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Showing posts with label Texas fireball. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Texas fireball. Show all posts

Feb 16, 2009

Weekend Skies: Fireballs and Sonic Booms

Space Weather News for Feb 16, 2009

WEEKEND FIREBALLS: A daylight fireball over Texas on Sunday, Feb 15, triggered widespread reports that debris from a recent satellite collision was falling to Earth. Those reports were premature. Researchers have studied video of the event and concluded that the object was more likely a natural meteoroid about one meter wide traveling more than 20 km/s--much faster than orbital debris. Meteoroids hit Earth every day, and the Texas fireball was apparently one of them.

There's more: On Friday, Feb 13, people in central Kentucky heard loud booms, felt their houses shake, and saw a fireball streaking through the sky. This occurred scant hours after another fireball at least 10 times brighter than a full Moon lit up the sky over Italy.

Although it is tempting to attribute these events to debris from the Feb 10 collision of the Iridium 33 and Kosmos 2251 satellites, the Kentucky and Italy fireballs also seem to be meteoroids, not manmade objects.

Italian scientists are studying the ground track of their fireball, which was recorded by multiple cameras, and they will soon begin to hunt for meteorites.

Videos, eye-witness reports and more information about these events may be found at SpaceWeather.com.

~:~

Ah, yes, apparently the fireballs are only meteoroids - not to fret, silly Earthlings!

But if you'd like an example of more fireball, sonic boom, and earthquake - yes, earthquake - reports, click Leuren Moret's article link and scroll about halfway down to the section on the Aum Shinrikyo Sect for eye-witness accounts from May 28, 1993. It's instructive and shows what certain experiments can cause in our skies.

Aren't fireballs and sonic booms occurring rather frequently these days? And 'satellite debris' from the Feb 10 'collision' being semi-portrayed as the possible cause of these mysterious celestial events may be only a smokescreen to muddy the issue...for how would we know any differently?