a plane crash," Vinson said. "But there was no evidence of any plane. We checked with Cleveland and Columbus FAA, and there were no flights in the area at the time."

The highway patrol orchestrated a fly-over to doublecheck the area that afternoon. Again, nothing was found.

Vinson said authorities believe the fireball may have been a meteor.

"It burned for about 45 minutes to an hour," Beverly said. The woods are about a quarter of a mile behind his home.

Beverly's father, Don, said his son pointed the strange phenomenon out to him.

"You could see the woods all lit up," he said. "When that first deputy arrived, we could see still the red embers and he took off for it, but it was like it suddenly just disappeared. There was no tree damage, not even a burnt spot.

"I'm thankful it wasn't a plane. I can tell you our adrenaline was flowing."

Electric Universe: Where Do Asteroids Come From?

Mel Acheson
thunderbolts.info
Thu, 24 Nov 2011 21:52 CST

Are carbonaceous asteroids the precursors of life or the wreckage of life?

NASA plans to launch the Origins Spectral Interpretation Resource Identification Security Regolith Explorer mission, also known as OSIRIS-REx, in 2016. The spacecraft will orbit the Near Earth Object (NEO) 1999RQ36. After a year in close orbit, the probe will gather a sample of material from the object's surface and bring the sample back to Earth.

1999RQ36 is over 500 meters in diameter, about a third of a mile. Its orbital period around the Sun is 1.2 years. Observations indicate that its surface contains quite a bit of carbon, so astronomers classify it as a carbonaceous asteroid. Its orbit crosses the Earth's orbit, and it will come close to the Earth - a few times the Moon's distance - several times during the rest of this century. Mission scientists are hoping to gain some insight into how to deflect it if it should threaten to collide with the Earth.

The primary goal of the mission is to get a sample of "asteroid dust" and to examine it in a lab. According to presently accepted theory, asteroids were the leftovers when planets condensed out of the solar accretion disk that formed the Solar System a few billions of years ago. Astronomers expect to find "pristine organic material that ... might have seeded the sterile early Earth with the building blocks that led to life."

Judging from previous missions, what the astronomers find will "surprise" them and send them "back to the drawing board." They will not have collected a sample of "pristine material" but a sample of unquestioned presumptions from an obsolete theory. The nebular theory of planet formation never worked; astronomers abandoned it at one time; but they resurrected it because they could think of nothing better.

So they ignore the contradictions and spend their time - and taxpayers' money - following their faith in their textbooks, much as the Medieval priest-scholars did, albeit with a different textbook. Their work at the drawing board will be an ad hoc addition to the unwieldy contraption that is presently accepted theory. It will enable them to interpret the surprising new data in an acceptable way, or at least in a way that will excuse attention to unorthodox ideas.

If they had more confidence in the scientific method than they do in textbooks and peer pressure, they would consider the evidence left by ancient astronomers. People around the world at the dawn of history were obsessed with observing and recording the movements of bodies in the sky. Modern astronomers accept the ancient astronomers' identifications of those bodies as planets when remarking on their observational skills. When the content of the observations reveals a sky and movements that contradict the textbooks, the ancient evidence is dismissed out of hand as fantasies about gods.

If astronomers treated historical data with the same rigor and attention to detail with which they treat present data, they would consider that that evidence indicates the occurrence of events only a few thousands of years ago that reorganized the Solar System and resurfaced the Earth. Instead of taking for granted their speculation that 1999RQ36 is a pristine sample of billion-year-old proto-life, they would consider that it might be a space-fried fragment of life recently blasted from the ruins of the Earth.

US: A Thanksgiving predawn meteor over North Carolina?

Johnny Horne
Fay Observer
Thu, 24 Nov 2011 15:41 CST

At least one person was watching the sky before dawn on Thanksgiving morning. And..he had a view to be thankful for.

Around 4:30 AM today Ty in Grimesland, NC between Greenville and Washington saw a bright meteor low in the sky...heading south to north.

He writes, "It appeared to be really low, bright and with a long tail lasted for about 3 sec".

Did anyone else catch this bright but brief visitor?

Incoming! Shower of micro-meteorites sets fire to household items in India

Times of India
Tue, 29 Nov 2011 16:30 CST

New Delhi - Experts are yet to ascertain the composition of the mysterious "celestial" objects that fell on Chand Mohalla colony in Gandhi Nagar in east Delhi. Police sources said the material resembled a meteorite even as they were not ruling out the possibility of a prank. The incident took place on Sunday evening.

Police sources said incidents of meteorites falling on earth are rare. "It is too soon to arrive at a conclusion. The objects have been sent to FSL for examination and we will have to wait for the expert's take on the incident," said a police source. The incident, however, has had an impact on those who witnessed it.

"A strange black fireball first hit a cricket bat and then a towel. Both caught fire. Even the bike caught fire because of the fireball,'' said Indrapal Singh, whose household items were set on fire by the "celestial" objects.

Indrapal was watching television with his family when they heard a sound and rushed out. Moments later, several items - including a cricket bat and a towel - were on fire. "We brought out buckets and tried to douse the fire with water. However, it took us a while to bring it under control," he said. Police sources said they have collected the material from the site.

A meteorite is a natural object originating in outer space that survives impact with the earth's surface. Most meteorites, whether big or small, are derived from meteoroids, but they are also sometimes produced by the impact of asteroids. When a meteoroid enters the atmosphere, pressure causes the body to heat up and emit light, thus forming a fireball, also known as a meteor or shooting star. The term bolide refers to either an extraterrestrial body that collides with the earth, or to an exceptionally bright, fireball-like meteor regardless of whether it ultimately impacts the surface.

A meteorite on the surface of any celestial body is a natural object that has come from elsewhere in space.

Meteorites have been found on the moon and the Mars. Meteorites that are recovered after being observed as they travelled through the atmosphere or fell on earth are called falls. All other meteorites are known as finds. As of February 2010, there has been approximately 1,086 incidents of falls. In contrast, there have been over 38,660 well-documented meteorite finds.

Mahad, Maharashtra, India Meteor - Nov.25, 2011

The Latest Worldwide Meteor/Meteorite News
Fri, 25 Nov 2011 00:00 CST

Nearly at 22:50 there was a flash light falling all over illuminating the dark sky. I don't know what it was but it was extremely bright, leaving a shiny trail behind it which lasted for few seconds. I am in Mahad, Maharashtra, India.-feelipkd Thank you!

Science Debunked Meteorites

Mysterious New Zealand
Tue, 29 Nov 2011 00:00 CST

"The Lord cast down great stones from heaven upon them"
Joshua 10:11

Rocks that fell from the sky were often venerated in ancient times and even became objects of worship. Visitors to the temple of Apollo at Delphi, for example, reported that a stone, reputed to have fallen from the sky, was on display there and each day was anointed by the resident priests.

So the ancient Greeks knew that stones could, and did, fall from the sky. They used observation, common sense and the genuine power of reason to establish this. Rocks and stones that fell to the ground were not really falling stars they reasoned, because the celestial population of stars remained the same.

Aristotle, however, the great Greek philosopher, was one who at first wholeheartedly debunked this concept. He thought that rocks could not fall from the sky because the heavens were perfect and could not possibly have loose pieces floating around to fall to Earth. Aristotle was forced to change his position somewhat after a meteorite fell at Thrace near Aegospotami. He reasoned that strong winds had lifted an earth rock into the sky, then dropped it. Other learned men of the time favoured an alternate theory. They held that meteorites somehow formed in the sky during violent thunderstorms, suggesting that particles inside the clouds consolidated because of the heat during a lighting flash. For this reason the rocks were sometimes referred to as thunderstones.

Despite the varying views, a consensus was somehow arrived at. Being a temporary phenomenon, it was agreed, shooting stars had to be something within the atmosphere. These objects were therefore named Meteors meaning 'things in the air'.

'Age of Reason' and 'The Enlightenment', roughly within the 18th century, were terms used and cherished by those who believed in the power of mind to liberate and improve. Reviewing the experience in 1784, Immanuel Kant saw emancipation from superstition and ignorance as having been the essential characteristic of these times. Philosophers and scientists alike pursued these ideals with enthusiasm and vigour and especially so the Académie Française des Sciences, Europe's leading rational authority. To them may be attributed a strange anomaly that exists in the world today - in museums and collections there is scarcely a single specimen of meteorite that predates the year 1790.

The idea that stones can fall out of the sky was scornfully denounced by the Académie as an unscientific absurdity. Antoine Lavoisier, for example, the father of modern chemistry, told his fellow Academicians, "Stones cannot fall from the sky, because there are no stones in the sky!" The concept of meteorites was thus condemned as nothing but medieval illusions and old wives' tales. Embarrassed museums all over Europe, wishing to be seen to be part of this enlightened 'Age of Reason', hurriedly threw out their cherished meteorite collections with the garbage as humiliating anachronisms from a superstitious past.

Although the last two decades of the eighteenth century saw scientists such as Peter Pallas and Ernst Florens Chladni, risking ridicule by the scientific community through the serious investigation of meteorites, most scientists shared Isaac Newton's view that that no small objects could exist in the interplanetary space. An assumption that left no room for rocks or stones falling from the sky.

Farmers who came to the Académie with samples of meteorites were laughingly shown to the door and denounced as superstitious ignorant peasants. On the night of the 26th of April 1803 however, perceptions started to change. On that night the people of L'Aigle were rudely awoken from their dreams by the thunderous noise of more than 2000 rocks falling from the sky. This undeniable display of meteorites also woke up the Académie Française who were compelled to take notice. They appointed a commission to investigate the event, the result of which was finally a reluctant admission that stones could indeed fall from the sky. Museums, freed from the stigma of non-conformity , started creating meteorite collections once again.

Strangely perhaps, American science did not wholeheartedly accept the Académie's findings until many years later. When, for example, in 1807, two Connecticut Scholars (one of them the chemist Benjamin Silliman) reported having witnessed a fall, President Thomas Jefferson (who had studied natural sciences) made a memorable statement. "I would sooner believe that two Yankee professors would lie than that stones would fall from heaven!" As in Europe it took a dramatic heavenly display, the 1833 Leonid Meteor Shower, before the American Astronomers turned to the subject of meteors and meteorites with any seriousness.

So science eventually learned to accept the idea that rocks, sometimes very very big rocks - could fall from space. The notion of thunderstones forming within the earth's atmosphere was relegated to the rubbish can of folklore. But not quite, because even in recent times reports of stones falling to the ground during heavy thunderstorms still occasionally occur as this report from the March 14, 1920 issue of Nature indicates:

"During a heavy thunderstorm which ensued on Monday, March 4, between 2:30 p.m. and 4.15 p.m., an aerolite was observed to fall at Conleny Heath, near St. Albans. The observed who has placed the specimen in my hands for examination, stated that the stone fell within a few feet from where he was standing, and that it entered the ground for a distance of about 3 feet. Its fall was accompanied by an unusually heavy clap of thunder. The example weighs 5 pounds 14 1/2 ounces and measures 6 3/4 inches by 5-5/8 inches at its great length and breadth respectively. The mass is irregularly ovate on the one side, and broken in outline on the other. The actual surface throughout is fairly deeply pitted, and under magnification exhibits the usual chondritic structure of the crystalline matter with interspersed particles of what appears to be nickeliferous iron."

The author of the report, G.E. Bullen, submitted the stone to the British Museum where it was examined and astonishingly, determined not to be of meteorite origin. Did they mean that thunderstones really do exist then? Science once ridiculed the concept of meteorites. Perhaps sometime in the future they may prove to be wrong about thunderstones also. That's not very likely though.

There are many strange things in the world today that ordinary and credible people in their millions report on a daily basis, only to be denounced as lies and illusions by our equivalents of the "Age of Reason's' Académie Française. Denouncements without genuine scientific investigation are indicative of vested interest and closed minds.

"A man is wise with the wisdom of his time only, and ignorant with its ignorance." - Henry David Thoreau.

The Ellerslie Meteorite

At 9.30 am on 12 June 2004 a meteorite smashed into the roof of the Archer family home in Elleslie, Auckland. After punching a hole through the roof the meteorite penetrated the family's couch bouncing around the living room before coming to rest.

The 1.3kg, 4600 million-year-old meteorite, identified as a Eucrite - a class of stone meteorite, must have travelled hundreds of millions of kilometres to reach Earth. A journey that would have begun millions of years ago. It now can be viewed in the Auckland museum.

Click here to view a video clip of Brenda Archer talking about the experience (link will open in a new window).

Three for the Show: Assessing the Potential Effects of Comets Elenin, Levy and Honda

2011-11-10T16:18:00.001Z

The Millennium Group
Sun, 16 Oct 2011 00:00 CDT

Three For The Show Pt.1

August 16, 2011

Intro

I sat down today with the full intention of writing about the comet Elenin. I started my research, first speaking with my very close friend and associate, Raymond Ward. He's incredibly informed and talented. I went through page after page on the Internet. The comments and the conclusions about these three comets that are coming put me over the top. I know, I know... We have published some pretty over the top kind of material ourselves. But we were really one of the first sites to challenge the status quo on the Internet. So what. Anyway...

One site was very slick, cool looking and had a lot of opinions; a beautifully designed and organized page. Another belonged to a former TMG friend/member, not very well done. But... well... I was going to write something very crass and very nasty... But I'll keep my boundaries intact! I'll let his design and conclusion stand for themselves and like we always say, 'you decide for yourself'! Anyway...

If you're reading this page, you are more likely than not going to be a return visitor. So you know more than the usual reader concerning comets and astronomy (but if you're new, welcome! read on!). But let me cut to the chase, save you some time, give you the facts and let you deal with what I've got to say. Here are the particulars we have seen:

1. Comets Elenin
2. Dramatic increase in the number of earthquakes
3. Dramatic increase in the number of strong earthquakes
4. Elenin positions and EQ dates coincide
5. We have been documenting clashes in our upper atmosphere
6. There has been some evidence larger ships have been over EQ sites
7. It now appears that there are three comets coming into a "conjunction" in the very near future

Part One: Comet Number One: Elenin

As you likely know by now, Elenin's relative position to the earth coincided strongly with disastrous events on our planet; the massive Chilean earthquake; the massive New Zealand earthquake; and the destructive earthquake and following tsunami in Japan.

Just to recap a bit of our position on the nature of comets, we strongly believe In the theories put forth by James McCanney on the nature of comets. He proposed that comets are electrical in nature. Time after time, NASA has found comets to be nothing more than asteroids in makeup. In fact it has been shown more times than not that comets are dry and have no ice or water on them. The theory proposing that comets are dirty snowballs has fallen flat on it's face and in fact we believe that in the next few decades or even only years we will see the NASA theorists moving toward the electric comet theory and away from this tired old belief. That has always been the way they work!

The Electric Earth

Back to the meat.... Everything in our universe, simply put, has a charge, an electrical charge. Even your body depends upon electrical charges, no matter how minute, to make your bodily systems work! Your heart beats because an electrical charge passes through it from your brain. The Earth has a charge. The resulting aurora borealis is a displayed charge of particles, effected by the sun's output. These are only two examples of millions. Everything has an electrical charge. It is a powerful entity in our universe. More powerful than gravity.

And with electrical charge, there is usually a positive and negative side of the charge (electrical engineers, please forgive me and bear with my simplistic explanation). Comets are only different from asteroids, AND PLANETS, because they are traveling at very high rates of speed through the solar wind. When you pass an object through a charged field at a high rate it draws a charge and is itself then charged, or that is a node of charge. Not unlike passing a wire through the flame of an acetylene torch (a different force, but the reference is visually similar). This is the main reason that we support McCanney's argument. I would also recommend that you take a good look at holoscience.com for more insight.

When a comet comes in through the galaxy, it usually travels, again, at great speeds, but it also is usually hitting the solar wind (which, on the plane of the planets, goes in one direction). It hits that solar wind, or plasma at a higher than usual angle as compared to the planets and asteroids. This "friction" in addition to the great power of the solar wind, causes these usually smaller than planet-like objects to become charged and display, not only one tail to their rear, but another tail out their nose toward the sun. I say sun, because that is usually the target of this negatively (or positively) charged 'horn' (please forgive my adjective, some of you will understand) attached to the head of the comet. Comets have even been known to discharge x-rays.

These two charges, positive and negative, just like your reading lamp, one positive wire going toward the plug and one wire coming away from the plug - negative - connect to the source, the sun. They don't run side by side, but in a great circle or arc generally to and from the sun. Unfortunately, these forces can become more complex, duplicating and/or multiplying themselves, due to being attracted (or diverted) by other sources or causes. In our case, we are concerned with these charges connecting with our planet earth. Just like being out in a lightening storm, lightening may divert from one target and shift to another, or hit them both! They say when you have to be out in bad weather and you feel that tingling sensation, indicating a lightening strike coming your way, you should curl up in a ball as close to the ground as possible to avoid it hitting you. Unfortunately the earth has no where else to go! When that charge comes our way, we take it. And I mean, we take it! If it's large enough, and it comes our way, it usually does great harm. It may result in increased weather extremes, or it may result in a deeper effect, earthquakes. We receive a usually normal charge from the solar wind constantly. It can fluctuate, of course. However, when there's an additional charge, the charge must be dissipated someway, somehow. These charges from comets only come our way when certain conditions occur. One of these conditions is "angle". This is the issue presented by some on the Internet concerning the position of Elenin and the three earthquakes and tsunami mentioned above.

An electric comet (not Elenin!)

Now to the specifics on Elenin. First let me say, in light of what I've written above, that the effects of comets are not merely based on their size and gravity (I would cautiously direct you to a NASA website - but please come back! - where Don Yeomans talks about Elenin. He basically "pooh poohs" anyone's thoughts but his own). If we only considered the effects of comets based on their gravity, the only reason to be concerned would be if the trajectory was aimed at our nose. Even if a comet were planet size (and some are!), the effect of gravity would be tolerable. But there's more! Gravity is NOT the sole force in the universe! Again let me say, electromagnetic forces are the greatest forces in the universe besides God himself, and honestly, He uses those EMFs a lot! No, comets cause problems because of the incredible electric charges they pass through and effect in our solar system. And of course, not all comets reach this electrical potential. On one end of the spectrum we call them comets, very highly charged. On the other end of the spectrum we call them asteroids, hardly charged at all.

Elenin is highly charged, and has immense electrical potential.

I am always suspicious. Maybe it's in my nature or something. Maybe it's because this has happened before. The discoverer of Elenin wasn't a big telescope setting on top of some mountains somewhere. It was discovered by an amateur Russian astronomer, in Russia, but using a remote telescope (International Scientific Optical Network's Robotic Observatory) from New Mexico! Now... Would you like to interview this guy? Good luck! What about a plain amateur astronomer here in the U.S.? Too easy to access. No, we have a guy thousands of miles away, so no one will question him. My guess, Elenin, or whatever they called it several years ago, has been on the radar for a long time. Which is even more frightening.

As I was pointing out above that angle has a large part to do with the comet's behavior, effect and power. There have been many associated earthquakes and weather effects that could be related to this comet. Here are a few earthquakes:

Elenin - Earth - Sun. Feb 20 2008 Indonesia 7.4
Elenin - Earth - Sun. Feb 25 2008 Indonesia 7.2
Elenin - Earth - Neptune May 12 2008 China 7.9
Elenin - Earth - Sun Feb 18 2009 Kermadec 7.0
Elenin - Mercury- Earth July 15 2009 New Zealand 7.8
Elenin - Mercury - Earth Aug 09 2009 Japan 7.1
Elenin - Sun - Earth. Sept 09 2009 Sunola 8.1
Elenin - Earth - Venus Feb 18 2010 China 6.9
Elenin - Earth-Sun Feb 25 2010 China 5.2

Elenin - Earth-Sun Feb 26 2010 Japan 7.0
Elenin - Earth- Sun Feb 27 2010 Chile 8.8
Elenin - Earth- Sun Feb 27 2010 Argentina 6.3
Elenin - Earth - Mercury Mar 04 2010 Taiwan 6.3
Elenin - Earth - Mercury Mar 04 2010 Vanuatu 6.5
Elenin - Earth - Mercury Mar 05 2010 Chile 6.6
Elenin - Earth - Mercury Mar 05 2010 Indonesia 6.3
Elenin - Earth - Mercury Mar 08 2010 Turkey 6.1

Elenin - Earth - Neptune May 05 2010 Indonesia 6.6
Elenin - Earth - Neptune May 06 2010 Chile 6.2
Elenin - Earth - Neptune May 09 2010 Indonesia 7.2
Elenin - Earth - Neptune May 14 2010 Algeria 5.2
Elenin - Earth - Jupiter Jan 03 2011 Chile 7.0
*April 2011 tornadoes in the U.S. Hit a record 753 tornadoes
Elenin - Earth - Sun Mar 11 2011 Japan 9.0

I mention only one weather related incident above, but there are many that have been happening. And likely many more earthquakes that I haven't added in here.

On October 20th Elenin will be in the position seen below. This is a "looking down" on the solar system view.

Four days earlier, on October 16th, Elenin will be at it's closest to earth at 22 million miles (hey folks, that's close for a comet!). The moon averages about 400,000 miles from the earth. I put this image up because it shows that Elenin will pass in front of us, just before we get there, in our own plane. Which means that there is a very good chance that we will pass through it's tail, or at least the debris of it's tail. Could be a nice light show, but not likely dangerous.

Again the most dangerous thing about Elenin is that it is highly charged and that charge is dangerous to us.

So that's Elenin. But as you know, there's more! So come back! You're going to want to see where this story goes!

Three For The Show Pt.2

August 23, 2011

Intro

Well I thought today would be a good day to get this post out on the "wire'! (If you haven't read my last post, you should read it first as I will be referring to it quite a bit). Why today? Have you heard any news today yet? And I'm not talking about the overthrow of Qaddafi!

There are two things relative to this story that I am going to talk about here to help show that the evidence and power of the force that even comets which are "claimed" to be small, have on our earth and on our existence. The first, since it just happened, are two earthquakes; one in Colorado last night at 10:46 their time (8/22/2011) and the other earthquake today in Virginia (8/23/2011), which was felt up and down the Eastern Seaboard. And then second, the new hurricane Irene, which for all intents and purposes appears to be preparing to cause a whole lot of damage.

Part Two: Comet Number Two: Honda

In the meantime, did you know that on August 15th, about a week ago, our Number Two comet, Honda (actually Honda-Mrkos-Pajdusakova), passed very close to the earth. In fact it passed at .06 AU from the earth! Considering our last discussion on comets, what do you think the chances are that Honda is dangerous? Let's recap a little. Comets are electrically powerful because they are passing through the solar wind, which is plasma. Sprite or AuroraPlasma is nothing but electrically charged hydrogen atoms. Because electrical charges are positive and negative they seek to neutralize themselves by grounding. Just like lightening connects the positively charged clouds above with the negatively charged ground below. Thus we have lightening (of course, there is so much more to that). And as was explained in the last article, electrical charges are everywhere in the universe. It's fuel that feeds and sustains life. So comets passing at great speeds through the plasma create more and more charges. And these growing charges naturally seek to be equalized or discharged.

The plasma in the solar wind that hits the earth, causes the Aurora Borealis, and in fact naturally causes the weather that we experience here on the surface of the earth. The charges find their way down to the surface first via "sprites" from the upper atmosphere. This can not only cause weather (and sometimes severe weather and storms) but it can also cause the earth to groan and shift, otherwise known as earthquakes. This dissipation of the charge from the upper atmosphere can actually take a few days, depending upon the circumstances and the conditions.

Last night at 10:46 there was an earthquake in Colorado! It was a 5.3. earthquake... in Colorado? Well... yes, they've of course had them before. But just like we learned from Velikovsky, we must look at the whole picture. The area where it occurred, the depth, the strength and the time period. This morning the next one occurred. And again, in a very rare area for earthquakes. A hundred miles from Washington, D.C.; shallow, but felt up and down the Eastern Seaboard and even into Canada. Why not the San Andreas? Why not the New Madrid Fault? The Virginia quake was only half a mile deep which probably contributed to it's strength. So the question is, why did these two earthquakes occur and why did they occur in the areas they occurred? Meanwhile, earthquakes are still happening around the world. Vanuatu has had numerous strong earthquakes over the last week up to a 7.1, and the earthquakes in Japan continue; a 6.2 near the nuclear plant in Fukushima. Also a 6.0 in Fiji. And there are more, in strange places; Oklahoma City and New York.

I need to make one more point about the Virginia earthquake that affected such a large area. Although there wasn't a significant amount of physical damage, there was a huge amount of emotional and psychological damage. This earthquake scared people. The long term effects of this particular earthquake are very significant. The Pentagon was evacuated, Union Station was evacuated, two nuclear reactors were said to have cracks, concern mentioned about the D.C. subway, cell phones wouldn't work, the Attorney general was rushed out of the area, the Capitol was evacuated, there was even a report that the Washington Monument was tilting! And now... all of these people, unaccustomed to feeling earthquakes are in the sights of another monster...

So if you've been isolated and haven't heard, the first hurricane of the season is coming! She's called IRENE. And believe me... this one's a monster! This image (below) was taken earlier today. And it appears that it's going to move up the East Coast. Can you begin to see a connection here? These monster storms are fed by immense charges sent down through the atmosphere. This storm has pumped up to a category two and it's just getting started! The eye is forming and more and more power is being added to it hour by hour due to the powerful charges reaching down to it from the upper atmosphere. The only thing that can stop it now is more dissipation of the charge. That may mean more earthquakes or other destructive discharges in other venues.

Hurricane Irene

Around the Internet there are all kinds of stories and ideas concerning these comets. Let's talk about some of these. No names, and I don't intend to be unfair. But there are folks talking about dates relating to 911, alignments with planets that have certain power and have been arranged by "someone", or the Creator. A lot of talk about the "Hopi Blue Star". This doesn't mean that I don't believe in the Spirit of humans, or that I don't believe in the power of the planets and stars on us, or the Hopi religion. But I do know what it means to need an answer so bad that you'll believe anything. But the sometimes rationality in these folks is lost with the desire to please others or to be recognized. This is a root problem with the paranormal and UFO community and this behavior leaves space for folks with serious mental health problems to have their craziness empowered, and those individuals not empowered as people. It may be a desire borne out of genetic memory to find and know the Origin, the Creator that has been lost in our ever narcissistically and hedonistically growing society. We have lost the true spirit of ourselves and can't seem to find our way back. END OF RANT.

This first map of Honda shows that it came every close to the earth on August 15th. You can't read the label for the earth, because the comet and it's name are covering it up!

This next map (below), shows the relative position of Honda on October 20th, when Elenin will be passing in front of us in our orbit. It will actually be a little closer to us a few days before October 20th, so that entire time period will definitely be touch and go. Maybe it's a good time to get a few supplies put away, some drinking water, and just maybe some first aid supplies?

I want to leave you with one more picture. I have tried to stay away from the philosophical discussion of these issues, although I have touched on it a bit. In part 3, which will follow, I will try and stay true to this approach. However, I can't make any promises; my own emotions get the best of me too at times! This picture, and others like it, have done this to me! I am very overwhelmed by the power and strength of our universe. We have been taught in school that lightening comes from clouds, that clouds come from condensation. These are lies. My colleagues and I have seriously tried to effect change back to the "olden ways". "Many are called, but few are chosen." This image below, if you choose to accept it, represents a return to those "olden beliefs and ways". Gods or not, power comes from above. It is given to the people below, for their strength... or for their destruction. This apparition in the image below is what scientists have lovingly called a sprite. It lives above the clouds and in the upper atmosphere. This is a very rare image of this phenomenon shared with us "cattle and sheep". I hope it helps compel you to believe in the things I have shared with you.

But there is more to share....

Three For The Show Pt.3

Intro

If you're interested in this article, I'm sure that you've been following this mess at other sites. It's incredible the ideas that people are coming up with! I have heard that in some of the seminars, presenters are spreading all kinds of wild ideas; spaceships and what not. Not that I automatically dismiss every idea. I don't. I did see the images of Elenin and the right angle features in the picture, and there has been increased activity. No doubt, you know that this third article will focus on Comet Levy. As the year passes, and we are on the brink of 2012, we are surely already in the middle of the s--- .

Part Three: Three's The Charm

But before I talk a bit about Levy, give me a minute to do some recapping. At the writing of this entry, we have seen a recent history of incredible destruction in our world. Do you really doubt what I have said? The critics can have their say and the powers that be can have their moment, but in the end, what has been said on this site will stand the test of time.

Hurricane Irene's destruction has rivaled the cost of even Katrina. And may I remind you, it's only the first of the season. Tropical Storm Lee has drenched the east coast (like they needed anymore), Katia and Ophelia... there will be more to come. Typhoon Talas ripped through Japan. Seas heaving their bounds. Earthquakes in "diverse" places; more 6.0 plus earthquakes than we have witnessed in a long time. Solar activity is starting to rise beyond all expectations. Weather patterns all over the world are severe and challenging old patterns of expectation. But you won't see much of any of these newsworthy stories on television. John Q will just be kept in the dark... Once again.

"Americans are a race of convicts and ought to be thankful for anything we allow them short of hanging." - Samuel Johnson

These happenings are surely indicative of what I have been saying. But what has impressed me more than these events, if there is anything that could, are the wild statements, and what I am calling disinformation. I just saw where one fellow is calling Elenin a ship. While I have no doubt about the existence of aliens within our solar system, this claim has the flavor of disinformation. It is a fact that Elenin was hit by a Solar Coronal Mass Ejection, which only further supports the EMF idea of comets. The only way that it was hit was by drawing in the charge or at the very least, being a part of this huge electrical system/field. The immediate claim was that it disintegrated the comet. This is not true. If anything it empowered the comet to even greater heights. It also supports the seeming collaboration of all three comets in a power house of EMF. Comets do come apart. This has been well documented, but only comets that have a high eccentricity or angle to the ecliptic; like a car slamming into a block wall. It was also reported that when the comet passed Jupiter, a bolt of charge reached out from the planet to the comet. Again, more support for the EMF model. Dirty snowballs? What? No, highly charged planetesimals gaining electrical charge from the plasma field. And sometimes not so small. Maybe "Planet-sized" would be the better adjective. Isn't it amazing what you can do with a big rock? Let's move on...

Do you know what a capacitor is? In layman's terms (because I'm a layman!), it's something between two charges that keeps them from connecting until a certain power or voltage, or a reduced distance, is reached. Such as a positive charge that is trying to equalize itself by seeking out and jumping to a negative area of charge. Capacitors are quite often used in electronics. A piece of a particular type of material is placed between two conductive metals (or whatever is doing the conducting). The material in-between keeps the charge from jumping until a certain voltage is reached. Too small of a charge and it won't jump. When it hits optimum voltage and distance, "BAM" it jumps! Just about anything can act as a capacitor, even air. So these charges are all around us but usually they're just too small for us to notice, until...

Until it affects us in someway. One comet, connected with the sun and one or more of the planets, can cause a lot of very serious damage to the earth and it's residents. Two comets cutting through the solar plasma bouncing charges back and forth increase the charges exponentially. Anyone want to contemplate the combination of three comets in the inner solar system?

But it's not just three comets in the inner solar system at once... If we think there is anything to this electrical model of comets, we must consider and be aware of the capacitant affect of these bodies. (Is 'capacitant' a word?) Have you ever touched a car battery wire or jumper cables to the body of the car or other metal. It's a shocking experience! Right now, my friends, we are in a washing machine of charges. These three comets are tugging charges from the sun back and forth and through us. And it will only get worse through the end of the year.

I want you to go to this URL and take a look at the orbital diagram of these three comets. I will make it so it opens a separate window. But when you get the diagram up, take the slider on the right, the up and down one, and pull it completely to the bottom. This will give you a view from the top of the solar system. Then take the horizontal slider and as you move it to the right watch the yellow line in the middle of the diagram. As you move it to the right it will become a straight flat line. This is where you want it. In this configuration we are at "Zero point" and we have a reference to be able to talk about and see the relation of the comets to each other and to the earth. Forgive me for being wordy here. Now before you go further take the right up and down slider and move it to the center. In this position you can see the "eccentricity" of the comet's orbits. Note that Levy is above the ecliptic at the present, but is diving down into it as time passes. Elenin is traveling from slightly under the solar system to above the solar system.

Now note the date at the bottom of the diagram. There are also switches there you can hit to make the dates go forward and backward. If you hit the forward control you can see how one comet passes one direction and another the other way! Now I want you to think about that discussion above concerning capacitance. These comets are charged! The sea of plasma they are passing through, like us, is charged! The sun is the hub and is producing massive amounts of plasma itself.

Orbital Diagram

Sure, of course I am concerned about Elenin passing in front of us on October 19th or 20th. But the effects of these tremendous charges on the earth and the simple fact that everything we know, the weather, earthquakes, our bodies, and more are EMF based, makes me extremely concerned. Further... I know many have suggested that position is an important predictor of future effects, but when you have this many points of power, for this long, position of the planets relative to the comets is no longer as important. Effects can occur at ANY TIME and the degree can still be enormous! And DO NOT be fooled by the comments of others... Elenin has not dissipated or come apart because it has passed through perihelion!

The comet Hale Bopp and Comet Lee among others caused substantial effects, just like the ones mentioned above. And although these current comets may not have the size of Hale Bopp, Comet Lee was also a relatively smaller comet, but caused incredible destruction to the earth. But further, Elenin is not that small of a comet. She is huge, my friends, and drawing and sending enormous voltages. The other two comets then added into the mix, which are also highly charged, are making this an historical event. We are in a washing machine, being tugged and pulled this way and that way with these enormous charges, slipping back and forth between the three comets, the sun and inner solar system planets! We can not ignore the incredibly destructive events that have occurred over the last few months. The escalation has statistically been out of the park!

Report from Ray Ward:

I was getting a lot of degraded signal yesterday and whether by design or interference, it matters not.

I noticed over the weekend that the SOHO C3 was down for 48 hrs. I would imagine Elenin is within "eyeshot" of the camera, well past perihelion.

There were solar flares over the weekend, strong, though just below M levels, except one.

I kept looking at the orbits until I was blue in the face last night. I have a few general suggestions concerning possible critical points in their orbits.

First of all, as you know, weather conditions continue to deteriorate and in addition, this set of conditions is spreading to an ever larger area of the earth in order for more of these drastically increased charges to be dissipated more evenly throughout the crust of the earth.

In January, 2012, Levy may cause problems when it crosses through the ecliptic.

Honda crossed through the ecliptic once already (back in March?) and will do so again, about now. Japan has now admitted that Reactors 1, 2,and 3 had Total Meltdowns within the first few hours of the 9.0 earthquake when their cooling systems were destroyed. The hydrogen blasts that occurred were evidence of that at all three plants.

In the Honda orbit, which is supposed to come within 6 million miles or so of earth, I noticed no gap between earth and Honda. As in the Lulin/Mars encounter, I would suggest Honda was no further out than 3 million miles away, due to my experience but this does not prove that fact. It's just my opinion.

Elenin was supposed to cross the ecliptic on 9/12 (right around 9/11?). Which is bizarre timing but we have no visual record of these events.

Honda seems to come within Elenin at a distance I estimate to be 0.25 AU but that does not seem to be a major problem for those two bodies.

2005 YU55 does not seem to be any more of a problem than it normally would be given all the interactions. It could cause problems just in and of itself since it will come in at 1 lunar distance.

One final note. I have yet to get a specific size on Elenin. My personal observations I doubt but if true, then Elenin is large. I really do not see how it cannot be. One reason I cite for this lack of ability on my part in this is the widespread lack of photos of Elenin. I am also aware of the luminosity charts NASA has and for their singular lack of accuracy on the size of the comets.

One more thing haunts this investigation of Elenin. In late November of last year, as in the days of Hale Bopp, two astronomers have died under mysterious circumstances. The two workers died in the San Diego area just 5 days apart of something akin to encephalitis . One astronomer worked at Palomar with the NEAT telescope and the other individual has had disagreements in the past with Don Yeomans (recognize that name?). I don't need to tell you how important these men were to the program. The blogger Rajatan says they were assassinated.

I think that this is all I have for now that I can think of. I will keep looking and digging for more facts.

This brings me to another way of looking at this entire issue.

We all, as human beings, are cast in our understanding of our reality by our history, both genetically and, of course, environmentally. The variety of experiences and physiological history are endless in nature. Pertaining to this experience, we are left with views that are far and wide. Some believe that the power of comets is only gravitational; some believe that they are signs of religious events; some say they are harboring spaceships from alien worlds; and some may believe that they can hitch a ride with them to other planes of reality (after committing suicide). I cannot speak for any of them, nor for you. All that is left for myself is to share my beliefs based upon my own understanding. I am not given access to the scientific equipment that our tax dollars have been spent on. You and I are left to depend upon the governmental scientists that have absolutely different priorities than you and I have! We are left to the whims of evolutionists, big bang theorists, uniformitarians, people who deny that men and women are any more than bags of skin, that we are without spirit, to be controlled and worse yet, to be used for production of taxes and economy. The Matrix - science "fiction"? Hardly.

The Matrix Hive

Think of the profits! Think of the politics! How many benefit from the whoring of humanity? An incredible machine! Stepping on, stepping over people.

But we do have another tool in our repertoire! We have the experience of millennia of human experience. This isn't a tool that you can pick up and use. This tool is not already sharp; the edge of this axe is dulled from human frailty. Contemporary science would have you believe that it's not worthy of your hands. But what are we to do? Scientists have created a clandestine society; a "mannerbund" so to speak. They have assassins that are chosen to criticize and curtail any clear examinations of the universe from history. Control of the public is priority. If the Galileos of our day, or the Velikovskis, were allowed to spread their ideas, society would crumble and this mechanized monster would fall from grace. Their comfortable six and seven figure lifestyles would be lost. The story never really changes, does it? We are the pigs in the cage and "they" are the keepers. The Mannerbund holds the scepter over our heads, keeping us full of fear, most never willing to approach the truth.

"The cause of liberty becomes a mockery if the price to be paid is the wholesale destruction of those who are to enjoy liberty." - Gandhi

So the earth swims in the plasma of the warm sun, as three comets swirl around her head like wasps carrying with them the sting of electrical force. A balance set in motion by God, but now toyed with, by a simple wave of his mighty finger.

So what will the critics say after the comets are gone on their way? They'll say the same thing that they've said after every article and every time we've reported on a comet: "The comet came and went and there was no disaster, it didn't hit the earth!"

Can you just accept the fact that these people are simply fools? They are on the wrong side of the equation. They have abandoned Truth for self-serving reasons.

In the end they will have to accept the truth. Why? Because their empire will fall. All that they have built up and all that they have tried to control will escape their wicked plans.

"People of privilege will always risk their complete destruction rather than surrender any material part of their advantage." - John Kenneth Galbraith

It took me a long time to get these three articles out. I was attacked repeatedly by weapons only guessed about by the unknowing public. My health is damaged, my life has been wounded, my family has suffered. But I have something greater and more terrible than those that control humankind will ever have.

So as these three comets do their worst, move on their way, what will be our witness to all of this? Will our day and age be the beginning of another "Age of Man"? Our culture suffers because of their hubris. Our society is stunted because of the punishment of the Human Spirit and Ingenuity. Freedom is absent, Liberty is almost an unknown quantity in our country - The Land of the Free and the Home of the Brave. How much punishment will it take before their hearts are softened?

The answer to that question is... destruction is mercy.

Read comments on SOTT.net

October 2011

2011-10-09T20:21:00.022Z

400-Metre Asteroid Flyby Due In Early November
Mark Dunphy
Irish Weather Online
Sat, 01 Oct 2011 08:17 CDT

© Unknown

A 1300-foot-wide (400 metres) asteroid, which is more than one and a half times the length of a soccer pitch, will pass within 0.85 lunar distances of the Earth on November 8/9, 2011.

Discovered on December 28, 2005 by Robert McMillan of the Spacewatch Program near Tucson, Arizona, 2005 YU55 is believed to be a very dark, nearly spherical object.

According to NASA's Near Earth Object Program: "Although classified as a potentially hazardous object, 2005 YU55 poses no threat of an Earth collision over at least the next 100 years. However, this will be the closest approach to date by an object this large that we know about in advance and an event of this type will not happen again until 2028 when asteroid (153814) 2001 WN5 will pass to within 0.6 lunar distances."

Click here to watch the trajectory of Asteroid 2005 YU55 - November 8-9, 2011.

While neither the European Space Agency (ESA) nor NASA has suggested that YU55 poses a threat to Earth, plans to develop a mission to counteract a potential asteroid collision in the future are already underway.

The ESA is planning to fire an 'impactor' satellite into a 'test' asteroid in 2015 to see if the object's trajectory can be altered. The Agency is conducting the test mission in light of the minimal threat posed by the 700-1100-foot-wide 99942 Apophis asteroid, which has a one in 250,000 chance of impacting Earth in 2036.

Other Recent Asteroid Encounters

In late June 2011, earth experienced one of its closest encounters with an asteroid in recent years. But as NASA indicated in the days ahead of the 'cosmic close call', the encounter was so close that Earth's gravity sharply altered the asteroid's trajectory and prevented the space rock from impacting the planet.

2011MD, a newly discovered asteroid passed within 12,000 kilometres (7,500 miles) of Earth. The asteroid was only sighted for the first time on 22 June by a robotic telescope in New Mexico, USA. The International Astronomical Union's Minor Planet Center in Massachusetts, USA, put out an alert Thursday.

It was daylight in the UK and Ireland (12.30 GMT) when the asteroid passed over the southern Atlantic Ocean, near the coast of Antarctica. The event was observable from South Africa and parts of Antarctica. It also was visible in the hours leading up to the closest approach across Australia, New Zealand, southern and eastern Asia, and the western Pacific.

Some media outlets proclaimed the asteroid to be as big as New York's Empire State Building'. In fact, 2011 MD measured about 16 feet to 35 feet.

According to Minor Planet Center's ranking charts 2011 MD's trip was the fifth-closest recorded Asteroid event. The last asteroid to impact earth was '2008 TC3' which was detected on 7 October 2008, just 19 hours before it burned up in the atmosphere over northern Sudan.

On 2 June, a 10-metre wide asteroid passed between the earth and moon.

Asteroid 2009 BD, which was first observed on 16 January 2009 passed approximately within 0.9 lunar distances (the distance between Earth and the Moon) of earth. Astronomers believe the rock is a rare "co-orbital asteroid" which follows the orbit of the Earth, not receding more than 0.1 AU (15 million km) away.

Two asteroids, several meters in diameter and in unrelated orbits, passed within the moon's distance of Earth on September 8 2010. In April 2010 an asteroid roughly as long as a tennis court zoomed past Earth at about the distance of the moon. The space rock to pass at or within lunar distance previous to this was 2009 JL2, an asteroid about 17 to 37 metres across, in May 2009.

There is a roughly 50 percent chance of a 30-metre-wide plus asteroid striking Earth each century, according to Clark Chapman, a space scientist at the Southwest Research Institute in Boulder, Colorado, USA.

NASA Asteroid Research

Earlier this week, NASA announced it has discovered more than 90 percent of the largest near-Earth asteroids, meeting a goal agreed to with the United States Congress in 1998. The Agency also believes that all near-Earth asteroids approximately 6 miles (10 kilometres) across, as big as the one thought to have wiped out the dinosaurs, have been found.

New observations by NASA's Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer, or WISE, indicate have allowed astronomers now estimate there are roughly 19,500 - not 35,000 - mid-size near-Earth asteroids. Scientists say this improved understanding of the population may indicate the hazard to Earth could be somewhat less than previously thought.

However, the majority of these mid-size asteroids remain to be discovered. More research also is needed to determine if fewer mid-size objects (between 330 and 3,300-feet wide) also mean fewer potentially hazardous asteroids, those that come closest to Earth.

The results come from the most accurate census to date of near-Earth asteroids, the space rocks that orbit within 120 million miles (195 million kilometres) of the sun into Earth's orbital vicinity.

WISE scanned the entire celestial sky twice in infrared light between January 2010 and February 2011, continuously snapping pictures of everything from distant galaxies to near-Earth asteroids and comets. NEOWISE observed more than 100 thousand asteroids in the main belt between Mars and Jupiter, in addition to at least 585 near Earth.

© NASA/JPL-Caltech

NEOWISE observations indicate that there are at least 40 percent fewer near-Earth asteroids in total that are larger than 330 feet, or 100 meters. Our solar system's four inner planets are shown in green, and our sun is in the center. Each red dot represents one asteroid. Object sizes are not to scale.

© NASA/JPL-Caltech

This chart illustrates why infrared-sensing telescopes are more suited to finding small, dark asteroids than telescopes that detect visible light.

Though the WISE data reveal only a small decline in the estimated numbers for the largest near-Earth asteroids, which are 3,300 feet (1 kilometre) and larger, they show 93 percent of the estimated population have been found. These large asteroids are about the size of a small mountain and would have global consequences if they were to strike Earth. The new data revise their total numbers from about 1,000 down to 981, of which 911 already have been found. None of them represents a threat to Earth in the next few centuries.

"The risk of a really large asteroid impacting the Earth before we could find and warn of it has been substantially reduced," said Tim Spahr, the director of the Minor Planet Center at the Harvard Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics in Cambridge, Mass.

The situation is different for the mid-size asteroids, which could destroy a metropolitan area if they were to impact in the wrong place. The NEOWISE results find a larger decline in the estimated population for these bodies than what was observed for the largest asteroids. So far, the Spaceguard effort has found and is tracking more than 5,200 near-Earth asteroids 330 feet or larger, leaving more than an estimated 15,000 still to discover. In addition, scientists estimate there are more than a million unknown smaller near-Earth asteroids that could cause damage if they were to impact Earth.

© NASA/JPL-Caltech

This chart shows how data from NASA's Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer, or WISE, has led to revisions in the estimated population of near-Earth asteroids. The infrared-sensing telescope performed the most accurate survey to date of a slice of this population as part of project called NEOWISE. This allowed the science team to make new estimates of the total numbers of the objects in different size categories. NEOWISE observed more than 500 objects larger than 100-meters (330-feet) wide - what can be thought of as medium to large-size asteroids. Near-Earth asteroids smaller than this size range were not studied, and near-Earth comets will be analyzed at a later time. Asteroid sizes are not drawn to scale in the chart.

Each asteroid image represents about 100 actual objects. Near-Earth asteroids that have already been found are filled in and appear brown. An entire row of asteroid images through the blue outlines shows how many total objects were thought to exist before the NEOWISE survey. The green outlines show the reduced new estimates based on the NEOWISE data.

As the graphic reveals, only a small difference was observed in the estimated total numbers of the largest asteroids - the ones with the potential for global consequences should they impact Earth. For the medium-sized asteroids, which could still destroy a metropolitan area, new estimates predict fewer space rocks than previously thought. Details are listed below.

- For the largest asteroids, larger than 1,000 meters (3,300 feet), NEOWISE data revises the total population down to 981 from a prior estimate of about 1,000. While this is not a dramatic difference, the findings show that NASA has met an initial near-Earth asteroid goal agreed to with Congress in 1998, calling for at least 90 percent of the largest objects to be found. There are an estimated 911 objects of this size range known, which means that NASA has found 93 percent. That leaves roughly 70 of these bodies left to find.

- The NEOWISE data reveals an approximately 44 percent decline in the estimated numbers of medium-sized asteroids, which are defined as those objects between 100 meters and 1,000 meters (330 and 3,300 feet). Estimates now indicate about 19,500, where as 35,000 were thought to exist before.

- The study does not apply to objects smaller than 100 meters (330 feet), but it is estimated that there are more than a million in this size range based on previous studies.

Maryland, US: Possible Meteorite Brings Calls to 911 Center

Cumberland Times-News
Tue, 04 Oct 2011 10:16 CDT

Cumberland - Numerous 911 calls in Allegany and Mineral counties at 4:22 a.m., Tuesday apparently stemmed from a "meteorite passing through the area," according to Roger Bennett, acting director of Allegany County 's 911 center.

"We checked camera footage from schools at Mount Savage, Westmar, Oldtown, Westernport and other locations that showed a flash of light that brightened the whole sky," said Bennett, who reviewed the video footage. He said no objects were visible in any of the videos.

The Allegany County 911 center received about a dozen calls inquiring about the sound of an explosion. Calls were were also reportedly made to the Mineral County 911 center from the Keyser area. However, apparently no calls were made at that time to emergency centers in Garrett, Washington, Bedford and Fayette counties among other locations.

A check of various agencies including the Federal Aviation Administration, Maryland Emergency Management Administration and the Maryland Institute of Emergency Medical Systems Services Statewide Communications Systems produced no information relative to the local 911 calls, according to Bennett.

Bennett also said some unofficial information about the possible meteorite sighting was posted on some websites.

Draconid meteor outburst due October 8th from Comet 21P/Giacobini-Zinner

Tony Phillips
Physorg
Wed, 05 Oct 2011 10:11 CDT

On October 8th Earth is going to plow through a stream of dust from Comet 21P/Giacobini-Zinner, and the result could be an outburst of Draconid meteors.

"We're predicting as many as 750 meteors per hour," says Bill Cooke of NASA's Meteoroid Environment Office. "The timing of the shower favors observers in the Middle East, north Africa and parts of Europe."

© N.A.Sharp/NOAO/AURA/NSF

Comet Giacobini-Zinner, a fairly frequent visitor to the inner solar system, was captured by the Kitt Peak 0.9-meter telescope on Halloween Night 1998 (UT November 1st, from 02:07 to 03:40). North is up with east to the left. Since the comet was moving across the sky fairly quickly, and since color images are made by combining successive exposures through three different filters, a conventional combination would have either a streaked comet or a set of colored dots for each star. To avoid this, the complete sequence of images, lasting over ninety minutes, was specially processed.

Every 6.6 years Comet Giacobini-Zinner swings through the inner solar system. With each visit, it lays down a narrow filament of dust, over time forming a network of filaments that Earth encounters every year in early October.

"Most years, we pass through gaps between filaments, maybe just grazing one or two as we go by," says Cooke. "Occasionally, though, we hit one nearly head on--and the fireworks begin."

2011 could be such a year. Forecasters at NASA and elsewhere agree that Earth is heading for three or more filaments on October 8th. Multiple encounters should produce a series of variable outbursts beginning around 1600 Universal Time (noon EDT) with the strongest activity between 1900 and 2100 UT (3:00 pm - 5:00 pm EDT).

Forecasters aren't sure how strong the display will be, mainly because the comet had a close encounter with Jupiter in the late 1880s. At that time, the giant planet's gravitational pull altered the comet's orbit and introduced some uncertainty into the location of filaments it has shed since then. Competing models place the filaments in slightly different spots; as a result, estimated meteor rates range from dozens to hundreds per hour.

© MSFC/Meteoroid Environment Office.

Comet dust stream models suggest a succession of peaks in meteor rate between 1600 and 2100 UT on Oct. 9th.

One respected forecaster, Paul Wiegert of the University of Western Ontario, says the meteor rate could go as high as 1000 per hour -- the definition of a meteor storm. It wouldn't be the first time. Close encounters with dusty filaments produced storms of more than 10,000 Draconids per hour in 1933 and 1946 and lesser outbursts in 1985, 1998, and 2005.

Meteors from Comet Giacobini-Zinner stream out of the northern constellation Draco--hence their name. Draconids are among the slowest of all meteors, hitting the atmosphere at a relatively leisurely 20 km/s. The slow pace of Draconid meteors minimizes their danger to satellites and spacecraft and makes them visually distinctive. "A Draconid gliding leisurely across the sky is a beautiful sight," says Cooke.

Unfortunately, many of this year's Draconids will go unseen. Draconids are faint to begin with, and this year they have to complete with an almost-full Moon. Lunar glare will reduce the number of meteors visible from Europe, Africa and the Middle East by 2- to 10-fold. The situation is even worse in North America where the shower occurs in broad daylight - completely obliterating the display.

That isn't stopping a group1 of middle school and high school students from Bishop, California, however. They plan to observe the shower from the stratosphere where the sky is dark even at noontime.

Led by Science@NASA's Tony Phillips, the 15 students have been launching helium balloons to the edge of space since May of 2011. With more than 95% of Earth's atmosphere below the balloon, the sky above looks almost as black as it would from a spacecraft - perfect for astronomy.

"The students are going to attempt to fly one of our low-light meteor cameras in the payload of their balloon," says Cooke. "I hope they catch some Draconid fireballs for us to analyze. They could be the only ones we get."

Stay tuned for results after Oct. 8th.

Did Comet-Born Oceans Hit Earth?

Jason Palmer
BBC
Wed, 05 Oct 2011 01:00 CDT

Comet Hartley 2 was also the subject of the Deep Impact probe study

Comet Hartley 2 contains water more like that found on Earth than all the comets we know about, researchers say.

A study using the Herschel space telescope aimed to measure the fraction of deuterium, a rare type of hydrogen, present in the comet's water.

Like our oceans, it had half the amount of deuterium seen from other comets.

The result, published in Nature, hints at the idea that much of the Earth's water could have initially come from cometary impacts.

Just a few million years after its formation, the early Earth was rocky and dry; most likely, something brought the water that covers most of the planet today.

Water has something of a molecular fingerprint in the amount of deuterium it contains, and only about half a dozen comets have been measured in this way - and all of them have exhibited a deuterium fraction twice as high as the oceans.

Asteroids, by contrast, give rise to the meteors and meteorites that arrive on Earth, making their deuterium fraction more well-established.

Meteoritic material has roughly the same proportion of deuterium that the Earth's oceans contain, and so the assumption has been that if water arrived from elsewhere, it came from asteroids.

Clouded Measure

Until now, all of the comets that have been measured have been so-called Oort Cloud objects, believed to have been formed early in the Solar System's history in the region of the giant planets Neptune and Uranus and kicked out to a great distance as they bumped into the planets and each other.

© SPL

Comets carry much more water than asteroids, but it may or may not be like the water found on Earth

Comet Hartley 2 is the first "Kuiper Belt" object to undergo the deuterium analysis. Kuiper belt objects formed not far outside our Solar System, and comets that originate there have much shorter orbits than those from the Oort Cloud.

An international team using the Herschel telescope to peer at the comet, they found it had a deuterium fraction much closer to that of our oceans.

Report co-author Ted Bergin of the University of Michigan said that opened up the possibility that comets at least contributed to our water supply.

"The reservoir of Earth ocean-like material is much larger than we thought, and it encompasses cometary material, which we hadn't recognised," he told BBC News.

"We have to think really hard and try to get a better understanding of what is going in our Solar System, and whether you can really rule out comets as the source of Earth's water."

They might not be ruled out, but they are not the definitive answer either; much of what we believe happened in the early Solar System is based on computer models.

James Greenwood of Wesleyan University in the US said such models may need adjusting in light of the new evidence - and that more such studies are needed to assess whether many Kuiper Belt objects are like Hartley 2.

"If the short-period comets are all like this one comet, then this could be a significant source of our early water," he told BBC News.

"It opens up a new can of worms for us."

Alessandro Morbidelli of the Observatory of Cote d'Azur argues that the result shows that the distinction between the potential water sources may need to be called into question.

"In the past, scientists thought that these asteroids and comets were completely different classes of bodies. Now, several new results show that primitive asteroids and comets are brothers and sisters," he told BBC News.

"This new view changes at least the semantics of the question on the origin of the Earth's water. The question becomes more technical: 'from which region of the disc and by which dynamical mechanism came the (objects) that delivered the water to the Earth?'"

Herschel has some time left to address the question, but what all the researchers agree is that the Atacama Large Millimeter Array of telescopes in Chile - which has just shown off its first results - will soon be able to resolve these questions with never-before-seen sensitivity.

US, Ohio: Fireball over Sandusky Tuesday night was 'chart-topper'

Sandusky Register
Thu, 06 Oct 2011 16:22 CDT

A gigantic UFO silently burned its way across the Sandusky sky Tuesday night.

That's the story from three Camp Street men who happened to look up just as the object tore through the dark yonder at about 10 p.m.

Robert Lowery, a clerk at the 7-11 store on Camp Street, said he was lugging a pile of cardboard boxes to the Dumpster when a bright object in the sky caught his attention.

"It was about the size of a dinner plate," Lowery said. "You could see the heat coming off it."

At the same time, about two blocks down Camp Street, Montee Prieur and Daniel Harpst were shooting the breeze next to the Camp Street Bar.

"I looked up and this huge fireball went right over us," Harpst said. "It was on fire and had a long streaming tail ... I yelled at my buddy Montee who was sitting right next to me, 'Hey man, check that out.'"

Prieur said he looked up in time to see it.

From their vantage point, the great ball of fire raced overhead for brief seconds before dropping out of sight.

"All I can tell you is it was a UFO," Prieur said. "I've only seen one other thing like it, and that was up in Michigan."

It's anyone's guess how many people saw the mysterious object.

Lowery, in fact, wasn't going to tell anyone about it.

"I was just kinda like, 'That was weird,' but I didn't think much about it," Lowery said. "That's one of those things - if there's nobody else around to see it, you don't go around talking about it. People will think you're crazy."

But when Harpst came in the store all worked up about the sighting, he asked Lowery about it.

Both men agreed on this much: The object came from the southwest, headed northeast and disappeared somewhere over the lake.

"It was really moving, whatever it was," Lowery said. "It looked like it went down somewhere around Johnson Island - that would've been the main stage. I wonder if anybody over there saw it."

The whole show lasted about four seconds.

"God, I wish I had a camera," Harpst said.

Elizabeth Cory, a spokeswoman for the Federal Aviation Administration's Great Lakes Region, said radars didn't show anything extraordinary Tuesday night.

"There was no report of anything unusual last night in that area, or any area for that matter," Cory said Wednesday.

But local astronomers weren't surprised at the sighting.

Lois Wolf, director of the Sidney Frohman Planetarium in Sandusky, said it was probably a meteor that survived upper-atmospheric friction.

"They do go by very fast and would burn white," Wolf said. "It's not uncommon."

Retired planetarium director Dick Speir agreed.

"Some meteors don't burn up in the upper atmosphere, and those that reach the lower levels would produce quite a bit of light," Speir said. "You'd be able to see it for a long ways - there should be other sightings in Erie County at least."

Harpst still isn't convinced of any particular explanation.

"I've seen a lot of strange things in my life, but this was a chart-topper," he said. "And I'll tell you one thing - it wasn't no airplane."

Draconid Meteor Outburst October 8th

Space Weather
Fri, 07 Oct 2011 12:09 CDT

On October 8th, Earth will pass through a network of dusty filaments shed by Comet 21P/Giacobini-Zinner. Forecasters expect the encounter to produce anywhere from a few dozen to a thousand meteors per hour visible mainly over Europe, northern Africa and the Middle East. The meteors will stream from the northern constellation Draco--hence their name, the "Draconids."

Peak rates should occur between 1600 UT and 2200 UT (noon - 6 pm EDT) as Earth grazes a series of filaments nearly intersecting our planet's orbit. Analysts at the NASA Meteoroid Environment Office prepared this plot showing how the meteor rate is likely to vary:

© NASA Meteoroid Environment Office

If the maximum around 1900 UT reaches 1000 meteors per hour, the 2011 Draconids will be classified as a full-fledged meteor storm. The question is, will anyone see it? Bright moonlight over Europe, Africa and the Middle East will reduce the number of visible meteors 2- to 10-fold. The situation is even worse in North America where the shower occurs in broad daylight.

One way to enjoy the Draconids, no matter where you live, is to listen to them. The Air Force Space Surveillance Radar will be scanning the skies over the USA during the shower. When a Draconid passes through the radar beam--ping!--there will be an echo. Tune in to Space Weather Radio for live audio.

In Europe, an international team of scientists plans to observe the shower from airplanes flying at ~30,000 feet where the thin air reduces the impact of lunar glare. In Bishop, California, a team of high school students will launch an experimental helium balloon to higher altitudes, 100,000 feet or more, where the sky is black even at noon. Cameras in the balloon's payload might catch some Draconid fireballs during the peak hours of the outburst.

Stay tuned for updates as Earth approaches the debris zone.

Draconid Meteor Update
Space Weather
09 Oct 2011

According to worldwide observers reporting to the International Meteor Organization, there was indeed an outburst of Draconid meteors on October 8th. Preliminary counts suggest a peak rate of 660 meteors per hour at 2010 UT (4:10 pm EDT).Most Draconids in the outburst were faint, but not all. Göran Fredriksson photographed this fireball splitting the evening twilight over Örnsköldsvik, Sweden:

The meteor rate and overall faintness of the display was in good accord with predictions by leading forecasters such as Jeremie Vaubaillon of the Institute for Celestial Mechanics in France and analysts at NASA's Meteoroid Environment Office.

Triple Asteroid Crash Created Sudan Meteorites

Space.com
Fri, 07 Oct 2011 09:18 CDT

© Peter Jenniskens (SETI Institute/NASA Ames)

The black fragment of Almahata Sitta meteorite number 15 shows up black against the lighter coloured rocks of the Nubian desert in northern Sudan.

Meteorites that fell over Sudan in 2008 could have come from a space rock that was formed by a triple-asteroid pileup - a collision between three different types of space rocks, a new study finds.

Scientists analyzed meteorite fragments that fell to Earth exactly three years ago today, on Oct. 7, 2008, and found that they contain an unusual mix of material from both primitive and evolved types of asteroids.

"Because falls of meteorites of different types are rare, the question of the origin of an asteroid harboring both primitive and evolved characteristics is a challenging and intriguing problem," study leader Julie Gayon-Markt, of the Observatoire de la Cote d'Azur in France, said in a statement.

The meteorites came from asteroid 2008 TC3, which impacted the Earth and rained more than 600 fragments across the Nubian Desert in Sudan. The meteorite fragments are collectively known as Almahata Sitta, which is Arabic for "Station Six," a train station between the Sudanese cities of Wadi Halfa and Khartoum, near where the fragments were found.

"Our recent studies of the dynamics and spectroscopy of asteroids in the main asteroid belt shed light on the origin of the Almahata Sitta fragments," Gayon-Markt said. "We show that the Nysa-Polana asteroid family, located in the inner main belt is a very good candidate for the origin of 2008 TC3."

© P. Jenniskens/P. Scheirich

The shape of Asteroid 2008 TC3, a small space rock that hit the Earth in Sudan in October 2008, has been revealed to be something akin to a loaf of bread.

Sifting through the asteroid belt

The Almahata Sitta meteorites were historic because it was the first time that an asteroid was observed in space and tracked as it descended through the Earth's atmosphere, the researchers said. In fact, a weather satellite called Metrosat 8 tracked the path of the asteroid's path using infrared technology.

Primitive asteroids are so called because they are survivors from the tumultuous birth of the solar system and have remained relatively unchanged. These asteroids contain high proportions of hydrated minerals and organic materials, the researchers said.

On the other hand, many other asteroids have undergone intense heating, most likely through the decay of radioactive materials, and the molten magma has separated into an iron core surrounded by a rocky mantle, the scientists explained.

The research was presented today (Oct. 7) at a joint meeting of the European Planetary Science Congress and the American Astronomical Society's Division of Planetary Science in Nantes, France.

© EUMESTAT

Infrared image taken by the Meteosat 8 satellite of asteroid 2008 TC3 exploding. The path of the asteroid is shown with a yellow arrow; red-yellow blob on arrow is infrared from the explosion.

Three asteroid flavors

The Nysa-Polana family of asteroids, located in the inner main asteroid belt, is divided into three different types: the primitive B-type asteroids, which are relatively rare, stony S-type asteroids, and intermediate X-type asteroids. Both S-type and X-type asteroids have undergone some kind of thermal evolution in their past.

Gayon-Markt and her colleagues found materials from all three Nysa-Polana asteroid types in the Almahata Sitta fragments. Their findings suggest that asteroid 2008 TC3 formed from the impact of an S-type object in the inner main asteroid belt with a B-type object from the Nysa-Polana family. This was followed by a second impact with an X-type asteroid also from the Nysa-Polana family.

"Around seventy to eighty percent of the Almahata Sitta fragments are what we call ureilites," Gayon-Markt said. "Although ureilites show both primitive and evolved characteristics, their spectra in visible light are very similar to B-type primitive objects. The remaining 20 to 30 percent of the Almahata Sitta fragments gather two other kinds of meteorites which are linked to S-type and X-type asteroids. A workable explanation for how asteroid 2008 TC3 could have formed involves low velocity collisions between these asteroid fragments of very different mineralogies."

A Meteor Breaks Up in Earth's Atmosphere

National Journal
Fri, 07 Oct 2011 09:35 CDT

NASA's Marshall Space Flight Center recorded a meteor breaking up in Earth's atmosphere on Sept. 30 at 8:37 p.m. EDT. Watch below.

Also, notice the star-like object moving slowly toward the upper middle of the screen. Orbiting 500 miles above Earth, it's the booster rocket that launched the Russian Cosmos 2219 intelligence satellite in 1992. The empty rocket body can get bright enough to be seen with the naked eye.

US: Four Orange Fireballs Cross Michigan Skies 'at a steady pace'

Roger Marsh
Examiner.com
Sun, 02 Oct 2011 00:00 CDT

© Wikipedia.

As reported recently in New Jersey, four fireballs crossed Michigan skies on October 1, 2011, and the witness was able to capture all four on video.

A Michigan couple report "four consecutive fireballs" crossed the sky "traveling straight at a steady pace," according to October 2, 2011, testimony from the Mutual UFO Network (MUFON) witness reporting database.

The couple was driving home from dinner when they noticed the first "orange fireball rising up from the horizon."

"It was travelling almost perfectly from north to south," the witness stated. "All you could really see was the v-shaped plume of fire behind it."

The witness described the size of the object.and its path.

"If you extended your arm fully out in front of you, the plume appeared the size of your pinky fingernail. It was travelling straight, at a steady pace."

But then more fireballs were seen.

"What was really odd was that after it traversed the sky and went out of site, about 20 seconds later, another one appeared from the same origin, travelling the exact same path-pace as the first one. Even stranger, this happened a total of four times."

The witness was able to take video of all four fireballs. One piece of video was included with the MUFON report, which was filed on October 2 ,2011. The events occurred on October 1, 2011. No town name was mentioned in the public portion of the report. The above quotes were edited for clarity.

We recently reported on fireballs September 26, 2011, for cases in Oregon and New Jersey - and the New Jersey witness also reported a series of four moving overhead.

Fireballs over Oregon seem controlled as one 'crashes'

New Jersey witness reports four fireballs moved 'like aircraft'

Also in Michigan on October 1, "about 20 to 30 lights" were reported by five witnesses moving north toward Canada in MUFON Case # 32278. "The more I looked, I could see clusters moving in the same direction," the reporting witness stated.

Michigan is a current UFO ALERT 3 rating, with a high number of UFO sightings nationally. Michigan had 40 reports in September 2011 - the 3rd highest reporting state - while California had 86 UFO reports - the highest reporting state in the nation.

You can read more details about other recently reported cases at the UFO Examiner home page.

The following is the unedited and as yet uninvestigated report filed with MUFON. Please keep in mind that most UFO reports can be explained as something natural or manmade. If Michigan MUFON State Director William J. Konkolesky investigates and reports back on this case, I will release an update. Please report UFO activity to MUFON.com.

MI, October 1, 2011 - four consecutive fireballs. MUFON Case # 32277.

My wife and I were driving home from dinner and I noticed an orange fireball rising up from the horizon. It was travelling almost perfectly from north to south. All you could really see was the v-shaped plume of fire behind it.

If you extended your arm fully out in front of you, the plume appeared the size of your pinky fingernail.

It was travelling straight, at a steady pace. What was really odd was that after it traversed the sky and went out of site, about 20 seconds later, another one appeared from the same origin, travelling the exact same path / pace as the first one.

Even stranger, this happened a total of four times!

I have separate videos of each, but attached is a small sample of some of the steadiest video i have, with a good point of reference (tree / streetlight) so you can get an idea of the pace it was moving at.

Electric Universe: Comet Elenin - the Debate that Never Happened

David Talbott
thunderbolts.info
Thu, 06 Oct 2011 22:01 CDT

The comet Elenin, a subject of intense Internet discussion for several months, seems to have disappointed everyone. I speak here not just of the doomsayers, who were awaiting a frightful specter in recent weeks. You might think these folks would be happy that the celebrated intruder faded fast just when it was supposed to be reaching maximum activity. But in these strange times, Doomsday seems a lot more fun than a minor distraction in our cosmic neighborhood.

Also disappointed are the many scientists who expected a more impressive display from Elenin. That expectation seemed well founded based on the growing coma of Elenin in the months following its discovery in December, 2010. And prior space probes sent to comets helped to feed an illusion about the comet's size. The estimates appear to have missed the mark completely.

Strangely, the popular scientific media, insofar as they've shown any interest in Elenin, are satisfied to simply expose the lunacy of Internet fear-mongering. But is that really all we should be discussing here? Elenin has only one connection to "Doomsday." Like every comet, it reminds us of ancient memories of a truly terrifying and destructive Great Comet, the true source of comet fears and Doomsday anxiety - a verifiable cultural conditioning that has persisted for thousands of years. With every appearance of a comet the ancient fear resurfaces, but this fact adds nothing to scientific discussion of Elenin and its fate.

Visions of Nibiru

The little wisp of a comet has no relationship to ancient Babylonian references to "Nibiru," a subject misrepresented up to a cosmic level by the originator of a Nibiru doomsday fantasy - Zecharia Sitchin. From the beginning, the Nibiru concept promoted by Sitchin was a meaningless fiction. A few meager examples of the word exist in Babylonian literature. Nothing in the language suggests either a comet or the rogue planet claimed by Sitchin.

Of course the spokesmen for "good science," a phrase that too often means official dogma, delight in mocking Doomsday musings. But that response can only distract from what should be discussed - the failure of standard comet theory to describe or predict comet behavior over the past 25 years. The ignored fact is that Elenin has only added to the list of comet "misbehavior" - throwing a spotlight once again on mistaken theoretical assumptions.

Just when theory said the comet should have exhibited its greatest activity, it almost disappeared. One would assume from the media silence that the comet's denouement poses no mystery to science. But to those who have come to understand the electrical nature of comets, there is something particularly noteworthy in the fading of Elenin. It is now clear that the original guesses about Elenin's mass were overstated to a spectacular degree. It will certainly not serve the interests of scientific progress to ignore the question posed or turn away from an essential reconsideration of theory.

Explosive brightening

Just a few months ago, Elenin was claimed to be an "average sized long-period comet," with a diameter "between 3 and 4 km."

This opinion was formulated as the comet approached the asteroid belt in its rapid fall toward the Sun. Astronomers observed that Elenin was brightening faster than expected. Between April and August, the dusty coma grew from 80,000 km in diameter to 200,000 km. Applying standard reasoning, observers agreed that Elenin, which seemed rather weak when discovered, was a "typical"-sized comet.

Elenin "looked like it was going to put on a good show," reported Space.com. "Even as recently as Aug. 19, the comet was brighter than predicted."

Then something unexpected happened when, on August 19, the charged particles of a coronal mass ejection struck the comet. In response, the comet flared up dramatically, as seen in the image on the left below. This image was recorded by amateur astronomer Michael Mattiazzo, and cited on the website Astroblog.

© Michael Mattiazzo - Amateur astronomer Michael Mattiazzo (Castlemaine, Australia) captured images of comet Elenin on Aug. 19 (left) after the nucleus was struck by a CME. The greatly diminished display on the right was captured on Sept. 6, 2011. Astronomers view the second image as an indication of disintegration.

Ian Musgrave writes, "Shortly after the coronal mass ejection the comet flared up and you could see some beautiful details in the tail, with the tail was twisting about in the solar wind." But over the next few days observers reported a huge decrease in the intensity of the comet, and it appeared that the comet was falling apart.

The electric comet responds

It seems that charged particles from the Sun did what the Sun's heat couldn't do. But did the specialists see a clue in this electrical event? Did anyone remember how, in October 2007, comet Holmes began discharging explosively, brightening by a factor of a million after it was subjected to a huge spike in the solar wind, eventually producing a spectacular coma larger than the diameter of the Sun. The event occurred as Holmes moved away from the Sun, leaving stunned astronomers to offer wild guesses about the cause. No mention of any connection to the surge of charged particles from the Sun, since electrical causes are so clearly outside the astronomers' field of view.

Least of all did the the scientific media recall how, in 1991, comet Halley flared up to 300 times its normal brightness while on its long journey away from the Sun, in the distant realm between the orbits of Saturn and Uranus. Here, a surface temperature of -200 ˚C would categorically exclude all "cometary" activity" under standard assumptions. Was it a coincidence that this occurred in the wake of near-record solar outbursts?

As for Elenin, there's apparently little or nothing left of the puny object. We'll know shortly when it, or its residue, emerges from behind the Sun. But consider the implications of Elenin's fate. If astronomers are correct in viewing comets as chunks of icy material moving through an electrically neutral domain of the Sun, imagine the absurdity of thinking that "warming" from the Sun - starting in the icy region beyond the asteroid belt! - could have caused Elenin to evaporate completely within a few months later, while only spending a few weeks inside Earth's orbit. This is the one issue on which the standard model and the electric model deliver the same message: Elenin's size was greatly overestimated.

The underachieving comet

If the comet was much smaller than originally supposed, what caused its noticeable display in the first place, while it was still in the icy region beyond the asteroid belt? At that distance from the Sun, where any appreciable effect of sublimation is doubtful, how did it create the illusion of a respectable size?

The answer - apparently the only plausible answer - is given by the electric comet model. In electrical terms, when a comet drifts in from the outermost regions of the solar system, it is not reasonable to base size estimates on observation of comets with much shorter, less elliptical orbits. Some comets we can visit because they have short periods and we know where they are. But when seen electrically these comets cannot give us an accurate picture of comets as a whole. Electric comets imply that the Sun is the center of an electric field. It is the most positively charged body in the solar system. A comet approaching the Sun from a much more distant region will carry far more negative charge than those orbiting closer to the Sun. And this is why comparisons based on size or strength of cometary activity alone, without reference to orbital characteristics, have never held up and never will.

The negatively charged comet nucleus of Elenin, arriving from the most remote regions of the Sun's influence, was very likely just a small rock, perhaps a hundred meters or less. Moving through the Sun's radial electric field, it began discharging under the electrical stress from rapid entry into a more positively charged environment. As electric arcs to the surface excavated material, accelerating it into a highly diffuse dust cloud, Elenin began to display a coma. That, not any imagined "thermal effects," was why Leonid Elenin detected the tiny comet in December 2010, when it was well beyond the asteroid belt.

Then, on August 19, when the comet was much closer to the Sun, it was struck by the proton-bearing cloud of a CME. Electrical breakdown occurred and the nucleus shattered like an exploding capacitor - just as we've seen in the case of other "inexplicable," exploding comets.

Seeing the obvious

A "3 or 4 km-wide" chunk of ice and dirt could not just disappear at Elenin's distances from the Sun, even with disintegration. Elenin is not a "sun grazer." Its perihelion (closest approach to the Sun) was outside the orbit of Mercury. But what if Elenin was, in truth, a tiny comet, but a strongly charged body for its size? As noted above, since Elenin arrived from a very remote region, electrically-provoked brightening would be expected as it entered a more positively charged region of the heliosphere. For the same reasons, under the impact of a CME, disintegration by electrical breakdown is the obvious interpretation of what occurred.

© NASA - The upper frame of this Hubble Space Telescope image captures the explosive disintegration of two separate fragments of Comet Schwassman-Wachmann 3 in April, 2006. The relationship of these two fragments to two other fragments from earlier break-up is evident in the lower Hubble image.

Would a larger comet have disintegrated so completely following the electrical explosion? For comparison purposes, the progressive disintegration of the unpredictable Comet Schwassmann-Wachmann 3 is worth noting. In the image above, the Hubble Space Telescope captured the disintegration of Schwassmann-Wachmann 3 in progress, when it was still out beyond Earth's orbit. Apparently, in this case a comet of more "respectable" size than Elenin exploded into fragments through phases, in the course of two or three orbits, leading to sudden, rapid disintegration of at least two larger fragments in April, 2006.

It seems that when a comet of a more "typical" size disintegrates, it puts on a more lasting and spectacular display. The prolonged disintegration of Comet Schwassman-Wachmann simply underscores the point noted above, that Elenin's disintegration in a bright flash, followed by rapid disappearance of the residue, is the confirmation of a tiny nucleus.

Elenin's predecessor - Comet Linear

A 21st century illustration of this point was the disintegration and disappearance of Comet Linear in 2000. Indeed, Linear's entry into the inner solar system from the outermost regions, its highly eccentric orbit, its brightening, and its demise appear to have anticipated very well the story of Elenin. Compare the two images below to the "before and after" images of Elenin given earlier in this article.

Comet Linear on July 23, 2000, in its "brightest moment" before complete disintegration. http://www.ing.iac.es/PR/AR2000/high_2000.html

Comet Linear on August 2, 2000 after fragmentation of the nucleus

Comet Linear also provided one other clue to the electric comet. Rocky pebbles and grains of dust can quickly adjust to their electrical environment. With complete disintegration, discharge activity will quickly end. That's what happened to Linear, and very likely what happened to Elenin. Linear was neither a dirty snowball, nor an icy dirtball. With its disintegration, the only appreciable residue was dry dust. In other words, though occasional water ice or other volatiles on a comet cannot be categorically excluded, there is good reason to anticipate that the remains of Comet Elenin will be almost entirely dust. (This will most likely mean that the only "water" in the dust cloud will be the consequence of negatively charged oxygen atoms from the comet combining with hydrogen ions from the solar wind.)

For more than a quarter century now, on every major issue confronting comet science, the record is remarkably clear. No "standard" model has withstood the surprises of the space age. When Donald Brownlee, head of NASA's stardust mission, confessed, "It's a mystery to me how comets work at all," he was simply speaking with the candor that all comet specialists owe to the tax-paying public. Today, in the face of growing public disinterest, this candor is needed more than ever.

A comet holding its integrity year after year, then suddenly shattering at considerable distances from the Sun, was never expected. But what better way to move science forward than to ask: Why? And what better way to re-inspire the space age than to discuss openly and publicly the sweeping evidence for electricity in space?

Source: Comet Elenin—the Debate that Never Happened

October 6, 2011: 50 reports of fireball sightings over Southeastern USA

Robert Lunsford
American Meteor Society
Thu, 06 Oct 2011 06:32 CDT

Huge fireball spotted over Southeastern US on January 12 this year.

The American Meteor Society has so far received approximately 50 reports of a dazzling fireball over the southeastern USA including Florida, Georgia, Alabama and Mississippi. This event occurred near 8:40pm EDT (7:40pm CDT) Thursday evening October 6th. Of the reports received so far, green is the by far the most mentioned color. Vivid green fireballs are not unusual and in the case of slow meteors, such as this one, are usually caused by a particular element such as nickel or copper present in the meteor. The green color observed in swift fireballs are more likely caused by ionized oxygen caused by the passage of the meteor through the atmosphere. The average brightness reported by witnesses was near the light produced by a full moon.

A fireball is a meteor that is larger than normal. Most meteors are only the size of small pebbles. A meteor the size of a softball can produce light equivalent to the full moon for a short instant. The reason for this is the extreme velocity at which these objects strike the atmosphere. Even the slowest meteors are still traveling at 10 miles per SECOND, which is much faster than a speeding bullet. Fireballs occur every day over some parts of the Earth. It is rare though for an individual to see more than one or two per lifetime as they can also occur during the day or on a cloudy night. Observing during one of the major annual meteor showers can increase your chance of seeing another bright meteor.

Fireballs often appear much closer than they really are. The AMS receives countless reports that an object landed just over the hill when in fact it was several hundred miles away and was witnessed over several states. It is your perspective that makes meteors appear to strike the horizon when in fact they are still high in the atmosphere. This is much like a jetliner seen low in your sky. It appears low to you but for someone located many miles away in that direction, the jetliner is passing high overhead. Meteors become visible at approximately 50 miles above the Earth's surface. Friction slows these objects down until they fall below the velocity necessary to produce light. At this point they still lie at least 5 miles high in the sky. They are invisible below this altitude and cannot be seen as they basically freefalling to the ground at 200mph. Very few meteors actually reach the ground as 99.99% completely disintegrate while still 10-20 miles up in the atmosphere.

In the AMS fireball table, refer to event #1137 for 2011.

Clear Skies!

Double-Whammy Knocked Uranus to Its Side

Irene Klotz
Discovery News
Fri, 07 Oct 2011 08:56 CDT

© Lawrence Sromovsky, (Univ. Wisconsin-Madison), Keck Observatory
Near-infrared views of Uranus reveal the extent to which it is tilted.

What toppled giant Uranus, the seventh planet from the sun, to its tilt is a long-standing puzzle. Scientists suspect it was left spinning on its side after a collision with an object about twice the size of Earth.

But that doesn't explain why Uranus's moons spin sideways, relative to their orbital planes, matching almost exactly their parent planet's 98-degree tilt.

Jupiter's spin axis, by comparison is tilted 3 degrees; Earth's, 23 degrees; Saturn and Neptune, 29 degrees.

The answer, suggests a team of scientists, is that Uranus was pummeled more than once. Computer models show a series of impacts by Earth-sized objects could have left Uranus on its side before its moons formed.

A single crash, the researchers say, would have left any moons accumulating from a cloud of materials surrounding Uranus spinning in the opposite direction from how they appear today.

The research has implications for understanding how the solar system -- and other planetary families beyond our solar system -- formed and evolved.

"The formation history of Uranus and Neptune is one of the most important open problems in planetary science. Having shown that giant collisions had to happen frequently on these planets is an important piece of information on the way to understanding their origin," lead author Alessandro Morbidelli, with the Observatory of Cote d'Azur in Nice, France, wrote in an email to Discovery News.

Better images of Uranus's moons probably would provide more clues about how the bodies formed, Morbidelli added.

The idea that Uranus was toppled by a double-whammy raises the question about where the impacting objects came from, points out astronomer Steven Desch, with Arizona State University.

Previous studies show that if the cores of Uranus and Neptune formed closer to the sun than where the planets are today, there would have been enough time for one object about twice the mass of Earth to form just beyond them. But Desch is skeptical there would have been enough time for more than one object to form and then batter Uranus.

"Is it possible to grow more than one object this large though? It seems unlikely," Desch told Discovery News.

Uranus currently orbits about 19 times farther from the sun than Earth. In Desch's model, it and Neptune would have needed to form about 50 to 75 percent closer to the sun to allow for the formation of the impacting body.

Morbidelli's research was presented this week at a planetary sciences meeting in Nantes, France.

Source

Impact On Asteroid Scheila?

Tammy Plotner
Universe Today
Sun, 09 Oct 2011 22:33 CDT
>

© Fernando Moreno
Left to right): images of (596) Scheila corresponding to 2010 December 13, 14, 17, and 29. The upper row corresponds to the observations, while the lower row to the models. The tails clearly show a bifid pattern with a central spike in the sunward direction, although it is not detectable in the December 29 image. Except for this latter case, the modeled images are rendered using the same color code for the intensities as the corresponding observed images in the top row.

On December 12, 2010, something very unusual happened to asteroid Scheila. For a short period of time, its appearance changed dramatically and it even developed a comet-like tail. Now a group of international scientists headed by Fernando Moreno of the Instituto de Astrofísica de Andalucía in Granada, Spain have created a computer model which may explain this weird activity... an impact.

In results revealed October 7th in Nantes, France at the joint meeting of the European Planetary Science Congress and the American Astronomical Society's Division for Planetary Sciences, the team explained their theory of how this innocent asteroid may have been crashed into by a smaller object. Moreno and his team plotted the brightness curve of Scheila's newly developed "tail" - watching how it declined over a period of weeks. Their conclusion was that Scheila was either responsible for bumping into an uncatalogued object - or the object bumped into it causing a debris trail.

"The model we used involves a very large number of particles ejected from Scheila." explains Moreno. "We took into account gravity from the Sun, pressure radiation on the ejected particles, and Scheila´s gravity, which has a strong effect on the particles in its vicinity owing to its large mass."

Just when did this crash occur? The first indications placed the "asteroid accident" at a period of somewhere between November 11 and December 3, 2001. But, thanks to refined studies the team has placed the smash-up to on - or within - three days of November 27, 2010. With a size of about 110 kilometers across, Scheila isn't very large and the impactor was estimated to be anywhere from 60 to 180 meters in diameter. That's quite enough to send visible pieces flying into space!

"We applied a scaling law that uses impact velocity to indicate the mass of the impactor and ejected material." concludes Moreno. "We know the impact should be about 5 kilometres per second because that's the average velocity of asteroids in the Main Belt. Using this number we predicted both the ejection velocity of the particles (50 to 80 meters per second) and the size of the impactor."

As for asteroid Scheila, she's also a step off the beaten path, too. It belongs to a class known Main-Belt Comets - objects which have orbital characteristics of Main-Belt Asteroids - but sometimes behave like a comet. The reason why they have outbursts still isn't clear. While these new modeling techniques may lend credence to the impact theory, there's also a strong possibility of gaseous emissions. However, astronomers from the University of Maryland and Institute for Astronomy, University of Hawaii have ruled out venting in Scheila's case.

Source: EuroPlanet News.
Read on SOTT.net

First comet found with 'ocean water'

Nicole Casal Moore-Michigan
Futurity
Mon, 10 Oct 2011 14:54 CDT

© NASA - Comet Hartley, as imaged by NASA's EPOXI spacecraft.

For the first time, researchers have detected ocean-like water in a comet - new evidence supporting the theory comets delivered a significant portion of Earth's oceans.

"Life would not exist on Earth without liquid water, and so the questions of how and when the oceans got here is a fundamental one," says Ted Bergin, an astronomy professor at the University of Michigan. "It's a big puzzle and these new findings are an important piece."

The findings are reported in the journal Nature.

Bergin is a co-investigator on HiFi, the Heterodyne Instrument for the Infrared on the Hershel Space Observatory. With measurements from HiFi, the researchers found that the ice on a comet called Hartley 2 has the same chemical composition as our oceans. Both have similar D/H ratios. The D/H ratio is the proportion of deuterium, or heavy hydrogen, in the water. A deuterium atom is a hydrogen with an extra neutron in its nucleus.

"We were all surprised," Bergin says.

Six other comets HiFi measured in recent years had a much different D/H ratio than our oceans, meaning similar comets could not have been responsible for more than 10 percent of Earth's water.

The astronomers hypothesize that Hartley 2 was born in a different part of the solar system than the other six. Hartley most likely formed in the Kuiper belt, which starts near Pluto at about 30 times farther from the Sun than the Earth is. The other six hail from the Oort Cloud more than 5,000 times farther out.

The source of earth's oceans has been a subject for debate among astronomers for decades. Until now, asteroids were thought to have provided most of the water. Now, however, Herschel has shown that at least one comet does have ocean-like water.

"The results show that the amount of material out there that could have contributed to Earth's oceans is perhaps larger than we thought," Bergin says.

Herschel, a European Space Agency mission with NASA participation, is an orbiting telescope that allows astronomers to observe at the far-infrared wavelengths where organic molecules and water emit their chemical signatures.

France: Meteorite believed to be more than 4bn years old smashes through roof of home on outskirts of Paris

Kim Willsher
The Guardian
Mon, 10 Oct 2011 12:46 CDT

When your name is Comette you may get used to jokes about rockets and space and planets. But French schoolboy Hugo Comette, 11, had the last laugh when of all the places, in all the countries on Earth, a piece of rock from outer space landed on his home.

An egg-sized meteorite believed to be 4.57bn years old smashed through the roof of the Comette family home on the outskirts of Paris some time over the summer when everyone was away on holiday.

And there the rock, blackened by its journey through Earth's atmosphere stayed, buried in the roof insulation, until Hugo's mother, civil servant Martine Comette, 32, noticed the roof was leaking and called out someone to fix it.

The roofer took one look at the broken tile and told the Comettes that whatever had smashed their roof tile must have come from the sky. "It would have had to be superman to break a tile in this way," he said. It was only then that the meteorite, weighing 88g (3.5oz), was discovered.

Curious to know exactly what it was, Mrs Comette called out scientist Alain Carion, a mineral expert, who declared it an "exceptional" discovery.

"It's extremely rare. We have had only 50 or so meteorite falls in France over four centuries," Carion told journalists. "We have never found anything like it within an 80km radius of Paris before."

He said the Comettes' meteorite was a piece of chondrite that had come from the belt of asteroids between Mars and Jupiter. Most meteorites recovered on Earth are chondrites. They were formed when dust and small grains present in the early solar system created primitive asteroids. Chondrite meteors include dust believed to predate the formation of our solar system and to have come from elsewhere in the galaxy.

Although they have been told some meteorites sell for up to €1,000 (£860) a gramme, the Comettes say selling theirs is out of the question. "A piece of the history of space of which we know nothing, but which is fascinating, has fallen on us," Mrs Comette, an accountant at the French ministry of finance, told Le Parisien newspaper. "It's like a fairytale, and less likely than winning the lottery, we're told."

Comment: Actually, the odd are much higher than this. The chances are also fairly high for the "raindrops" to morph into a downpour. In this case, the fairytale could turn into a potential nightmare.

Not that the lump of rare chondrite Hugo Comette has been proudly showing off at school has convinced everyone. "I took it to school in a piece of kitchen roll in my satchel, but one friend said he only half believed me when I told him what it was," Hugo said. "He thought it looked like a piece of concrete."

A Meteorite Visits the Comettes

Jason Major
Universe Today
Mon, 10 Oct 2011 22:42 CDT

© Universe Today - This egg-sized meteorite broke through the roof of the Comette family.

When your last name is Comette, I'm sure the occasional astronomy-themed joke is never far away. But it's no joke that the Comette family living in Draveil, a suburb south of Paris, was paid a visit by a real extraterrestrial a couple of weeks ago - in the form of an 88-gram (3.5 oz.) meteorite that broke through their roof!

The Comettes were on vacation at the time, so didn't realize their house had been struck by a space rock until they noticed a leak in the roof. When they called in a roofer it was discovered that a thick tile had been completely broken through.

The meteorite was found wedged in insulation.

Mineral scientist Alain Carion investigated the meteorite and determined that it's an iron-rich chondrite, a 4.57-billion-year-old remnant of the early Solar System that most likely came from the main asteroid belt between the orbits of Mars and Jupiter. About 3/4 of all meteorites that have been observed landing on Earth are chondrites.

While obviously not impossible, the odds of your home being hit my a meteorite are incredibly slim. Only 145 meteorites have been documented landing in the US in the past 200 years. On March 26, 2003, just before midnight, hundreds of fragments of a large meteorite fell in the Park Forest area of Chicago. Several fell through roofs of houses and one punched a hole in the roof of the fire station. One large piece weighing about 2.5 kg (5.5 lb) crashed into a bedroom, narrowly missing a boy who was asleep in his bed! On September 23, 2003, a 20 kg (44 lb) stone meteorite tore straight through a two-storey house in New Orleans and came to rest in the basement. (Source: University of New Mexico Institute of Meteoritics.)

Only about 50 meteorites have been found in France over the past four centuries, and none has ever before been discovered less than 80 km (50 miles) from Paris.

While they could attempt to sell the meteorite that struck their home, possibly fetching several hundred euros for it, the Comettes have decided to keep their otherworldly visitor.

"A piece of the history of space of which we know nothing, but which is fascinating, has fallen on us," Mrs. Comette told the Le Parisien newspaper. "It's like a fairytale, and less likely than winning the lottery, we're told."

Saturn's rings tell a comet's tale

Nadia Drake
ScienceNews.org
Tue, 11 Oct 2011 14:15 CDT

© NASA

Ripples testify to 14th century collision

During the 1300s, the Black Death was savaging Europe, England and France were locked in the Hundred Years' War and Chaucer was penning his Canterbury Tales. Meanwhile, more than a billion kilometers away, a comet careened toward Saturn and disintegrated, dropping dusty clouds of debris on the giant planet's iconic rings, creating rippled cometary footprints.

The ripples from that cataclysmic event can still be detected today, electrical engineer Essam Marouf reported October 4 during the joint meeting of the European Planetary Science Congress and the American Astronomical Society's Division for Planetary Sciences.

Marouf, a professor at San Jose State University in California and a member of the Cassini science team, described how the probe beamed radio waves back to Earth through the innermost part of Saturn's C ring, a tenuous inner band in the planet's ring system. The radio waves revealed what Marouf calls a "very unusual kind of addition" to the normal ring structure. "There were highly regular little wiggles that rippled over hundreds of kilometers in a very specific pattern," Marouf says.

The rippling region contains two different waves, one that repeats every 1.2 kilometers and another that repeats every 1.3 kilometers. Though curious, similar wiggles do appear elsewhere in the outer solar system. Scientists traced a similar structure in Jupiter's rings - spied by the Galileo probe - to debris littered by comet Shoemaker-Levy 9 as it crashed into the solar system's largest planet in 1994.

Saturn's C ring also features a longer rippling structure imaged by Cassini and reported earlier this year. Scientists think these longer undulations - between 30 and 50 kilometers - were caused by an impact event in 1983.

Using that information, Marouf and his team were able to determine how long ago the ripples were created, since wavelengths shrink predictably and elderly ripples are more closely packed together.

Rewinding that shrinking process revealed that the newly observed ripples are 600 years older than those born in the early 1980s. "They date back to about the late 1300s," Marouf says. "And there is very clear evidence for two events, not one, separated by about 50 years."

"This is such an amazing result," says Mark Showalter of the SETI Institute in Mountain View, Calif., who recently linked the Jovian ripples with the comet. "Two events is really a hint that this is a cometary kind of thing. Some object got captured into orbit, made two close passages. Survived the first, not totally damaged - then 50 years later it came back in and that was the end of it."

Did A Comet Cause Solar Explosion? Hardly, Ignorant Experts Say

Mike Wall
SPACE.com
Tue, 11 Oct 2011 15:47 CDT

© SOHO

A huge solar eruption that occurred right after a comet plunged into the sun was likely a coincidence, experts say.

The so-called "sungrazing" comet streaked toward the sun Saturday (Oct. 1) and disintegrated after getting too close. The sun then unleashed a massive eruption of solar plasma known as a coronal mass ejection, which can rocket through space at 3 million mph (5 million kph). But there's no reason to think the two dramatic events were related, scientists said.

"There still remains zero evidence for a link between sungrazing comets and coronal mass ejections (CMEs) that can't be better explained than by simple coincidence," Karl Battams of the U.S. Naval Research Laboratory wrote in a blog post Tuesday (Oct. 4). [Stunning Photos of Solar Flares & Sun Storms]

Solar astronomers with the sun-watching Solar and Heliospheric Observatory agreed.

"The question of whether a sungrazing comet can somehow trigger a coronal mass ejection is an intriguing one," SOHO scientists wrote in a website update this week. "So far, the feeling is that [the] apparent relationship between some comets and some mass ejections is simply one of coincidence."

No mechanism known

CMEs and other solar storms are magnetically driven, erupting after magnetic field lines on the sun twist, break and reconnect.

Scientists don't know how a comet could spur such a process, wrote Battams, who does computer processing for SOHO and runs the sun observatory's comet-sighting website for the Naval Research Lab.

The likelihood seems more remote when you consider that death-diving comets rarely actually reach the sun's surface. Instead, they generally break up after veering too close.

And sungrazing comets tend to be small.

The comets spotted by SOHO have cores about 330 feet (100 meters) wide at most, according to Battams. The sun, on the other hand, is about 865,000 miles (1.39 million kilometers) across.

"I'm lucky enough to be surrounded by some of the best solar physicists in the world, and none of them can think of a reasonable mechanism in which physics would allow this event to be initiated by any comet, let alone such a tiny one," Battams wrote.

Researchers also have a pretty good idea of where Saturday's CME originated, he added, and it looks like the death-diving comet didn't come anywhere close to that spot.

Finally, Battams has gone through the SOHO data and found many sundiving comets whose death plunge was not followed by a CME. But the times when the two dramatic events occur one after the other tend to stick out in people's minds, he added.

An active sun

The most reasonable explanation, Battams and other scientists say, is that when sungrazing comets and solar storms coincide, that's all it is: mere coincidence. [The Sun's Wrath: Worst Solar Storms in History]

When the sun is active, it can unleash a dozen or so CMEs per day, and perhaps even more, Battams wrote. And sungrazing comets aren't all that rare, either. During a 10-day stretch in December 2010, for example, at least 25 comets hurled themselves into the sun.

So it would be surprising if at least some CMEs didn't occur shortly after a comet plunge, just by chance alone. And that could start happening more and more, because the sun is in an active phase right now, researchers said.

"At this stage of the solar cycle, the sun is producing many mass ejections - in fact there were several earlier in the day [Saturday] - and it probably just happened by chance that one of them was around the same time as the approach of the comet," researchers with SOHO, which is a joint effort of NASA and the European Space Agency, wrote in an update Monday (Oct. 3).

"Some researchers have been looking for a more direct relationship, but nothing as yet has come out of these efforts," they added.

Activity in the current cycle, known as Solar Cycle 24, should peak around 2013, experts say.

Asteroid Vesta Has Mountain Three Times as Tall as Everest

Victoria Jaggard
National Geographic News
Wed, 12 Oct 2011 00:00 CDT

New view shows huge peak on Vesta's south polar region.

© Caltech/UCLA/MPS/DLR/IDA/NASA - Vesta's south polar region, as seen in a digital model based on NASA images.

The asteroid 4 Vesta hosts a mountain three times as high as Mount Everest, seen in a new picture from NASA's Dawn spacecraft.

The unexpected peak rises from the center of a crater in the asteroid's south polar region. The mountain is about 13 miles (22 kilometers) high and spreads about 112 miles (180 kilometers) at its base.

By contrast, the biggest known mountain in the solar system, Mars's Olympus Mons, stands 16 miles (25 kilometers) high and spreads 374 miles (624 kilometers).

"Vesta is full of surprises, and no more so than in the southern polar region," Paul Schenk, a Dawn participating scientist at the Lunar and Planetary Institute in Texas, said today during a press briefing.

"We had indications before arrival that the south polar region was going to be interesting," Schenk added. For instance, "Hubble pictures show a dimple there, but at [the space telescope's] resolution it's hard to tell what's going on."

With the new, higher-resolution data from Dawn, scientists can see the "dimple" is really an impact crater - dubbed the Rheasilvia Basin - that's about 295 miles (475 kilometers) wide and that's dominated by the massive central mound.

"Vesta is really a small world that is quite unique and has exceeded our expectations," Carol Raymond, Dawn's deputy principal investigator at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, said at the briefing.

Flattening an Asteroid

At about 330 miles (529 kilometers) wide, Vesta is the second largest body in the main asteroid belt, a ring of solar system "leftovers" that lies between the orbits of Mars and Jupiter.

Dawn entered orbit around Vesta in July and will spend a full year collecting data before moving on to the dwarf planet Ceres, the largest body in the main belt.

Using some of the high-resolution pictures of Vesta taken so far, JPL scientists created an image that gives an angled view of Vesta's south polar region, to highlight its three-dimensional topography.

Like straightening out an orange peel, this view of Vesta's surface has been digitally flattened so that features such as the high mountain don't disappear over the horizon of the nearly round asteroid.

Vesta a Peek at Baby Earth?

Studying features such as the giant polar mountain on Vesta should help scientists trace the asteroid's geologic history, possibly giving a glimpse at how our solar system formed.

Previous studies of meteorites from Vesta showed that the space rock's pitted surface was once coated by basaltic lava flows, hinting that Vesta hosted a global magma ocean similar to the one that likely existed on Earth's moon.

In fact, Vesta is thought to be a protoplanet - a baby world whose growth was stunted by gravitational interactions from Jupiter, as that planet grew to become the massive gas giant we see today.

The results of the Dawn mission, according to NASA, can therefore offer clues to what rocky planets such as Earth and Mars might have looked like in the early days of the solar system.

"We are finding - and expect to further document - that Vesta has undergone planetary processes," JPL's Raymond said.

Time-lapse trifecta! Photo captures meteor, Milky way and Northern Lights

Jonathan Woods
MSNBC
Thu, 13 Oct 2011 12:45 CDT

A meteor, the Milky Way and the Northern Lights. Capturing just one of these natural beauties in a photo is a feat many photographers would be proud of.

Amateur photographer Tommy Eliassen struck photo gold in this beautifully composed image he shot in Ifjord, Finnmark, Norway.

Eliassen made the photo on Sept. 25 using a Nikon D700 with a wide angle lens and long exposures between 25-30 seconds.

© Tommy Eliassen/Caters News Agency - A meteor streaks across the Milky Way adjacent to a display of the Northern Lights in Finland.

In an interview with Caters News, The 33-year-old, who capitalized on a narrow window of clear skies, talked about the experience.

"I quickly went and took some pictures in a regular spot of mine, and thought to myself that I had got some good aurora shots and also some separate good milky way shots. But just as the clouds started to come in over the mountains I noticed this faint aurora lining up perfectly beside the milky way. Normally the lights from the aurora is much, much stronger than the lights from the stars, so getting the right exposure on both is difficult. But it was ideal conditions - almost once in a lifetime".

He was able to snap seven images of the scene before clouds moved back in.

"I was so focused on getting it right that I didn't think about it at the time. But afterwards I realised that this was something special and that it might be years before I get an opportunity like it again," he said.

Asteroid Near Earth Discovered by Amateur Astronomers
Mike Wall
Space.com
Thu, 13 Oct 2011 08:46 CDT

© ESA/TOTAS Survey Team - Observations coordinated by ESA's Space Situational Awareness programme have led to the discovery of a previously unknown near-Earth object, asteroid 2011 SF108 in September 2011. The asteroid orbits the sun in a path that brings it within about 18 million miles (30 million km) of Earth.

A team of amateur astronomers has discovered a previously unknown asteroid in orbit that brings it near the Earth, highlighting the contributions regular folks can make to planetary defense, scientists announced Wednesday (Oct. 12).

The skywatchers spotted the asteroid, which is known as 2011 SF108, in September using a telescope in the Canary Islands. While 2011 SF108's orbit appears to bring it no closer to Earth than about 18 million miles (30 million kilometers), it still qualifies as a near-Earth object - the class of space rocks that could pose a danger to our planet.

The team took advantage of an observation slot sponsored by the European Space Agency's Space Situational Awareness (SSA) program to make the find, according to an ESA announcement.

"As volunteer work, it is very rewarding," said Detlef Koschny, head of near-Earth object activity for SSA, in a statement. "When you do spot something, you contribute to Europe's efforts in defending against asteroid hazards."

Amateurs make a find

Asteroid 2011 SF108 was discovered by the Teide Observatory Tenerife Asteroid Survey (TOTAS) team, a group of 20 skywatching volunteers. They used the 1-meter telescope at the European Space Agency's Optical Ground Station on Tenerife in the Canary Islands.

Specifics on the asteroid's estimated size were not detailed in the ESA announcement.

The telescope observed for four nights, running automated asteroid surveys using software developed by amateur astronomer and computer scientist Matthias Busch from the Starkenburg Amateur Observatory in Heppenheim, Germany.

Busch's software flags potential space rocks, but the finds must be confirmed by human eyes. The software scored a hit during the observing session of Sept. 28 and 29, researchers said.

"Images are distributed to the entire team for review, and any one of them could be the discoverer of a new asteroid," Koschny said. "This time, the luck of the draw fell to Rainer Kracht."

Kracht, a retired schoolteacher who lives in Elmshorn, Germany, is therefore 2011 SF108's official discoverer. He now has found 46 asteroids, researchers said.

To date, about 8,000 near-Earth objects have been discovered worldwide, but many thousands more are suspected to exist. Astronomers are keen to find as many of them as possible, so they can better assess the chance that a big, dangerous space rock will slam into Earth sometime soon.

Since starting their SSA-sponsored survey work in January 2010, the TOTAS amateur astronomers have identified nearly 400 candidate asteroids, 20 of which have been confirmed and named, researchers said.

Determing the orbit

After examining telescope images from three separate nights, the TOTAS team was able to determine 2011 SF108's orbit well enough to declare it a near-Earth object.

The team sent news of its find to the Minor Planet Center in Cambridge, Mass., the worldwide clearinghouse of information about comets and asteroids.

While 2011 SF108 appears not to pose much risk to Earth for the foreseeable future, further observations could help refine its orbit and our assessment of just how dangerous it might be, researchers said. But for now, the team can bask in the glow of discovery for a spell.

"It was really an exciting moment when I saw 'our' asteroid appearing on my computer screen," Koschny said. "It confirms the excellent quality of work done by the entire TOTAS team."

Debris of "Doomsday" comet to swing by Earth on Sunday

Mike Wall
CBS News / SPACE.com
Fri, 14 Oct 2011 13:21 CDT

The moment long feared by conspiracy theorists is nearly upon us: The "doomsday comet" Elenin will make its closest approach to Earth Sunday (Oct. 16). Or what's left of it will, anyway.

© NASA/JPL-Caltech - Trajectory of comet Elenin

Comet Elenin started breaking up in August after being blasted by a huge solar storm, and a close pass by the sun on Sept. 10 apparently finished it off, astronomers say. So what will cruise within 22 million miles (35.4 million kilometers) of our planet Sunday is likely to be a stream of debris rather than a completely intact comet.

And the leftovers of Elenin won't return for 12,000 years, astronomers say.

"Folks are having trouble finding it, so I think it's probably dead and gone," said astronomer Don Yeomans of the Near-Earth Object Program Office at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif.

That means it probably won't present much of a skywatching show Sunday, scientists have said.

The doomsday comet

Elenin's apparent demise may come as a relief to some folks, since apocalyptic rumors circulating on the Internet portrayed the comet as a major threat to Earth.

One theory claimed Elenin would set off havoc on Earth after aligning with other heavenly bodies, spurring massive earthquakes and tsunamis. Another held that Elenin was not a comet at all, but in fact a rogue planet called Nibiru that would bring about the end times on Earth. After all, the comet's name could be taken as a spooky acronym: "Extinction-Level Event: Nibiru Is Nigh."

© Michael Mattiazzo/Space.com - Two images of comet Elenin taken on Aug. 19 (left) and Sept. 6, 2011. The images show a rapid dimming in the comet

Those ideas were pure nonsense, Yeomans said.

"Elenin was a second-rate, wimpy little comet that never should have been noted for anything, really," he told SPACE.com. "It was not even a bright one."

Elenin's remains will not be the only objects about to make their closest pass of Earth. One day after the Elenin flyby, the small asteroid 2009 TM8 will zip close by. Like Elenin, it poses no risk of striking our home planet.

Asteroid 2009 TM8 is about 21 feet (6.4 meters) wide and the size of a schoolbus. It will come within 212,000 miles of Earth - just inside the orbit of the moon - when it zips by on Monday morning (Oct. 17).

Say goodbye to Elenin

Elenin was named after its discoverer, Russian amateur astronomer Leonid Elenin, who spotted it in December 2010. Before the icy wanderer broke up, its nucleus was likely 2 to 3 miles (3 to 5 km) in diameter, scientists say.

Elenin never posed any threat to life on Earth, Yeomans said. It was far too small to exert any appreciable influence on our planet unless it managed to hit us.

"Just driving to work every day in my subcompact car is going to have far more of a gravitational effect on Earth than this comet ever will," Yeomans said.

Elenin's supposed connection to earthquakes was just a correlation, and a weak one at that, he added. Relatively strong earthquakes occur every day somewhere on Earth, so it's easy -- but not statistically valid -- to blame some of them on the comet's changing position.

Yeomans views the frenzy over Elenin as a product of the Internet age, which allows loud and often uninformed voices to drown out the rather more prosaic results that scientists publish in peer-reviewed journals.

"It's a snowball effect on the Web," Yeomans said. "You get one or two folks who make an outrageous claim, and a bunch of others pile on. Some folks are actually making a living this way."

Elenin's crumbs will soon leave Earth in the rear-view mirror, speeding out on a long journey to the outer solar system. But Yeomans doesn't think the departure will keep the conspiracy theorists down for long.

"It's time to move on to the next armageddon," he said.

Was the "First Photographed UFO" a Comet?

Jon Voisey
Universe Today
Fri, 14 Oct 2011 20:01 CDT

On August 12th, 1883, Mexican astronomer José Bonilla was preparing to study the Sun at the recently opened Zacatecas Observatory. However, the Sun's surface was marred by numerous objects quickly travelling across its disk. Over the course of the day and the next, Bonilla exposed several wet plates to take images of the 447 objects he would observe. They weren't released publicly until January 1st, 1886 when they were published in the magazine L'Astronomie. Since then, UFOlogists have crowed these photographs as the first photographic evidence of UFOs. The chief editor of L'Astronomie passed the observations off as migrating animals, but a new study proposes the observation was due to the breakup of a comet that nearly hit us.

The only piece of evidence the authors, led by Hector Manterola at the Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México, use to suggest that this was a comet in the process of breaking up, was the descriptions of the objects as being "fuzzy" in nature and leaving dark trails behind them. Assuming this were the case, the authors consider how close the object would have been. Since astronomers at observatories in Mexico City, or Puebla had not reported the objects, this would imply that they did not cross the disc of the Sun from these locations due to parallax. As such, the maximum distance the object could have been is roughly 80,000 km, roughly 1/5th the distance to the moon.

But the team suggests the fragments may have passed even closer. By the time comets reach the inner solar system, they have a significant velocity of some tens of kilometers per second. In such a case, to transverse the disc of the Sun in the time reported by Bonilla (a third to a full second), the object would have been, at most, at a distance of ~8,000km.

At such distances, the overall size of the fragments would be in rough agreement of sizes of other fragmented comets such as 73P/Schwassmann-Wachmann 3, which gave off several fragments in 2006. Based on the number of fragments, estimated sizes, and density of an average comet, the authors estimate that the mass may be anywhere between 2 x 1012 and 8 x 1015 kg. While this is a very large range (three orders of magnitude), it roughly brackets the range of known comets, again making it plausible. The upper range of this mass estimate is on par with Mars' moon Deimos, which is generally held to be similar in mass to the progenitor of the impact that killed the dinosaurs.

One oddity is that one would likely expect such a close breakup to result in a meteor storm. The timing of these events is just before the annual Perseid meteor shower, but reports for that year, such as this one, do not depict it as being exceptional, or having a different radiant than should be expected. Instead, it notes that 157 of the 186 meteors observed on the 11th were definitively Perseids, and that the "year's display cannot be reckoned as a fine one by any means." Meanwhile, the Leonid meteor shower (peaking in November), was exceptional that year, generating an estimated 1,000 meteors an hour, but again, no records seem to indicate an unusual origin.

In total, I find the characterization of Bonilla's observation as a compet plausible, but generally unconvincing. However, if it were a fragmented comet, we're very lucky it wasn't any closer.

Halley's Comet to Put on Meteor Show Next Week

Joe Rao
SPACE.com
Fri, 14 Oct 2011 20:13 CDT

If you step outside before dawn during the next week or so, you might try to catch a view of some "cosmic litter" that has been left behind in space by Halley's Comet: the Orionid meteor shower.

The Orionids can best be described as a junior version of the famous Perseid meteor shower. This year's Orionids show is scheduled to reach its maximum before sunrise on the morning of Oct. 22. The meteors are known as "Orionids" because the fireballs seem to fan out from a region to the north of Orion's second brightest star, ruddy Betelgeuse.

© NASA courtesy of Meteor Physics Group, University of Western Ontario
A 2010 Orionid meteor, seen over Western Ontario, Canada. A waxing gibbous moon shines brightly at the left side of the image.

Currently, Orion appears ahead of us in our journey around the sun. The constellation does not completely rise above the eastern horizon until after 11 p.m. local daylight time. At its best, several hours later around 5 a.m., Orion will be highest in the sky toward the south.

US: Maryland Residents surprised by sonic boom

Delmarva Now
Fri, 14 Oct 2011 17:29 CDT

Berlin, Maryland - According to the Worcester County Fire Marshal's Office, the loud noise heard throughout the north end of the county this morning was a sonic boom.

The noise heard from at least West Ocean City to Bishopville was a sonic boom, according to Worcester County Public Information Officer Kim Moses, but officials don't know what agency the associated aircraft was from.

Shortly after the roughly 9:30 a.m. sound, Maryland State Police said a variety of agencies sent officers out to investigate the loud sound that shook roofs but no one was able to determine the cause.

Comment: Another meteorite exploding in the atmosphere perhaps?

Billion Tonne Comet May Have Missed Earth By A Few Hundred Kilometres in 1883

Technology Review
Tue, 18 Oct 2011 14:53 CDT

© Unknown - Schwassmann-Wachmann 3 comet which broke apart as it re-entered the inner Solar System in 2006

A re-analysis of historical observations suggest Earth narrowly avoided an extinction event just over a hundred years ago

On 12th and 13th August 1883, an astronomer at a small observatory in Zacatecas in Mexico made an extraordinary observation. José Bonilla counted some 450 objects, each surrounded by a kind of mist, passing across the face of the Sun.

Bonilla published his account of this event in a French journal called L'Astronomie in 1886. Unable to account for the phenomenon, the editor of the journal suggested, rather incredulously, that it must have been caused by birds, insects or dust passing front of the Bonilla's telescope. (Since then, others have adopted Bonilla's observations as the first evidence of UFOs.)

Today, Hector Manterola at the National Autonomous University of Mexico in Mexico City, and a couple of pals, give a different interpretation. They think that Bonilla must have been seeing fragments of a comet that had recently broken up. This explains the 'misty' appearance of the pieces and why they were so close together.

But there's much more that Manterola and co have deduced. They point out that nobody else on the planet seems to have seen this comet passing in front of the Sun, even though the nearest observatories in those days were just a few hundred kilometres away.

That can be explained using parallax. If the fragments were close to Earth, parallax would have ensured that they would not have been in line with the Sun even for observers nearby. And since Mexico is at the same latitude as the Sahara, northern India and south-east Asia, it's not hard to imagine that nobody else was looking.

Manterola and pals have used this to place limits on how close the fragments must have been: between 600 km and 8000 km of Earth. That's just a hair's breadth.

What's more, Manterola and co estimate that these objects must have ranged in size from 50 to 800 metres across and that the parent comet must originally have tipped the scales at a billion tonnes or more, that's huge, approaching the size of Halley's comet.

That's an eye opening re-examination of the data. Astronomers have seen a number of other comets fragment. The image above shows the Schwassmann-Wachmann 3 comet which broke apart as it re-entered the inner Solar System in 2006. There's no reason why such fragments couldn't pass close by Earth.

One puzzle is why nobody else saw this comet. It must have been particularly dull to have escaped observation before and after its close approach. However, Manterola and co suggest that it may have been a comet called Pons-Brooks seen that same year by American astronomers.

Manterola and co end their paper by spelling out just how close Earth may have come to catastrophe that day. They point out that Bonilla observed these objects for about three and a half hours over two days. This implies an average of 131 objects per hour and a total of 3275 objects in the time between observations.

Each fragment was at least as big as the one thought to have hit Tunguska. Manterola and co end with this: "So if they had collided with Earth we would have had 3275 Tunguska events in two days, probably an extinction event."

A sobering thought.

Ref: Interpretation Of The Observations Made In 1883 In Zacatecas (Mexico): A Fragmented Comet That Nearly Hits The Earth

Ancient Meteorite Blast Resembled Volcanic Eruption

OurAmazingPlanet
Tue, 18 Oct 2011 11:36 CDT

© Branney and Brown 2011 (Journal of Geology 199, 275-292)>
Meteorite impact ejecta (left) compared with volcanic deposits (right) showing closely similar structures made of dust particles. The top two photos show accretionary lapilli in density current deposits, whereas bottom two photos show pellets that formed when dust in the atmosphere clumped together and simply fell onto the land surface.

A billion years ago, a meteorite slammed into the Earth along the coast of what is now Scotland. A forensic investigation by a team of volcanologists has pieced together exactly how the debris from the impact devastated the surrounding region.

The new research shows that some aspects of giant meteorite impacts may mimic the behavior of large volcanic eruptions.

Meteorite impacts are more common than most people realize, but what happens when the meteorite hits? Direct observation is understandably difficult, but researchers can pick through impact debris that hasn't eroded away and then forensically reconstruct these catastrophic events.

The volcanologists say that an improved understanding of what happens when large objects hit the Earth will help us understand how such events affect life on the planet.

Volcanologists analyzed a layer of ejected debris from this huge meteorite impact and discovered that much of the debris moved across the ground as rapid, dense, ground-hugging currents of gas and debris, remarkably similar to the pyroclastic density currents - fast-traveling streams of hot ash and rock - that flow outward from explosive volcanoes.

"In particular, the way that ash and dust stick together seems identical," said study team member Mike Branney of the University of Leicester in England. "Moist ash from explosive volcanoes sticks together in the atmosphere to fall out as millimeter-sized pellets. Where these drop back into a hot pyroclastic density current, they grow into larger layered structures, known as accretionary lapilli."

The researchers studied the finely preserved deposit in northwest Scotland from the ancient impact. It shows both types of these 'volcanic' particles - pellets and lapilli - are produced.

"This reveals that that the 10 meter-thick [33 feet] layer, which has been traced for over 50 km [31 miles] along the Scottish coast, was almost entirely emplaced as a devastating density current that sped outwards from the point of impact - just like a density current from a volcano. Only the uppermost few centimeters actually fell out through the atmosphere," said study team member Richard Brown of the University of Durham.

US: California - Numerous meteors seen falling Tuesday morning?

NC Times
Tue, 18 Oct 2011 08:48 CDT

Temecula - A spray of objects racing across the sky about 6:30 a.m. Tuesday east of Temecula was photographed by Chaparral High School student Karina Reyes.

© Karina Reyes

Don Yeomans of NASA's Near-Earth Object Program Office at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena said at least one of the objects could be part of the annual Orionid meteor shower -- meteors left behind by Halley's Comet. The meteors became noticeable on Monday and should peak on Saturday morning.

US: Bright Flash Lights Up Sky

KFGO Studio
Wed, 19 Oct 2011 10:31 CDT

Truckers and at least one law officer all reported seeing a very brief but very bright flash in the sky just before 3:30 a.m. Wednesday morning. Trucker Klye Moulds was on U.S. Highway 2 east of Devils Lake, N.D. when he saw what looked like lightning. It was colored with red, blue and green.

Another trucker near Oriska, N.D. says it was so bright he should have had sunglasses on.

A Walsh County deputy sheriff also saw the flash, which was described as a red orb.

The best guess is that the bright light was part of the Orionid meteor shower which will peak this weekend. The meteor shower occurs each October as the earth passes through a trail of dust left by Halley's comet.

Comet Armageddon Detected in Nearby Star System

Ian O'Neill
Discovery News
Wed, 19 Oct 2011 17:14 CDT

© NASA/JPL/Cal-Tech
A nearby star system is currently going through hell, as hinted at by NASA's Spitzer Space Telescope. Through its infrared eye, Spitzer has detected the dusty remains of comet impacts around the star Eta Corvi -- reminding us what it must have been like during the early evolution of our own solar system.

During our solar system's "Late Heavy Bombardment" (LHB) some four billion years ago, the inner planets were constantly peppered with massive comets impacting their surfaces. Earth would have been unrecognizable -- the planet's surface was a burning, molten mess; young atmosphere constantly punctuated by incoming cometary fragments.

Devoid of any eroding atmosphere, the moon's surface bears the scars of this epic cometary onslaught -- huge impact craters providing a reminder of how violent the "early years" of our solar system really was.

Despite the continuous cycle of cataclysmic impact events generating a hellish cauldron on Earth, the LHB has been linked with the genesis of life -- evidence points to a cometary source for the organic ingredients. Needless to say, the growing pains inflicted by the LHB on our planet is of huge importance to scientists.

Therefore, to spot the signs of similar cometary bombardments in other star systems would be pretty awesome. Not only would that help us understand the evolution of planetary systems orbiting other stars, it would provide a "time capsule" for us to have a glimpse of the early life of our own solar system. Of course, it would also give us an idea of how many other stars could be "ripe" for life (as we know it).

Now, scientists using observations by Spitzer have detected cometary Armageddon around Eta Corvi, a star some 50 light-years away in the constellation Corvus.

A ring of warm dust closely surrounds Eta Corvi, and after analysis of the dust, it appears to have the same chemistry as pulverized comets -- water ice, rock and organics. This provides the hint that the star may be going through a similar phase as the early solar system -- comets are careening inward, colliding with as-yet to be detected planetary bodies.

The star is approximately a billion years old, an age that scientists estimate is "just right" for a cometary hailstorm to occur.

"We believe we have direct evidence for an ongoing Late Heavy Bombardment in the nearby star system Eta Corvi, occurring about the same time as in our solar system," said Carey Lisse, senior research scientist at the Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory in Laurel, Md.

Not only does the chemical fingerprint of the debris surrounding Eta Corvi demonstrate active impacts from a huge reservoir of comets, the dust's chemistry resembles that of the Almahata Sitta meteorite, fragments of which fell to Earth in Sudan in 2008. This suggests ancient material floating around in the solar system may have a common formation process as the material getting bashed up in Eta Corvi.

The similarities don't end there. There is evidence of another, cooler dusty ring further away from the star than the cometary impact debris, approximately 150 AU (150 times the Earth-sun distance) from Eta Corvi. The ring was detected in 2005 and could be the location of cometary nuclei, asteroids and other debris. The solar system has a region at roughly the same distance -- the Kuiper Belt.

Could this outer, cool ring be the source of the comets currently smashing through the inner Eta Corvi system? Possibly.

This is a fascinating study as Spitzer has gleaned an insight to the nature of a star system, possibly containing several planetary bodies -- after all, it was the migration of Jupiter and Saturn in the early history of the solar system that kick-started the LHB in the first place. Perhaps Eta Corvi is currently undergoing a similar process.

"We think the Eta Corvi system should be studied in detail to learn more about the rain of impacting comets and other objects that may have started life on our own planet," said Lisse.

These findings have been accepted for publication in The Astrophysical Journal and were presented at the Signposts of Planets meeting at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md., on Wednesday.

New Comet Discovered: P/2010 TO20 (LINEAR-GRAUER)

Giovanni Sostero, Ernesto Guido & Nick Howes
Remanzacco Observatory
Fri, 21 Oct 2011 14:28 CDT

© Remanzacco Observatory

Cbet nr.2867, issued on 2011, October 21, announces the discovery of a new comet (discovery magnitude 19.1) by A. D. Grauer on CCD images obtained on September 19, 2011 with the Mount Lemmon 1.5-m reflector.

According to the CBET: "After two nights of observations of Grauer's comet had been received at the Minor Planet Center, T. Spahr realized that this object was identical with an object discovered a year ago by the LINEAR project (discovery observation tabulated below; cf. MPS 351583) that appeared to be a Jupiter Trojan minor planet."

The new comet has been designated P/2010 TO20 (LINEAR-GRAUER).

We performed follow-up measurements of this object on 2 different nights, while it was still on the neocp.

Stacking of 6 R-filtered exposures, 60-sec each, obtained remotely, from the Siding Spring-Faulkes Telescope South by G. Sostero, I. Melville, A. Kasprzyk, N. Howes, E. Guido on 2011, Oct. 19.6, through a 2.0-m f/10.0 Ritchey-Chretien + CCD under good seeing conditions, shows that this object is a comet: sharp central condensation, compact coma about 5" in diameter, and a wide, fan-shaped tail, at least 45" long toward PA 250

Stacking of 5 R-filtered exposures, 60-sec each, obtained remotely, from the Haleakala-Faulkes Telescope North by G. Sostero, N. Howes, E. Guido on 2011, Oct. 20.4, through a 2.0-m f/10.0 Ritchey-Chretien + CCD, confirms that this object is a comet: we found again a sharp central condensation, a compact coma about 6" in diameter, and a tail, at least 30" long, toward PA 247.

M.P.E.C. 2011-U41 assigns the following very preliminary orbital elements to comet P/2010 TO20: T 2008 Aug. 27.9; e= 0.09; Peri. = 250.17; q = 5.06 AU; Incl.= 2.65

Comets are raining down water on neighbouring Eta Corvi solar system

Alisdair Wilkins
io9.com
Thu, 20 Oct 2011 14:41 CDT

© NASA/JPL-Caltech

The Eta Corvi solar system is like a window into how our own solar system looked billions of years ago. All of Eta Corvi is being bombarded by giant comets - the exact same process that created Earth's oceans.

What's more, observations by NASA's Spitzer telescope show signs of huge dust clouds close to the system's star. The most obvious way to create dust clouds like that is if a huge comet collided with a planet near the star. Analysis of the light coming from the dust suggests it's composed of water ice, organic compounds, and rock, all of which points very strongly to a big comet.

We can't be sure, but it's certainly possible that this comet actually hit a planet located in Eta Corvi's habitable zone. If that's the case, then we're witnessing what is essentially a reenactment of the formation of our planet's oceans. Earth got huge amounts of its water and carbon-based organic compounds during an epoch known as the Late Heavy Bombardment, in which comets from the Kuiper Belt beyond Neptune began hurtling towards the inner solar system due to gravitational disturbances from Jupiter and Saturn.

We probably owe the existence of life as we know it to a bunch of comets, and now the Eta Corvi system is in the middle of the exact same process. The Eta Corvi system even has its very own answer for the Kuiper Belt, as astronomers had previously discovered the existence of a massive ring of cold dust located about 150 astronomical units from the star, meaning the distance is 150 times that between the Sun and Earth.

Lead researcher Carey Lisse explains the potential of studying what's going on in the Eta Corvi system:

"We believe we have direct evidence for an ongoing Late Heavy Bombardment in the nearby star system Eta Corvi, occurring about the same time as in our solar system. We think the Eta Corvi system should be studied in detail to learn more about the rain of impacting comets and other objects that may have started life on our own planet."

Because a lot of what's going on in the Eta Corvi system is too dim for our telescopes to see, we can't be sure of everything that's going on there. But it does appear that we're witnessing something very close to what happened in our own solar system more than 3.8 billion years ago, which is an exciting thought. Indeed, as we get better and better at observing alien solar systems, each in different phases of development, we may be essentially able to reconstruct our solar system's entire past and future. Eta Corvi is just one pretty crucial piece of that cosmic reenactment.

Mainstream Science catching up: Most Planets' Oceans are Probably Seeded by Comets

Mike Wall
SPACE.com
Fri, 21 Oct 2011 14:29 CDT

© NASA/JPL-Caltech
Artist's concept illustrating an icy planet-forming disk around the star TW Hydrae, located about 175 light-years away in the constellation Hydra. Astronomers found huge stores of cool water vapor (illustrated in blue) in the frigid outer regions of the star system, where comets will take shape.

A still-forming alien solar system has enough water in its outer reaches to fill Earth's oceans several thousand times over, a new study finds.

The discovery marks the first time astronomers have detected water in a dusty planet-forming disk so far from its central star, in the frigid region where comets are born. Scientists think comet impacts delivered most of Earth's water, and the new study hints that alien planets may commonly acquire oceans in the same way.

"We now know that large amounts of water ice are available in planet-forming disks, ready to be incorporated in comets," said Michiel Hogerheijde, of Leiden Observatory in the Netherlands, the study's lead author. "Ultimately, some of this water may end up on Earth-like planets that form completely dry but this way may end up with life-supporting oceans."

A nearby star

Hogerheijde and his team made the find using the European Space Agency's Herschel Space Observatory. They trained Herschel on the appropriately named young star TW Hydrae, which is located about 175 light-years away in the constellation Hydra (the Sea Serpent).

TW Hydrae is an orange dwarf star, slightly smaller and dimmer than our sun. It's only about 10 million years old, and is still surrounded by a disk of dust and gas that should one day coalesce to form planets, researchers said.

Herschel detected huge amounts of water - thousands of times more water than is found on Earth - in the freezing-cold outer reaches of this disk, far from TW Hydrae itself. The water out there is likely ice coating the innumerable tiny dust grains that swirl around in the disk, researchers said.

Ultraviolet radiation from TW Hydrae knocks some water molecules free from these icy grains, allowing Herschel to spot the light signature from the resulting vapor.

Astronomers have found water vapor in the warmer, interior regions of other planet-forming disks before. So Hogerheijde's team wasn't shocked to find evidence of water farther out.

"We had actually always suspected that this much water was hiding out in the cold reaches of disks like these," Hogerheijde told SPACE.com in an email. Thanks to Herschel, he added, "we can now for the first time detect the water vapor, and infer the presence and size of the hidden ice reservoir."

The team reports its results in the Oct. 21 issue of the journal Science.

Alien comets, alien oceans?

The TW Hydrae find suggests that ice-bearing comets may form commonly around other stars. The icy wanderers might thus have seeded oceans on many alien planets throughout the cosmos over the years, researchers said.

"It does seem likely that life-supporting environments can form easily around other stars, now that we have found sufficient water ice to seed Earth-like planets with oceans," Hogerheijde said.

The discovery could also help astronomers better understand solar system evolution and planet formation in a general sense, he added.

For example, large quantities of ice in a protoplanetary disk could serve as a sort of glue, Hogerheijde said, helping dust grains stick together and grow into planetesimals, the building blocks of planets.

Also, analysis of TW Hydrae's far-flung ice shows that it's significantly different than that found on comets in our solar system. This suggests that comets' ice comes from several different regions in the dusty disk, not just the freezer on its outer edge.

"We actually think that comets in our own solar system contain mixtures of ices from across the solar nebula, hinting at the presence of long-range transportation of material through planet-forming disks," Hogerheijde said. "This is a much more 'dynamic' picture of planet formation than previously imagined."

US: Bright Meteor Lights Up Night Sky From Minnesota to Nebraska
kcautv.com
Fri, 21 Oct 2011 14:49 CDT

Wednesday there were reports from people across the region who saw a bright flash of light in the sky about 3:30 am.

That bright flash was seen as far north as Minnesota and as far south as Lincoln, Nebraska.

Now we've learned it was a meteor streaking through the sky.

A security camera at the Lincoln airport caught the flash in action.

If you'd like your chance to see some meteors streaking across the night sky your best chance is Friday night starting at 10pm until Saturday 3am.

Watch video here.

UFO over Sioux Falls? Experts think it was a meteor

Brenda Wade Schmidt
Argus Leader
Fri, 21 Oct 2011 15:16 CDT

© File Photo

Amie Neustrom doesn't have a good explanation for what she saw in the night sky near her Renner home early Wednesday.

It surprised her and happened so fast that she isn't sure whether it was a meteor or a UFO.

"I really honestly don't know what to think," she said.

It was about 3:30 a.m., and she was on her deck smoking a cigarette when the deck lit up and an orange-and-blue object streaked off, leaving a trail of smoke behind.

"It was quick ...," she said. "I've never seen anything like it. I've seen shooting stars out here. Nothing like this. It was so bright."

Several other Sioux Falls area residents also reported seeing an unusual flash of light in the sky about that time, as well.

At least two people called Metro Communications and five law enforcement officers said they, too, saw the bright light, according to emergency officials. Their locations ranged from Hartford to Brandon and north of Sioux Falls to 57th Street and Western Avenue.

The National Weather Service in Sioux Falls received calls from people near Brandon who saw the unexplained object, said Tim Masters, a technician with the weather service.

But there is an explanation, he said.

"It wasn't a UFO. It was a meteor," he said. "It lit up the sky pretty bright."

There were no reports of an object hitting the ground, he said.

"We just know that it's probably just a little rock that fell through the atmosphere and probably burned up when it fell down," Masters said.

The incident was a random event and not part of a meteor shower, he said.

Neustrom, 38, reported what she saw to Peter Davenport, director of the nonprofit National UFO Reporting Center in eastern Washington state.

People who are unfamiliar with the UFO phenomenon will default to the explanation being a meteor, Davenport said, though the bright light is consistent with a meteor, he said. The only way to tell for sure would be to interview in detail the people who saw it, he said.

"There are many, many events that occur which, when we get into the fine detail ... it seems obviously it could have not been a meteor," Davenport said.

Faulkes Team Images Trojan Jupiter Comet
Adrian West
Universe Today
Fri, 21 Oct 2011 21:54 CDT

© Universe Today

Jupiter Comet

Based on an observation posted on the Near Earth Object confirmation page from an image taken by A. D. Grauer using the mount Lemmon observatory, Faulkes telescope team members Nick Howes, Giovanni Sostero and Ernesto Guido along with University of Glamorgan student Antos Kasprzyk and amateur astronomer Iain Melville, imaged what is potentially some of the first direct evidence for a Trojan Jupiter Comet.

Comet P/2010 TO20 (LINEAR-GRAUER) was immediately recognised by the team from looking at the orbit to be a highly unusual object, but it was only when the images came through from the Faulkes observations that the true nature of the object became clear.

The observations showed a distinct cometary appearance, with a sharp central condensation, compact coma and a wide, fan-shaped tail.

This is no ordinary comet, and supports the theory and initial spectral observation work by a team using the keck telescope in Hawaii. Closer analysis of their object (part of a binary known as the Patroclus pair) showed that it was made of water ice and a thin layer of dust, but at the time of writing, no direct images of a Jupiter Trojan showing evidence of a coma and tail had been taken.

The Faulkes teams above image, combined with the original observations by Grauer clearly show a cometary object, thus confirming the Keck team's hypothesis.

According to the CBET released today "After two nights of observations of Grauer's comet had been received at the Minor Planet Center.

Spahr realized that this object was identical with an object discovered a year ago by the LINEAR project (discovery observation tabulated below; cf. MPS 351583) that appeared to be a Jupiter Trojan minor planet."

The observations have now proved it is not a minor planet, but a comet.

This discovery could provide new clues about the evolution of the Solar System, suggesting that the Gas Giants formed closer to the Sun and as they moved further away, they caused massive perturbations with Kuiper Belt objects, trapping some in their own orbits.

Nick Howes on the Faulkes team said "When we first saw the preliminary orbit, we knew it was a quite remarkable object" Howes also added "To have a University Student also involved is terrific for the degree program at Glamorgan and also for the Faulkes project. We'd like to extend our congratulations to Al Grauer" for his detection of this groundbreaking new comet" and we're immensely proud to be part of the CBET released by the IAU confirming its nature.

References:

Space Is Ace
Spacedaily.com
Remanzacco Observatory

UK: Meteorite crashes into sea

Lynn Cox
KentOnline
Sat, 22 Oct 2011 08:57 CDT

A meteorite falling into the sea sparked a search and rescue mission last night after two people reported they saw a plane crash into the water off the coast of Whitstable.

Kent Fire and Rescue Service were called out after a pilot and another person both reported they saw what the thought was an aircraft crashing into the sea.

However, after firefighters from Whitstable and nearby Herne Bay scoured the area, no trace of the aircraft could be found.

Air traffic controllers, reported they didn't have any planes missing, so eventually the search was called off, and put down to a meteorite falling to Earth.

Hundreds of meteorites are expected to streak across the sky this weekend as the Earth passes through a cloud of dust left by behind by a comet called Giacobini-Zinner.

A spokesman for Kent Fire and Rescue Service said: "Two independent calls came in reporting a plane had crashed off the coast.

"Even a pilot who was looking out of his window reported a plane was in distress and had gone into the sea.

"Fishermen in the area also reported seeing something, but in the end nothing was found and it was put down to a meteorite falling to Earth."

SOTT archive

Comet Elenin cloud corpse spotted in space

Space Weather
Mon, 24 Oct 2011 11:45 CDT
>
"Doomsday Comet" Elenin was briefly famous for inaccurate predictions that it might hit Earth. Instead it disintegrated as it approached the sun last month. (Doomsday canceled.) Over the weekend, Italian astronomer Rolando Ligustri spotted the comet's remains. It's the elongated cloud in this Oct. 22nd photo of the star field where Elenin would have appeared if it were still intact:

© Rolando Ligustri

Another team of astronomers--Ernesto Guido, Giovanni Sostero and Nick Howes--spotted the cloud on the same night. At first they were skeptical. "The cloud was extremely faint and diffuse," says Guido. "We wondered if it might be scattered moonlight or some other transient artifact." But when the team looked again on Oct. 23, the cloud was still there. A two-night blink animation shows that the cloud is moving just as the original comet would have. Note: Some readers have noticed a fast-moving streak to the to the lower right of the debris cloud. That is an unrelated asteroid, 2000 OJ8 (magnitude 14), which happened to be in the field of view at the same time as the cloud of Elenin.

More information about this discovery and continued tracking of the "comet corpse" may be found at the Remanzacco Observatory Astronomy Blog.

Read on SOTT.net

Video Captures Draconid Meteor

redOrbit
Tue, 25 Oct 2011 00:39 CDT

© redOrbit

This video catches the moment when a Draconid meteor exploded in Earth's atmosphere earlier this month. The dramatic footage comes from a campaign to observe this important meteor shower using aircraft to beat the clouds.

On the evening of Saturday 8 October, Earth plunged through a stream of dust and rocks that had been expelled into space by the comet Giacobini - Zinner. The resultant meteor shower lit the skies over Europe with shooting stars.

The display radiates from the constellation of Draco, The Dragon, giving the name of "Draconids" to this shower which occurs at the same time every year as the Earth passes through the debris trail. In 2011, however, there was a difference. Astronomers had predicted an unusually high numbers of meteors as Earth was due to encounter particularly dense patches of the cometary detritus.

Detlef Koschny, leader of the Meteor Research Group at ESA, led the Agency's involvement in a project to find out if the prediction was right.

With cameras and other equipment packed into two Falcon-20 research planes, Detlef's colleagues took to the skies over Europe to rise above the clouds and watch for meteors.

"The Draconids peaked as predicted. A small peak at 17:30 GMT and then a larger one at 20:05 GMT," says Detlef.

The two planes flew on parallel tracks roughly 100 km apart as the researchers pointed their cameras at the same volume of Earth's atmosphere. The data they collected will allow each meteor to be triangulated, to determine its altitude and trajectory. Typically, meteors burn up between 80-120 km above the ground, well above the cruising altitude of an airliner. This will give updated information about the meteor stream itself, and the way the comet ejected the material.

It has been calculated that most of the meteors hitting Earth that night were ejected by comet Giacobini - Zinner in 1900 and have been circling the Sun ever since.

The team also recorded the spectrum of at least one meteor, which will reveal its chemical composition.

The Draconid meteor stream is important to understand because, like other streams, it can pose a danger to orbiting spacecraft. The tiny impacts can damage solar panels or sensitive optics.

The Draconids tend to be overlooked in favor of more visible displays such as the Leonids in November. This could be a mistake according to Detlef: "The Draconids move more slowly relative to Earth, so we don't see all of the smaller ones burning up. But they are still there, probably as many in number as the Leonids, only it's harder to find them."

Watch the Video.

Discovery: Cosmic Dust Contains Organic Matter from Stars

Denise Chow
Space.com
Thu, 27 Oct 2011 01:32 CDT

© NASA, C.R. O'Dell, S.K. Wong (Rice University)
A spectrum from the European Space Agency's Infrared Space Observator superimposed on an image of the Orion nebula, where these complex organics are found.

A new look at the interstellar dust permeating the universe has revealed hints of organic matter that could be created naturally by stars, scientists say.

Researchers at the University of Hong Kong observed stars at different evolutionary phases and found that they are able to produce complex organic compounds and eject them into space, filling the regions between stars. The compounds are so complex that their chemical structures resemble the makeup of coal and petroleum, the study's lead author Sun Kwok, of the University of Hong Kong, said.

Such chemical complexity was thought to arise only from living organisms, but the results of the new study show that these organic compounds can be created in space even when no life forms are present. In fact, such complex organics could be produced naturally by stars, and at an extremely rapid pace.

"What impressed me most is that complex organics are easily formed by stars, they are everywhere in our own galaxy and in other galaxies," Kwok told SPACE.com in an email interview. "Nature is much more clever than we had imagined."

The findings of the new study were published online today (Oct. 26) by the journal Nature.

Scanning the cosmos in infrared

Kwok and his colleague Yong Zhang, also of the University of Hong Kong, studied a set of well-known but mysterious infrared emissions found in stars, interstellar space and galaxies. These phenomena, which are collectively called Unidentified Infrared Emission (UIE) features, have been known for 30 years, but the exact source of the emissions has not been pinned down, and remains a broad assumption.

"In the astronomy community, it has been commonly assumed that the UIE features are emitted by [polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbon, or PAH] molecules, which are simple, purely aromatic, molecules made of carbon and hydrogen," Kwok said. "Our paper suggests that the PAH hypothesis is not correct."

Kwok and Zhang analyzed data from the European Space Agency's Infrared Space Observatory and NASA's Spitzer Space Telescope to show that the Unidentified Infrared Emission features are not emitted by PAH molecules because the emissions have chemical structures that are far more complex.

"I have been suspecting this for many years," Kwok said. "Now we think we have the evidence."

The researchers observed stars at different phases of stellar evolution - first low- to medium-mass stars, then stars in the protoplanetary nebula phase, which is a short-lived episode during a star's rapid evolution, and finally stars in the planetary nebula phase, which is characterized by an expanding shell of ionized gas that is ejected by certain types of stars late in their life.

Kwok and his colleague found that characteristics of the Unidentified Infrared Emission features could not be detected in low- to medium-mass stars. But, the astronomers found that the emissions began to appear in stars in the protoplanetary nebula stage and grew stronger as the stars matured into the planetary nebula phase.

"We therefore know that these organics are being made in the circumstellar stellar environment," Kwok said.

More surprises

Another surprising thing they found was just how quickly stars were generating complex organic compounds and ejecting the dusty material into their surrounding environment.

"Since we know their dynamical and evolutionary ages of these objects (dynamical age is how fast the nebula will disperse, and evolutionary age is how fast the star is evolving), we can put constraints on the chemical time scales," Kwok said. "Since the dynamical/evolution ages are of the order of thousands of years, the appearance of the spectral features suggests that the organic compounds are made on time scales shorter than thousands of years."

The researchers also studied emissions from exploding stars and found that these dynamic cosmic events produced dust even more rapidly.

"Their spectra changed from a pure gas spectrum to a dust spectrum on a matter of days or weeks," Kwok said. "The sudden appearance of the features suggests that organic dust can be made extremely quickly."

But, the findings throw a wrench into existing theories that posit that stars cannot produce such complex organic compounds in the near-vacuum environment of space.

"Theoretically, it is very difficult to understand because of the very low density of the circumstellar environment," Kwok said. "But, observationally, there is no doubt as we see these spectral features appearing and changing on very short time scales. This means that these organic solids are condensing directly from the gas phase."

Star dust and the early solar system

The scientists also found that the chemical structure of organic star dust is similar to complex organics found in meteorites. Since meteorites originate from space rocks that are remnants of the early solar system, the results of the study suggest that stars could have enriched the early solar system with organic compounds, Kwok said.

"It is quite possible that the organics in meteorites are remnants of star dust in the solar nebula," he explained. "The star dust [was] ejected by nearby planetary nebula[s] and survived the journey across the galaxy."

Early in the Earth's formation history, the planet was pummeled in a shower of meteorites and comets during a period known as the Late Heavy Bombardment. Since the organic compounds in meteorites are similar to what was found in stellar dust, the results of this new study show that the barrage of meteorites that fell to Earth during the Late Heavy Bombardment could have carried organic star dust.

While it may be too soon to determine whether these organic compounds played a role in kick-starting the development of life on Earth, it certainly is a possibility, Kwok said.

"If this is the case, life on Earth may have had an easier time getting started as these organics can serve as basic ingredients for life," he said.

Further research in this area will be necessary, and Kwok intends to continue analyzing additional infrared observations to better pin down the chemical structure of organic star dust. He is also interested in studying more about how and why stars are able to produce complex organics as quickly as they seem to.

"Coal and kerogen are products of life and it took a long time for them to form," Kwok said. "How do stars make such complicated organics under seemingly unfavorable conditions and [do] it so rapidly?"

US, California: Mystery Lights Interrupt News 8 Live Shot

Fireball Recorded Entering Atmosphere over Japan on October 19

Sheilaaliens
YouTube
Sun, 30 Oct 2011 11:29 CDT

Source

While you're there, check out the "etc." section for what they have captured... Very interesting!

The various vantage points of different witnesses place the fireball's trajectory in the yellow line, running Southwest to Northeast (left to right).

Comets - Not What We Expected

Michael Suede
YouTube
Sun, 30 Oct 2011 03:28 CDT

This video highlights recent discoveries about comets that shatter existing theories in favour of the Electric Comet Theory.

Supporting documentation and links to all the NASA quotes, web sites, and papers used in the video can be found here.

Part 1

Part 2

Part 3

Part 4

Part 5

Part 6

The narrator's website

Sun Diving Comet, October 30th

Space Weather
Mon, 31 Oct 2011 01:28 CDT

A small comet dove into the sun during the late hours of Oct. 30th. Blasted by intense solar heat, the 'dirty snowball' disintegrated in plain view of the Solar and Heliospheric Observatory (SOHO). Watch the movie below and note how the comet shrinks to a pinprick just before it vanishes.

Watch video on YouTube

Asteroid's Near-Miss Reminder Of Doomsday Threat

The Indy Channel
Mon, 31 Oct 2011 13:58 CDT

© NASA - YU55 will pass near Earth on Nov. 8, scientists say

Purdue Scientist Estimates Impact Of Large Object.

Though there's no threat that it will strike Earth, a large asteroid that will pass close to the planet on Nov. 8 would have had a devastating effect if it were to hit the planet, experts said.

The aircraft carrier-sized asteroid, known as YU55, was discovered in 2005. At its closest approach, scientists project it will be 201,000 from Earth.

The near-miss is a reminder of how fragile the planet is.

Jay Melosh, a professor of earth and atmospheric sciences at Purdue University, said the impact of an object of similar size would be catastrophic, producing an earthquake of magnitude 7.0, prospects of a 70-foot tsunami and worse.

"What is unique about this asteroid flyby is that we were aware of it well in advance," Melosh said. "Before about 1980 we wouldn't know about an asteroid of this size until it was already making a close pass, but now it is unlikely that such an asteroid will approach the Earth without our knowledge."

NASA and Spacewatch monitor near-Earth objects that are 0.6 mile or larger in diameter. The close approach of the asteroid has been expected since 2005, when it was discovered.

Scientists at Purdue put together a calculator, called Impact Earth to estimate the impact of an object striking Earth, approximating the type of damage it could cause.

The calculator estimated that if YU55 hit Earth, a 1,700-foot-deep crater four miles in diameter would be created and that humans would endure extensive first-degree burns 60 miles away from the point of impact.

An object the size of YU55 would destroy a large city if it took a direct hit.

NASA said the last time an asteroid of a similar size came close to hitting Earth was in 1976, and that a known large asteroid will be near the planet in 2028.

Earth is scarred by craters scientists believe were created by similar-sized objects, including craters in Alabama and Wisconsin, Melosh said.

"Impacts from asteroids of this size are very rare," he said. "They occur about once every 100,000 years, so the chances of an actual collision with an asteroid like YU55 is about 1 percent in the next thousand years."

Scientists believe that an asteroid that is about a third of a mile wide has a small chance of hitting Earth in 2036.

Read also: Large Asteroid to Pass by Earth Nov. 8, 2011 But What If It Didn't?

'Continent Killer' Asteroid On Possible Collision Course With Earth

redOrbit
Mon, 31 Oct 2011 14:34 CDT

© redOrbit

On the heels of the return to Earth of a pair of satellites - NASA's Upper Atmosphere Research Satellite (UARS) and the German-built Röntgensatellit (ROSAT) - over the past two months comes a report of another object set to collide with our planet.

Only this one is a 20 million ton asteroid that is currently heading towards us at 23,000 miles per hour, and could collide with our planet in approximately 25 years, Alex Hannaford of the Telegraph wrote on Sunday. The asteroid in question, Apophis, is more than 800 feet wide, comprised of a mixture of rock, ice, and dust, and has been dubbed "the continent killer."

"There are two scenarios," Hannaford writes. "The first, and thankfully most likely, is that Apophis will fly by in April 2029, the year it is due to make its first 'close approach', and that's the last we'll see or hear of it. The second is that during that approach, it'll pass through what scientists refer to as a 'keyhole' - a small area of space that can alter the asteroid's course due to Earth's gravity."

"If this happens, it'll be on a massive collision course with us seven years later, likely to be April 13, 2036 - Easter Sunday," the Telegraph reported added, noting that experts with NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in California claim that it is "too far away" to predict which of the two possibilities is most likely, but that they should be able to know more in the near future.

"We don't know precisely where Apophis is headed but we will soon, when it becomes observable again, probably in 2012 or 2013," Paul Chodas of the U.S. space agency's Near Earth Object (NEO) said. "Once we get radar on it we will be able to nail down its orbit and we will know the chances of it going through the keyhole and hitting in 2036. By that time, it could be a four in a million chance, and that could very well go down to zero."

That might not be the end of it, though, as Chodas told Hannaford that the asteroid could find another one of those "keyholes" - small regions of space that can alter the course of a passing asteroid, due to a planet's gravity - meaning that even if it misses the planet the first time, it could theoretically return and collide with the Earth's surface later on.

That ain't no satellite! Meteorite impacts Buenos Aires, Argentina

2011-10-09T20:06:00.003Z

That ain't no satellite! Meteorite impacts Buenos Aires, Argentina

Sott Editors
Sott.net
Mon, 26 Sep 2011 18:00 CDT

An Argentinian official investigates the impact site in the Monte Grande suburb of Buenos Aires

A bright blue fireball fell out of the sky and smashed into a suburban neighbourhood in Buenos Aires today, killing one woman and injuring six others. In other news, the Russian prime minister is set to become the president again and again.... no, wait, back up a second. WHAT just happened in a major capital city in Latin America??

Argentina: One woman killed and six injured as meteorite smashes into Buenos Aires

Believe it or not, incoming cometary debris may actually have killed someone today. The space debris also destroyed a house and some cars. People reported seeing a fireball descending followed by an explosion. One witness told local TV news that prior to the explosion the sky lit up and windows began to vibrate strongly. They had no idea what was happening as 'the thing' just appeared... within a few seconds somebody's home was obliterated.

An Argentinian SOTT reader reported:

The laughable thing is that the program hosts of local TV news, although
considering the possibility of a meteorite being to blame, kept telling
people about the satellites rubbish, that a "gas explosion in
combination with street electricity cables" was to blame, and other
things like that... they gave those hypotheses equal or even more
credibility than the meteorite one.

Stunned onlookers cannot believe what they've just experienced

The "satellites rubbish" our local witness is referring to is of course that AWOL NASA satellite we've been told for weeks is due to plummet to earth.

Check out this YouTube video which appears to be the trail left by the incoming fireball:

Apparently the man who filmed it can be heard saying: "Did you see it fall? What a strange thing, man!" Earlier he said, "It's like it caught on fire." He finished by saying, "And it's still on fire".

Just imagine a whole bunch of those falling at the same time and the unbearable shock people would experience. Then again, people can be told anything, like a fireball crashing into a capital city is 'part of a satellite that broke off', or just a 'once-in-a-life-time' event. Nothing to see here folks, move along please!

It reminds us of the intense programming about the no-plane at the Pentagon immediately after 9/11. Give people a story about a fictional airplane, Islamic terrorists or broken satellites, repeat them over and over, then hope for the best that most will accept it. And most DO! But who can blame them really? The truth is just too much to bear.

It's kinda funny that the current flurry of meteor sightings and impacts should happen right when SOTT is being labelled by the French police as "apocalyptic" in their witch hunt based on a ridiculous cult accusation. If you just talk about comets and meteors, simply from observing DATA , not imagining 'End of the World' scenarios, then you are immediately labelled an "apocalyptic cult". The police clearly don't spend much time observing the sky...

But then why would they? The sky is where their invisible god on a stick lives and they don't want to anger him...

A photograph of the incoming meteor taken by a witness who was later arrested and forced to recant, saying that the image was hoaxed. That may well have been the case, but it's important to realise that incoming fireballs can cycle through every colour of the rainbow as they burn through the Earth's atmosphere. This explains the apparent discrepancies between witness testimonies of the fireball being both bright blue and dark red, as shown above.

So here we are. It's 2011 and something SOTT has been saying foryears would happen has happened. And still, it's amazing to us howeasily people's minds can be primed into buying a cooked-up version ofevents. We've all been hearing about falling satellites in the lead-upto this event... therefore this incident must be a falling satellite too! Never mind that they had previously claimed the 'NASA satellite' fell into the Pacific Ocean. Can't leave any room for alternative explanations, now can we?

What you're supposed to think is all prefabricated by the media. It's diabolically clever, efficient mind-programming.

Is Another Disabled Satellite Headed for Earth?

We strongly suspect that the meme about falling satellites indicates that the Powers That Be knew
we'd have incoming objects during this time frame, which means they can track some of them (even though they supposedly "lost the satellite".) Things will get really interesting when the ones they can't track start hitting the ground.

Here's a report of another impact starting a fire in Texas on Sunday.

Raindrops keep fallin' on our heads.... and Nero fiddles while Rome burns.

Comment: Update 27 September 2011

It turns out that far more than a single home was destroyed. The following video from local Argentinian media reveals the true scale of the destruction from this meteorite impact: