March 7, 2016 - UNITED KINGDOM - The Northern Lights illuminated skies above the UK and Ireland last
night, giving local photographers a rare opportunity to capture the
spectacular sight of the aurora borealis.
The dazzling phenomenon was visible as far south as Oxfordshire as well
as South Wales, Scotland and in parts of Ireland and Northern Ireland.
January 31, 2016 - SPACE - New clues suggest the moon resulted from a head-on collision
between Earth and another forming planet, according to scientists.
Researchers from a team lead by the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) analyzed lunar and volcanic rocks before concluding the moon was formed during a violent head-on collision between an early Earth and another forming planet called Theia.
Scientists knew Earth had been involved in a high-speed crash almost 4.5 billion years ago, but they thought the crash with Theia had been a 45-degree angle sideswipe.
After studying seven lunar rocks brought back by the Apollo 12, 15 and 17 missions, as well as six volcanic rocks from the Earth’s mantle, they found that Theia and Earth had had a head-on collision, rather than just a fender-bender.
The scientists said the clue lay in the chemical signature of the rocks’ oxygen atoms. Oxygen makes up 90 percent of rocks’ volume and 50 percent of their weight.
More than 99.9 percent of Earth’s oxygen is 0-16, meaning each atom contains eight protons and eight neutrons. There are small quantities of heavier oxygen isotopes, such as 0-17, which has an extra neutron, and 0-18, which has two extra neutrons.
All of the planetary bodies in our solar system have a distinct “fingerprint” of 0-17 to 0-16 isotopes.
WATCH: The formation of the Moon.
A team of German scientists ventured in a 2014 issue of Science that the moon had its own unique ratio of oxygen isotopes, which is different from Earth’s, but UCLA scientists found “that is not the case.”
“We don’t see any difference between the Earth’s and the moon’s oxygen isotopes; they’re indistinguishable,” said Edward Young, lead author of the new study and a UCLA professor of geochemistry and cosmochemistry, in a statement.
Using UCLA’s new mass spectrometer, the team performed ultra-high precision oxygen isotope analyses of the lunar samples and were able to deduce that if Theia had sideswiped Earth, the moon would have been made mainly of Theia, and would have different isotypes than Earth.
The fact that the Earth and the moon share the same chemical signatures contradicted the theory.
“Theia was thoroughly mixed into both the Earth and the moon, and evenly dispersed between them,” Young said. “This explains why we don’t see a different signature of Theia in the moon versus the Earth.”
The crash with Theia happened approximately 100 million years after the Earth formed, almost 4.5 billion years ago. The merging of the two planets also suggests why the moon is less dense than the Earth.
Young and other scientists think Theia was approximately the same size as the Earth, while others believe it was more similar in size to Mars.
This is not the first time the theory of a head-on collision has been proposed. In 2012, the theory was proposed by Matija Cuk, now a researcher with SETI Institute; Sarah Stewart, now a professor at UC Davis; and Robin Canup of the Southwest Research Institute.
The paper, called Oxygen isotopic evidence for vigorous mixing during the Moon-forming giant impact, by Edward Young, Issaku Kohl, and Paul Warren, was published in Friday’s edition of Science.
April 3, 2015 - UNITED STATES - The moon will pass through the Earth’s shadow and turn blood-red in
the early hours of the morning on Saturday, in a brief total eclipse
best visible from the western part of the US.
It will be the third in a series of four total lunar eclipses, or
a “tetrad,” that began in mid-April last year. The second
occurred in October 2014, and the last will be on September 28
this year. Tetrads are very rare: only seven more are expected by
the year 2100.
Saturday’s eclipse will also be the shortest in a century, with
the moon spending just four minutes and 43 seconds completely in
Earth’s shadow. However, the time it will take for the moon to
become completely occluded will be abnormally long, a whole 102
minutes, writes Space.com. This is because the moon will have
just reached apogee, its farthest point from the Earth.
As the moon skims the edge of the planet’s shadow, it will turn a
shade of red.
“This is happening because the sunlight that’s reaching the
moon is just the sunlight bending through the Earth’s
atmosphere,” NASA scientist Michelle Thaller explained last
year. “The same reason that a sunset is red: the Earth’s
atmosphere scatters away blue light, but lets red light
through.”
The eclipse will be visible from all parts of the US, though
those in the east will only see the beginning stages before the
06:16 ET sunrise. People in the west will have a full view of the
total eclipse, at 04:58 PT.
While the lunar eclipse is a fascinating astronomical phenomenon,
some see deeper religious significance in it. Saturday will be
the first night of Passover for the Jews, and Easter Vigil for
Christians that follow the Gregorian calendar.
The current tetrad is only the fourth time in 500 years that all
four ‘blood moons’ fall on Jewish holidays, one Israeli website
reported. It quoted a mystic rabbi from the south of the country,
who said the eclipse was a sign Israel faced “great judgment
and potential danger.”
Some Evangelical Christian preachers in the US have pointed at
the Biblical prophecy that says: “The sun shall be turned
into darkness, and the moon into blood, before the great and the
terrible day of the LORD come.” (Joel, 2:31, KJV).
A full solar eclipse occurred on March 20, in the middle of the
current lunar tetrad. - RT.
March 31, 2015 - SPACE
- Only the speediest of skywatchers will have a chance to see the total
lunar eclipse rising Saturday: NASA predicts that the total phase of
the lunar eclipse will only last about 5 minutes, making it the shortest
lunar eclipse of the century.
Early-rising observers all over the
United States should be able to see at least the partial phases of the
April 4 lunar eclipse just before the sun rises, if weather permits.
People on the West Coast will have the chance to see the moon turn an
eerie shade of red during totality, which should begin at about 7:58
a.m. EDT (1158 GMT, 4:58 a.m. PDT). NASA this week unveiled a video detailing the total lunar eclipse, and dubbed the event the shortest lunar eclipse of the century in an announcement on Monday (March 30) in detail.
This sky map shows around the world will see the total lunar eclipse on April 4, 2015.
Credit: Sky & Telescope illustration
Observers
in other parts of the world will have an even better chance to see the
lunar eclipse. Stargazers in Australia, Japan, China, and Southeast Asia
will get the chance to see the eclipse on the night of April 4, according to Sky & Telescope.
(Sky & Telescope predicts that the total phase of the eclipse will
actually last about 9 to 12 minutes starting at 7:54 a.m. EDT.)
WATCH: Total Eclipse of the Moon.
"Total
lunar eclipses, like the one we're looking forward to on 4 April, are a
slow, ethereal affair and, as usual, we'll have cameras around the
world bringing us live views," Will Gater, an astronomer at the online
Slooh Community Observatory said in a statement. "What better way to
start the day than tuning in to watch this wonderful event."
Slooh will host a live webcast of the total lunar eclipse on the Slooh.com website on Saturday starting at 6 a.m. EDT (1000 GMT) on April 4. The webcast will be available on Space.com, courtesy of Slooh.
This
lunar eclipse will be the third of four eclipses in a lunar eclipse
tetrad. The first occurred in April 2014, with the second rising in
September 2014. The final lunar eclipse in the tetrad will happen on
Sept. 28, according to NASA.
Lunar eclipses occur when the moon
dips into Earth's shadow, casting an occasionally spooky glow on the
natural satellite. A partial phase of an eclipse happens when the moon
passes through the outer part of Earth's shadow, but total lunar
eclipses happen only when the darkest part of the planet's shadow falls
across the lunar surface.
"During the eclipse, the moon often
looks reddish because sunlight has passed through Earth's atmosphere,
which filters out most of its blue light," NASA officials said in a statement. "This eerie, harmless effect has earned the tongue-in-cheek nickname 'blood moon.'"
Eclipse times in Central Daylight Time from Larry Koehn at shadowandsubstance.com. Used with permission.
Unlike
total solar eclipses, lunar eclipses can be seen by anyone on Earth
that can see the moon at the time of the eclipse, Sky & Telescope
added. Total Solar eclipses
— like the one that happened only a couple weeks ago, on March 20 — can
usually only be seen by a small swath of the planet because of the way
the moon, sun and Earth align.
If you have any questions about the
eclipse, you can ask a NASA astronomer via Twitter on Saturday using
the hashtag #eclipse2015 starting at 6 a.m. EDT and lasting through the
end of the eclipse at about 8 a.m. EDT (1200 GMT). - SPACE.
March 24, 2015 - EARTH
- A Swedish scientist claims in a new theory that humanity has exceeded
four of the nine limits for keeping the planet hospitable to modern
life, while another professor told RT Earth may be seeing an impending
human-made extinction of various species.
Environmental science
professor Johan Rockstrom, the executive director of the Stockholm
Resilience Centre in Sweden, argues that there are nine “planetary boundaries” in a new paper published in Science – and human beings have already crossed four of them.
Those
nine include carbon dioxide concentrations, maintaining biodiversity at
90 percent, the use of nitrogen and phosphorous, maintaining 75 percent
of original forests, aerosol emissions, stratospheric ozone depletion,
ocean acidification, fresh water use and the dumping of pollutants.
“The planet has been our best friend by buffering our actions and showing its resilience,” said Rockstrom. “But for the first time ever, we might shift the planet from friend to foe.”
Image from ideas.ted.com
Rockstrom’s
planetary boundary theory was first conceived in 2007. His new paper
reveals that because of climate stability, which began when the Ice Age
ended 11,000 years ago, a planetary calm helped our ancestors to
cultivate wheat, domesticate animals, and launch industrial and
communications revolutions. But those advances have strained the
stability of the planet, and Rockstrom says we have broken four
boundaries: too much nitrogen has been added to ecosystems, too many
forests have been cut down, the climate is changing too quickly and
species are going extinct at too great a rate.
Speaking to RT’s
Ben Swann, Professor of Ethics Bron Taylor from the University of
Florida said that we have accelerated the extinction crisis through
deforestation and ocean acidification, a development which is driving
species to extinction. “[Human] beings have increased, even
from 1925, from 2 billion – which is considered to be a sustainable
population for human beings, according to northern European consumption
standards – to 7.2 billion at this point,” he said.
WATCH: We are looking at the first human-made extinction - environmental scientist.
“What
we have also done is increased the number of domestic animals, the ones
we eat and the ones that are companion animals. We have 4.3 domestic
animals one for every two human beings on the planet. Cultivating the
land they need creates species extinction because where they are, other
organism are not. Where we cut down forests for cattle, other species
are not there."
“We are losing literally tens of thousands of endemic or native species to these trends.”
Professor
Taylor told RT that scientists say we entering the Sixth extinction,
but that this an anthropogenic extinction caused by human beings.
“If you don’t have control over something, there is no moral obligation,” said Taylor. “In
this case, we are doing it. So we have to ask the question: If we are
doing something that is driving species off the planet, are we in some
sense morally culpable?” “What right do we have to drive
[out] other species, who got here in precisely in the same way that we
have, who have participated in the long struggle for existence just as
we have?”
Meanwhile, Professor Rockstrom is using his
planetary boundary theory not as a doomsday message but as analysis to
keep the planet “safe” for humanity. He said nations can cut
their carbon emissions to almost nothing and pull the Earth back across
the climate boundary. “For the first time,” he said, “we have a framework for growth, for eradicating poverty and hunger, and for improving health.” - RT.
The
memory of the cataclysms was erased, not because of lack of written
traditions, but because of some characteristic process that later caused
entire nations, together with their literate men, to read into these
traditions allegories or metaphors where actually cosmic disturbances
were clearly described. - Worlds in Collision, Immanuel Velikovsky. March 24, 2015 - SPACE
- Jupiter’s large orbital journey across the early solar system may
have cleared the way for the oddball arrangement of our planetary
system, scientists say – even to the point of destroying burgeoning
young planets.
Researchers at the California Institute of Technology created a model for the formation of Jupiter and Saturn, dubbed 'Grand Tack,'which
shows Jupiter’s migration towards the sun – the area of the inner solar
system, where planets like Mercury, Venus, Earth and Mars exist – until
Saturn is formed. Saturn’s formation caused Jupiter to reverse course
and migrate outward to its current orbit.
In other exoplanet
systems, there is generally evidence of super-Earths that have formed,
which are planets 10 times the mass of Earth. “[Those planets]
tend to have very thick and massive atmospheres with pressures that
exceed that of the Earth by factors of hundreds, if not thousands,” lead study author Konstanti Batygin, a planetary scientist at Caltech in Pasadena, told Space.com.
Jupiter smashed the solar system like a wrecking ball, study claims.
These
super-Earths are conspicuously absent in our solar system, so
researchers think they may have existed in the inner solar system before
Jupiter’s migration. They theorize that as Jupiter moved inward and
then outward, its gravitational pull would have set off a series of
collisions that smashed the newborn planets to pieces.
“It’s the same thing we worry about if satellites were to be destroyed in low-Earth orbit,” co-author Gregory Laughlin, an astronomer at the University of California, Santa Cruz, said in a statement. “Their
fragments would start smashing into other satellites and you’d risk a
chain reaction of collisions. Our work indicates that Jupiter would have
created just such a collisional cascade in the inner solar system.”
Scientists
say the resulting debris would have mostly spiraled into the sun and
caused a second generation of inner planets to form later from the
depleted material. This could explain why Mercury, Venus, Earth and Mars
are younger than our outer solar system planets, with smaller and with
thinner atmospheres.
“While Earth-mass planets may indeed be
plentiful in the galaxy, truly Earth-like planets, with low atmospheric
pressure and temperatures on the surfaces, are likely an exception to
the rule,” said Batygin. - RT.
March 20, 2015 - SPACE
- People across Europe and other parts of the world gazed with awe skywards on Friday to see a rare type of solar eclipse, which has coincided with other celestial events such as the spring equinox and a supermoon.
Only those in parts of the Artic and the north of Europe were lucky enough to witness the eclipse in its totality. But millions were able to see a partial eclipse in other parts of Europe, North Africa and West Asia.
The rare coincidence of the solar eclipse and the vernal equinox is not expected to occur until the year 2034. The supermoon is a phenomenon, which sees the moon’s position closer to Earth than usual.
However, some viewers of the rare celestial show were disappointed as clouds obscured the sky over Torshavn, the capital of the Faroe Islands.
"It was overcast, there was rain and wind. You could see nothing. It was a disappointment for everybody," Gabor Lantos, a Hungarian tourist, told Reuters. "Some tourists were so irritated, they argued with tour operators, demanding their money back."
Others were more thrilled despite the cloudy weather.
"It was worth coming here from Australia, probably not as good as the 2012 eclipse we saw in Cairns, but still worth coming," said Australian visitor Michael Tonks. Street lights came on automatically as the sky blackened.
Astronomers and onlookers also gathered on Norway’s Svalbard archipelago to watch the eclipse: the sun became almost completely obscured there. "We couldn't ask for more. It was stunning," Ronny Brunvoll, head of the Visit Svalbard organization told Reuters.
WATCH: Supermoon solar eclipse thrills sky gazers.
The event gave scientists a rare opportunity to carry out tests of the solar atmosphere, the corona, the temperature of which is about twice as hot as the sun.
People started booking hotel accommodation at the archipelago in 2008 to see the supermoon eclipse, forcing some tourists to stay in tents despite running the risk of a surprise rendezvous with polar bears.
In places like London and Paris, observers didn’t get much of a sense of darkness, and Patrick Rocher of the IMCCE astronomy institute in France explained that it’s because the sun “still brightens up (the sky) a lot even at 20 percent,” as cited by AFP.
What’s more, clouds covered a big part of Northern Europe, so only a few spots experienced the event in full, one being Berlin.
In Moscow, where the weather was clear, people took to the streets to watch the partial eclipse and could later see the footage of the full eclipse on a big screen in the city center, as well as in the metro by connecting to the system’s WiFi. - RT.
The moment of totality during the solar eclipse (Reuters / Howard Burditt)
March 9, 2015 - EUROPE
- This spring should reward plenty of star-gazers, especially in
Britain, which will experience its deepest solar eclipse in 15 years, as
well as a Supermoon, all at the same time – an event that will sink the
island into twilight for two whole hours.
The Supermoon eclipse,
as the phenomenon is known, is an astronomical alignment where the Moon
is sent on a trajectory between the Sun and the Earth, depriving us of
light. The event will occur on March 20 at around 8:40GMT.
Scotland
will have it best though, with a whopping 98 percent of the sky
darkened, compared to about 85 percent for the south of England. For
best results the Scottish need to look up starting 9:36 am.
Other areas in Britain will only get around 30 percent.
Similar
events took place in 2006, 2008 and 2011, but neither of them can touch
the upcoming Supermoon eclipse, except an event that occurred in 1999.
We’ll
have to wait three years for the next one in 2018. However, only 2026
will present us with a deep solar eclipse once again. As for the
magnitude, it won’t be until 2090 that we get to see anything like the
1999 and upcoming March 20 events.
Whenever particularly striking
displays take place, it is because the Moon is close to the Earth.
According to Dr Edward Bloomer of the Royal Observatory at Greenwich,
the March eclipse will see the Moon closer to us than it has been in
more than 18 years. “The Earth is orbiting around the Sun and
sometimes is slightly closer and sometimes further away, and the Earth
is also wobbling around on its axis,” the Telegraph cites him as saying. “Likewise
the orbit of the Moon around the Earth is elliptical and slightly
tilted so it’s rare for the Sun, Earth and Moon to actually line up,” he also said. And when the Moon’s orbit is as close as possible to the Earth’s, we have a total eclipse, Bloomer explains.
That’s
when the Supermoon appears, and that is what will take place in Britain
in a few days, as our satellite appears to us as an enormous black,
glowing orb, shortly before March 20.
Reuters / Michaela Rehle
The only thing the Brits
have to worry about is weather. It can potentially ruin their viewing
experience, with the possibility of clouds and rain.
But if skies
are clear, another treat for everyone will be the moon itself. With such
proximity and lighting conditions, a pair of binoculars will give the
viewer surface details that could never be seen with the naked eye.
However,
it’s not just the fun factor of such events that is attracting
attention. The Brits are afraid it might cause power grid failures as
well. The National Grid says around 50 percent of power will be lost
throughout the morning hours later in March.
But Britain will
remain relatively unscathed, compared to its European neighbors, where
up to 10 percent of energy is generated sustainably, meaning they depend
more on the sun. According to the UK’s energy body, only 1.5 percent of
power there is generated by solar panels. And since people will be
going out in droves to watch the spectacle, energy consumption should
drop almost at the same time the shortages will strike, it says.
The European Network Transmission System Operators for Electricity says, according to the Independent, “with
the increase of installed photovoltaic energy generation, the risk of
an incident could be serious without appropriate countermeasures.” "Within
30 minutes the solar power production would decrease from 17.5
gigawatts to 6.2GW and then increase again up to 24.6GW. This means that
within 30 minutes the system will have to adapt to a load change of
-10GW to +15GW," said Patrick Graichen, executive director of the
Berlin-based think-tank on renewable energy Agora Energiewende, as cited
by the Financial Times.
While the world is only hearing about the
Supermoon eclipse now, energy companies have been preparing for the
event for months in advance, some in Europe setting up contingency
measures for extracting energy from other power stations.
Experts
predict that precautionary methods will only increase with time, as more
solar energy becomes increasingly commonplace. - RT.
March 2, 2015 - EARTH - The southern season for noctilucent clouds (NLCs) has come to an end. NASA's AIM spacecraft observed the last wisps of electric-blue
over Antarctica on Feb. 20, 2015. The end of the season was no
surprise: The polar clouds always subside in late summer. Looking back
over the entire season, however, reveals something unexpected. In an
8-year plot of Antarctic noctilucent cloud frequencies, the 2014-2015
season is clearly different from the rest:
These
data come from the AIM spacecraft, which was launched in 2007 to
monitor NLCs from Earth orbit. The curves show the abundance
("frequency") of the clouds vs. time for 120 days around every southern
summer solstice for the past 8 years.
"This past season was not like the others,"
notes Cora Randall, a member of the AIM science team and the chair of
the Department of Atmospheric and Oceanic Sciences at the University of
Colorado. "The clouds were much more variable, and there was an
enormous decrease in cloud frequency 15 to 25 days after the summer
solstice. That's when the clouds are usually most abundant."
What does this mean? Previous research shows that NLCs are a sensitive indicator of long-range teleconnections in Earth's atmosphere, which link weather and climate across hemispheres. The strange behavior of noctilucent clouds in 2014-2015 could be a sign of previously unknown linkages."Preliminary
indications are that it is indeed due to inter-hemispheric
teleconnections," says Randall. "We're still analyzing the data, so stay
tuned."
Now attention turns to the northern hemisphere, where
the season for NLCs typically begins in May. Will the northern season
ahead be as strangely variable as the southern season, just concluded?
Says Randall, "I can't wait to find out."
Boosting the chances
of auroras even more is a high-speed solar wind stream waiting on the
other side of the heliospheric current sheet. The wind is flowing from a
coronal hole on the sun, shown in this extreme UV image from NASA's
Solar Dynamics Observatory:
Coronal
holes are places in the sun's atmosphere where the sun's magnetic field
opens up, allowing hot gas to escape. In the image, above, the magnetic
field is traced by curved white lines. Arrows show where the solar wind
is escaping along open field lines. Forecasters expect the gassy stream
to reach Earth on Feb. 28-March 1. Keep an eye on the realtime photo gallery for aurora sightings this weekend. - Space Weather.
Nearly 90 per cent of the sun's rays will be blocked out in parts of Europe on March 20.
In London and the South East, 85 per cent of the sun will be obscured by the moon whilst in northern Scotland, more than 95 per cent will be covered.
The National Grid has warned that solar power output in Britain will halve during the event.
It
is unlikely to cause problems as so little electricity comes from solar
power im the UK but other parts of Europe come be plunged into
darkness.
Eclipse map courtesy of Fred Espenak - NASA/Goddard Space Flight Center
The European Network Transmission System Operators for Electricity said: "The risk of incident cannot be completely ruled out. Solar eclipses have happened before but with the increase of installed photovoltaic energy generation, the risk of an incident could be serious without appropriate countermeasures."
The organisation said it had been planning for months so that suppliers across Europe provide more energy from other power stations during the hours that solar energy supplies are hit. Patrick Graichen, executive director of Agora Energiewende, a renewable energy think-tank in Berlin, said such events might become problematic in the future as more solar farms are built.
He told the Financial Times: "In a way March 20 is a glimpse into the future of our power systems."
The eclipse will last around two hours from 8.40am. The next one will not be until 2026.
February 25, 2015 - SPACE
- NASA has captured the unexpected trajectory of a comet in a 15-second
space video as it whizzed around the sun within 2.2 million miles (3.54
million km) of its blazing hot surface.
Discovered by NASA’s
Solar and Heliospheric Observatory (SOHO), Comet 2,875 is interesting
for two reasons. Firstly, it is not part of any known family of comets.
Most comets seen by SOHO belong to the Kreutz family – a single comet
that breaks into smaller comets the closer they moved towards the sun.
Secondly, most comets that come close to the sun, called sungrazers, do
not survive as they are evaporated by the intense heat. The action of
comet 2,875 was caught on February 18–21.
WATCH: SOHO sees its 2,875 comet.
The video shows the
comet approaching from the right side of the frame, circling the sun and
emerging on the other side. The sun spits out a coronal mass ejection
near the end for extra dramatic effect. "There's a half-decent chance that ground observers might be able to detect it in the coming weeks," Karl Battams, a solar scientist at the Naval Research Lab in Washington, DC, said in a released statement.
"But it's also possible that events during its trip around the sun will cause it to die fairly fast."
Comets
are icy bodies, regarded as fossils from when the solar system was
originating, and they could provide scientists with some of the
primordial material. When passing close to the sun, they heat up and
begin to outgas, displaying a visible atmosphere or coma, and sometimes
also a tail. These phenomena are due to the effects of solar radiation
and the solar wind upon the nucleus of the comet.
WATCH: Why are we seeing so many sungrazing comets.
The space drama
was captured as part of NASA’s SOHO project – a collaboration between
the European Space Agency and NASA. Launched in 1995, the project is
designed to study the internal structure of the sun, its outer
atmosphere and the origin of solar wind – the ionized gas that blows
throughout the solar system. The project has become the number one comet
finder, charting over 2500 comets sightings since observations began. -
RT.
February 24, 2015 - NORTH AMERICA - A blaze of light seen across Utah skies at around 10:55 Monday night was likely not a meteor, according to a local expert.
The fireball set off a barrage of calls from around the state to police dispatch, the Salt Lake City International Airport, and The Salt Lake Tribune, but the FAA said it was not a manned aircraft, and NASA/JPL Solar System Ambassador Patrick Wiggins told The Tribune that he's "95 percent sure" that what people saw was the re-entry of a Chinese rocket body used to launch the satellite Yaogan Weixing-26 in December.
Not, as many assumed, a meteor.
Wiggins said he became dubious when people said they watched the flight of a meteor for such an extended period.
"No meteor takes minutes to go across the sky, with very, very rare exception, so that got me thinking satellites," he said.
Images from social media:
Wiggins subscribes to a service that alerts him to upcoming re-entries, and sure enough, that was a possible window for the rocket body's return to Earth.
"These happen all the time," he said. "There are literally thousands upon thousands of satellites orbiting the earth right now."
Most re-entries go unnoticed because most of the Earth is relatively unpopulated, he said.
Descriptions of the fireball varied from witnesses in Utah up north into Canada. Wiggins said that's likely because the rocket body's lighter materials burn more efficiently upon initial re-entry.
On Tuesday, NASA put the final nail in the it's-not-a-meteor coffin.
"What folks in your area saw last night was not a meteor but the reentry of a Chinese rocket body, which was launched into a 97-degree inclination orbit back on December 27 of last year," said Bill Cooke of the Meteoroid Environments Office at the Marshall Space Flight Center. - The Salt Lake Tribune.
WATCH: Giant fireball lights up parts of North America.
NASA: Impressive fireball over Idaho, western skies was falling rocket body
Sky gazers in Montana, Idaho, Utah and Alberta, Canada, took to Twitter and Instagram late Monday night to share photos and sightings of what many thought was a meteorite lighting up the sky.
"Nutty, was not expecting that ... even called the non-emergency dispatch to make sure everything was OK." — Jordan T. of Eagle, Idaho, in report to American Meteor Society. Sighting at 11 p.m. MST Monday.
A NASA official says the fireball was a rocket body used in the December launch of the Yaogan Weixing-26, a Chinese satellite.
"This is the most pronounced fireball I have ever seen in person," said Harry T. of Grangeville, Idaho, in report to American Meteor Society. Sighting at 10 p.m. PST Monday.
"I have never seen anything of this magnitude and brightness nor duration in my lifetime; it was quite spectacular, Incredible really! Many people must have seen this one! Wow!" — Michael B. of Pendleton, Ore., in report to American Meteor Society. Sighting 10 p.m. Monday PST.
"Most amazing celestial event I have ever seen." — Maples G. of Garden Valley, Idaho, in report to American Meteor Society. Sighting at 10:55 p.m. Monday MST. - Idaho Statesman.
CHINESE ROCKET RE-ENTRY
Last
night, Feb. 23-24, sky watchers in the western half of North America
witnessed a spectacular cluster of fireballs and meteors. We now know it
was the re-entry and breakup of a Chinese rocket body, specifically
stage 3 of the CZ-4B rocket that launched the Yaogan Weixing 26 satellite in Dec. 2014. Donny Mott photographed the glowing debris from Spirit Lake, Idaho:
Mott
was watching last night's display of auroras around 10 pm local time
when the fragments flew by. "It was super bright," he says. "You can see
it breaking up in these 4 images I took 10 seconds apart."
Another photographer, John Arnold, caught the meteor flying over Craig, Montana: photos.
According to satellite tracking expert Ted Molczan, "there are confirmed sightings
from Arizona, Utah, Nevada, Wyoming, Idaho, Oregon, Washington,
Montana, British Columbia, Alberta. The most southerly observation I
have noted so far was from Scottsdale, Arizona; the most northerly from
Didsbury, Alberta. That spans nearly 3000 km of the descent." Molczan
has prepared a map of sightings along with the ground track of the
decaying rocket body:
The
re-entering rocket body traveled from south to north. Molczan says "the
approximate toe of the debris footprint (should any have survived to
impact Earth) would be well into Canada." - Space Weather.
February 23, 2015 - FLORIDA, UNITED STATES - Another huge fireball has been observed disintegrating in the sky of Florida on February 22, 2015.
And there were unusually high number of sonic reports associated with it. So it was pretty significant!
While conditions are favorable for meteor observing during this period, hourly rates are expected to be low, especially from the northern hemisphere.
But sometimes during these calm periods, a large space bolide can suddenly break up baffling people with its sonic booms and loud rumbles… This is what actually occurred over Florida tonight!
The fireball lights up the sky after 40s of video:
WATCH: Huge fireball lights up Florida skies.
Here’s a sampling of some sonic booms pending reports from American Meteor Society. It looks like Lake City, Florida got most of it:
“windows and walls shook along with a loud pop and boom”
Lindsey E, Lake City, Florida
“Sonic Boom, shook the house”
Andrew C, Lake City, Florida
“Spoke with a friend who lives about 10 miles west of my location who was outside when he saw the sky light up and turned to the east to see a large “falling star” break apart and almost explode he said it was the biggest and most intense he has ever seen and it was headed east toward Lake City Florida he also heard a loud boom that shook his garage he said it sounded like blasting at a quarry”
Zach W, Lake City, Florida
Very cool! I’m in Sarasota, Florida and saw that people just a few miles from me made a report. I just moved into an apartment a few months ago and heard a loud noise overhead that sounded like a jet airplane while I was watching a movie. Why so significant?
The more sonic reports indicates a deeper penetrating object into our atmosphere. Back to back huge fireball events with a high percentage of sonic reports is very rare, going back years probably, if ever within this short of period of time. For example, the biggest fireball in AMS records was on December 29th of last year, and that event had 1% of reports with sound. Huge fireballs do tend to happen in clusters. In the past year if there was a huge fireball, there was an 80% of 1 or more within the next 5 days. There was the huge meteor event on the 17th of February. The one on the 17th with reports still coming in looks to be the highest % of sonic reports for an event that size since September 2013.
There hasn’t been a really big meteorite fall in the US since the one Park Forest, Il in 2003. It damaged several buildings. Here’s what that one looked like coming in:
WATCH: Meteorite captured by four cameras over Chicago.
And now from Twitter:
“I did see it. It lit up the sky. Shook the house. Folks all the way to Gainesville and Lake City did also”
“Heard a big boom METEOR HIT SHOOK HOUSE”
“Y’all have any word on the meteor that shook my house about 30 minutes ago in Macclenny?”
“idk where ellisville is but I live in jacksonville and heard it it shook my house”
“my whole house shook ! Someone said it was a meteor !”
“My dog fell of the couch and shook the whole house”
“a meteor did just hit about 40 minutes ago EST near Lake City FL”
“So what’s all this talk about a meteor falling in lake city? Talk about a boom!”
“Interwebz rumor that the boom heard across north #Florida was a #meteor”
“that meteor had to of taken out like 4 families, it was so big”
“So a meteor just hit close by our house #nojoke #NEFlorida #houseshookviolently”
“heard it was a meteor and it hit in ellisville”
“Pretty sure a #meteor just hit near by here in north Florida”
“idk but it was like the coolest thing! i saw the sky light up then saw the meteor, i wonder where it hit”
“I think I just saw a #meteor fall. It had to hit the ground.”
February 22, 2015 - SPACE - Astronomers are puzzling over a comet that passed "insanely close" to the sun on Feb. 19th. At first glance it appeared to be a small object, not much bigger than a comet-boulder, doomed to disintegrate in the fierce heat. Instead, it has emerged apparently intact and is actually brightening as it recedes from the sun.
Here's a post-flyby movie recorded on Feb. 20th by the Solar and Heliospheric Observatory (SOHO):
Unofficially, the icy visitor is being called "SOHO-2875," because it is SOHO's 2,875th comet discovery.
Karl Battams of the Naval Research Lab explains what's odd about SOHO-2875: "It's a 'non-group comet,' meaning that it does not appear to be related to any other comet or comet family that we have on record."
Most comets that SOHO sees belong to the Kreutz family. Kreutz sungrazers are fragments from the breakup of a single giant comet many centuries ago. They get their name from 19th century German astronomer Heinrich Kreutz, who studied them in detail. SOHO-2875, however, is not one of those fragments.
"Non-group comets like this appear a few times a year, so in that sense it's not too unusual," continues Battams. "But this one is relatively bright. The big question most people will have now is, Can I see it, or will I be able to see it, from Earth? At first I thought the answer was no. But I am very pleasantly surprised--shocked in fact! The comet has brightened dramatically and now is sporting an increasingly impressive tail. Visibility from Earth in a few weeks is no longer out of the question, although I still wouldn't put money on it."
The meteor was seen at 4:45 a.m. from parts of Pennsylvania, Ohio and New York, according to a NASA blog.
The bright fireball was seen on NASA cameras and posted to YouTube by
the meteor society. The video below comes from the Allegheny Observatory
near Pittsburgh, the NASA blog says.
February 17, 2015 - NEW YORK, UNITED STATES - While most of us were sleeping Tuesday morning, something bright streaked across the skies.
Now, NASA's Meteoroid Environments Office confirms the fireball that
many Western New Yorkers reported seeing around 4:50 a.m. Tuesday
morning.
Bill Cooke, the lead person at the Meteoroid
Environments Office, says the meteor was seen over Ohio, New York and
Pennsylvania.
Currently, the American Meteor Society shows on
its website dozens of self-reported logs from people who submitted
reports that they saw the meteor.
Those are currently considered
"pending" logs and have yet to be reviewed. At least two of them are
from WNY including reports from Lockport and Cheektowaga.
WATCH: Fiery meteor sighting over Western New York.
And there were unusually high number of sonic reports associated with it. So it was pretty significant!
While conditions are favorable for meteor observing during this period, hourly rates are expected to be low, especially from the northern hemisphere.
But sometimes during these calm periods, a large space bolide can suddenly break up baffling people with its sonic booms and loud rumbles… This is what actually occurred over Florida tonight!
The fireball lights up the sky after 40s of video:
WATCH: Huge fireball lights up Florida skies.
Here’s a sampling of some sonic booms pending reports from American Meteor Society. It looks like Lake City, Florida got most of it:
“windows and walls shook along with a loud pop and boom”
Lindsey E, Lake City, Florida
“Sonic Boom, shook the house”
Andrew C, Lake City, Florida
“Spoke with a friend who lives about 10 miles west of my location who was outside when he saw the sky light up and turned to the east to see a large “falling star” break apart and almost explode he said it was the biggest and most intense he has ever seen and it was headed east toward Lake City Florida he also heard a loud boom that shook his garage he said it sounded like blasting at a quarry”
Zach W, Lake City, Florida
Very cool! I’m in Sarasota, Florida and saw that people just a few miles from me made a report. I just moved into an apartment a few months ago and heard a loud noise overhead that sounded like a jet airplane while I was watching a movie.
Why so significant?
The more sonic reports indicates a deeper penetrating object into our atmosphere. Back to back huge fireball events with a high percentage of sonic reports is very rare, going back years probably, if ever within this short of period of time. For example, the biggest fireball in AMS records was on December 29th of last year, and that event had 1% of reports with sound. Huge fireballs do tend to happen in clusters. In the past year if there was a huge fireball, there was an 80% of 1 or more within the next 5 days. There was the huge meteor event on the 17th of February. The one on the 17th with reports still coming in looks to be the highest % of sonic reports for an event that size since September 2013.
There hasn’t been a really big meteorite fall in the US since the one Park Forest, Il in 2003. It damaged several buildings. Here’s what that one looked like coming in:
WATCH: Meteorite captured by four cameras over Chicago.
And now from Twitter:
“I did see it. It lit up the sky. Shook the house. Folks all the way to Gainesville and Lake City did also”
“Heard a big boom METEOR HIT SHOOK HOUSE”
“Y’all have any word on the meteor that shook my house about 30 minutes ago in Macclenny?”
“idk where ellisville is but I live in jacksonville and heard it it shook my house”
“my whole house shook ! Someone said it was a meteor !”
“My dog fell of the couch and shook the whole house”
“a meteor did just hit about 40 minutes ago EST near Lake City FL”
“So what’s all this talk about a meteor falling in lake city? Talk about a boom!”
“Interwebz rumor that the boom heard across north #Florida was a #meteor”
“that meteor had to of taken out like 4 families, it was so big”
“So a meteor just hit close by our house #nojoke #NEFlorida #houseshookviolently”
“heard it was a meteor and it hit in ellisville”
“Pretty sure a #meteor just hit near by here in north Florida”
“idk but it was like the coolest thing! i saw the sky light up then saw the meteor, i wonder where it hit”
“I think I just saw a #meteor fall. It had to hit the ground.”
So it seems there would be a good chance that pieces of this meteor are going to be found. Did you also hear it?
- Strange Sounds.