Near-Earth objects and close calls

From spaceweather.com:

"
BRIGHT FIREBALL RATTLES THE EASTERN USA: This morning just after 2 a.m. EDT, sonic booms rolled across the eastern USA, shaking buildings hard enough to wake observers. Sky watchers looked up and saw a brilliant fireball tearing itself apart overhead. Amateur astronomer Bill Stewart of Ceredo, West Virginia, was outside on his rooftop observatory and accidentally videoed his own reaction to the booming flash:


"It was at 2:13 a.m.," says Stewart. "The fireball made two audible booms. After one bright flash it broke into 3 distinct fragments. One remained bright as it descended below the horizon. It could have possibly touched down although I didn’t hear it impact."

The American Meteor Society has collected more than 65 eyewitness reports from 9 US states. The fireball first appeared over Ohio, streaked south, then petered out over Georgia. Observers said "it flashed like lightning," "it shook my house," and "I've never seen anything like it."

There are currently three active meteor showers capable of producing bright fireballs: The Perseids, Alpha Capricornids, and Southern Delta Aquariids. However, the fireball's path through the sky doesn't match any of those showers.

It may have been a random meteoroid--also known as a "sporadic." Random meteoroids hit Earth all the time as our planet plows through old clouds of comet dust and asteroid debris, which litter interplanetary space. On any dark night you can see a handful of bright sporadics. This fireball, however, may be exceptional. According to NASA statistics, sporadic fireballs exceeding supermoon brightness disintegrate in Earth's atmosphere no more than once every year or so. "
 
A new threat to Earth: a meteor swarm of Taurids is approaching

The Earth is facing a new threat from outer space - the "meteor swarm of Taurids". This is a vast cloud of debris left after the collapse of a comet, which can cause catastrophic collisions. Researchers warn that in November 2032, the Earth will pass right through this swarm, which could have serious consequences.

The Earth will pass right through the meteor shower, which quite possibly caused the Noah's Flood and wiped out North America and Europe.

A swarm of Taurids is the remnants of a comet that fall into the Earth's orbital path and cause meteor showers. However, the Taurids are an unusually large cloud of debris, probably associated with comet 2P/Encke. Scientists believe that these fragments may be the cause of catastrophic events on Earth that occur once every 1,000 years.

The Earth passes relatively close (at a distance of about 30,000,000 km from its center) to a swarm of Taurids twice a year. These events trigger the Beta Taurids meteor shower from June 5 to July 18, followed by the Northern and Southern Taurids meteor showers at the end of October. These events are not dangerous yet, but the proximity of the Earth to the epicenter of the flow is critically important, because, according to forecasts, our planet will pass directly through the "swarm of Taurids" in November 2032. There are reasons to assume that we should be ready for something serious...

Historical evidence confirms the danger of a swarm of Taurids. He was probably responsible for the famous "Tunguska Event" in 1908, when a huge area of the Siberian forest was destroyed. And it was just one rather large fragment from the wreckage of the Taurid swarm. It is also believed that the Taurid swarm may be associated with the Ice Age 11,000 years ago and the fall of the Tagish Lake meteorite in Canada. It is not difficult to imagine what will happen when our planet enters the mainstream.

Scientists from the Western Meteor Physics Group are conducting research to determine the potential danger of a swarm of Taurids. They used computer simulations and the Canada-France-Hawaii telescope to observe and study this swarm. Their goal is to detect large objects that may pose a threat to the Earth in 2032.

David Clark, a graduate student and the first author of the study, notes that the results of the study aroused great interest in the space community. This allows you to prepare for the possible consequences of a collision of the Earth with a swarm of Taurids.

We have less than 9 years left until "hour X", but the closer we get to the swarm of debris, the more often meteorites will fall on our planet and the larger they will be. Now the Earth is already experiencing an increase in the number of meteorites falling on it. They fall almost daily, and the increase in their number is indicated by a simple fact - silvery clouds that usually shine only over the North Pole, but already this year they are observed all over the world where they did not exist before, including over the entire territory of Russia. What does silvery clouds have to do with it? They are formed from the dust of meteorites burned in the earth's atmosphere. Most of them fall into the ocean, because our planet is essentially a water world where most of the territory is the ocean.

However, large meteorites are entering the earth's atmosphere more and more often in 2023. Some reach the surface in the form of debris. Of recent cases, we can note the explosion of a meteorite and the fall of a fragment on a woman sitting on the veranda of her house and the explosion of a meteorite on August 2 this year in the sky over the United States comparable in power to the explosion of two tons of TNT.

Calmness in the information field regarding this threat is easily explained, it is enough to watch the recently released film "Don't look up!", it is very well shown there.
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earth-chronicles.ru

Новая угроза для Земли: метеорный рой Таурид приближается

Земля столкнулась с новой угрозой из космоса - "метеорный рой Таурид". Это обширное облако обломков, оставшихся после распада кометы, которое может вызвать катастрофические столкновения. Исследователи предупреждают, что в ноябре 2032 года З
earth-chronicles.ru earth-chronicles.ru
 
Tristan said:
www.dailymail.co.uk

Melbourne meteor: Loud boom and 'earthquake' felt after 'comet' seen

Shortly after midnight, residents took to Twitter to say they had felt the Earth move - while others posted pictures of something glowing in the night's sky.
www.dailymail.co.uk www.dailymail.co.uk

https://twitter.com/x/status/1688614057379770377
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We heard/felt the "earthquake"(?), though did not see the object.. Apparently it was space debris from a Soyuz rocket, and people are saying the bang was a sonic boom.. It didn't feel like recent earthquakes we've had. Wish I'd seen the thing! Looks freaky..

www.skynews.com.au

‘Coolest thing I’ve ever seen’: Mysterious object lights up Melbourne sky

Victorians enjoyed a rare sight overnight as a bright object streaked across the sky, with many speculating whether it was a meteor, comet or space junk.
www.skynews.com.au www.skynews.com.au
 
From Spaceweather.com, a picture combining photos of the 2023 Perseid's meteors :
(early this morning I saw 2 in just a few minutes)

"
PERSEID METEOR RECAP:
The annual perseid meteor shower peaked over the weekend with maximum rates near 75 meteors per hour, according to the International Meteor Organization. Juan Carlos Casado photographed more than 50 of them from Sant Llorenç de la Muga, Girona, Spain:


​


"This image is a composite that summarizes the maximum of 2023 Perseid meteor shower," says Casado. "I took more than 1200 photos, which I examined one by one to extract the Perseid meteors. When combining the photos, I compensated for Earth's rotation to show the effect of a radiant located in the constellation Perseus."

"In the forground is the medieval town of Sant Llorenç de la Muga," he continues. "Sant Llorenç in Catalan means Saint Lawrence, and the Perseids are known in Spain as the 'tears of Saint Lawrence' in memory of the martyr who is commemorated on August 10 of each year."

more images: from Dan Bush of Albany, Missouri; from Jeremy Perez of Lake Mary, Arizona; ; from Radu Anghel of Motoseni, Romania; from Martin McKenna of Lough Fea, N. Ireland; from Craig Heden of Cottonwood, California ; from James Champagne of Logan, Utah; "
 
Had to share this. A friend sent it to me on the night of august 12, after our family had gone to the local observatory to watch the Perseids.

www.fox17online.com

'It was just insanity': Loud, mysterious boom lights up West Michigan skies

As families prepared for bed late Thursday night, streaks of light lit up the skies of West Michigan. Hundreds of people online reported hearing or seeing the event.
www.fox17online.com www.fox17online.com

The article cracked me up - the writer did so much work to lie. To summarize, it says that bright light and loud boom certainly wasn’t a meteor. Perseid meteors, you see, don’t do that. Some meteors DO do that, though, and if you want to see meteors the sky is full of them tonight :lol2:

What caught me more off-guard though, was my friend, who discussed the meteor shower viewing with me, and then sent me this asking “did they ever find out what this was??”

Can’t wait for the Taurids.
 

​

Cyberattack shutters major NSF-funded telescopes for more than 2 weeks.​

A mysterious “cyber incident” at a National Science Foundation (NSF) center coordinating international astronomy efforts has knocked out of commission major telescopes in Hawaii and Chile since the beginning of August. Officials have halted all operations at 10 telescopes, and at a few others only in-person observations can be conducted.​

With no clear resolution to the shutdown in sight, research teams are uniting to figure out alternatives as critical observation windows spin out of reach. Given remote control of many telescopes is no longer available, some groups may rush graduate students to Chile to relieve exhausted on-site staff who have spent the past 2 weeks directly operating instruments there.

“We’re all in this together,” says Gautham Narayan, an astronomer at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign whose team is trying to save its chance to observe new supernovas using one of the affected Chilean telescopes. The astronomy community has a “grim determination to press on, despite the trying circumstances,” he adds.

NOIRLab, the NSF-run coordinating center for ground-based astronomy, first announced the detection of an apparent cyberattack on its Gemini North telescope in Hilo, Hawaii, in a 1 August press release. Whatever happened may have placed the instrument in physical jeopardy. “Quick reactions by the NOIRLab cyber security team and observing teams prevented damage to the observatory,” the center’s release said.

In response to the incident, NOIRLab powered down all operations at the International Gemini Observatory, which runs the Hilo telescope and its twin, Gemini South, on Cerro Pachón mountain in Chile. (The latter was already offline for a planned outage.) Together, the two 8.1-meter telescopes have revealed vast swaths of celestial wonders—from the birth of supernovae to the closest known black hole to Earth.

Normally, NOIRLab’s computer systems let astronomers remotely operate a variety of other optical ground-based telescopes. But on 9 August the center announced it had also disconnected its computer network from the Mid-Scale Observatories (MSO) network on Cerro Tololo and Cerro Pachón in Chile. This action additionally made remote observations impossible at the Víctor M. Blanco 4-meter and SOAR telescopes. NOIRLab has stopped observations at eight other affiliated telescopes in Chile as well.

NOIRLab has provided few further details about the matter, even to employees. The center declined to answer Science’s query on whether the incident was a ransomware attack, in which hackers demand money for the return of information or control of a facility. A NOIRLab spokesperson tells Science that the center’s information technology staff is “working around the clock to get the telescopes back into the sky.” ​

Narayan praises NOIRLab’s “exemplary” response, and he and other astronomers express sympathy for the center. “I assume the challenges they’re facing are bigger than me not getting observations,” says Luis Welbanks, an astronomy postdoc at Arizona State University. But the longer the shutdowns last, the more anxious astronomers are getting. Multiple international projects, as well as doctoral theses and papers under development, depend on data from the telescopes.
Ground-based astronomical research often depends on observations precisely timed for when extraterrestrial objects align with the field of view for specific telescopes. Astronomers try to plan for various delays—anything from bad weather to a power outage or a cracked mirror can bump a project down a queue—but hackers have not typically figured into their calculations. “We’re lucky enough to make it through a regular night,” Welbanks says. “But now we have to consider the cybersecurity implications.”
Welbanks relies on high-resolution images from Gemini South to study the atmospheres of exoplanets; the shutdown has already caused him to miss three of his seven observation windows this year. Many colleagues, he says, are managing similar losses. Welbanks emphasizes the wider astronomy community may be “doomed” if the telescopes don’t resume operations: A unique spectrograph, capable of characterizing the atmospheres of far-away planets, is currently mounted on Gemini South, but scheduled to move to a smaller northern telescope in May 2024. If Gemini South doesn’t start up soon and the device transfer happens as planned, astronomers will—for the foreseeable future—lose their chance at valuable spectral data from the southern half of the sky.
For early-career researchers like Welbanks, a yearlong delay could be particularly harmful. “When people are like, ‘Oh, where’s the data?’ Then I’ll have to say, ‘Well, I don’t have any data because a hacker somewhere took down the computer,’” he says with a rueful laugh. “I don’t know if any hiring committee will be sympathetic to that.”
With limited options, NOIRLab staff are going “well above and beyond the call of duty” to keep projects going, Narayan says. As a temporary workaround to the lack of remote observing, some on-site staff at the Blanco and SOAR telescopes have stepped up to help researchers implement their observations at available telescopes. But NOIRLab has noted in an internal email that this model is not sustainable—hence the discussions about dispatching graduate students to Chile so in-person observations can continue.
Cybersecurity experts are perplexed as to why Gemini North was the target. “Quite possibly, the attacker doesn’t even know they are attacking an observatory,” says Von Welch, retired lead of the NSF Cybersecurity Center of Excellence.
He and others say the episode is another wake-up call for the astronomy community. In November 2022, the Atacama Large Millimeter Array radio telescope in Chile also went dark for nearly2 months as its staff scrambled to respond to a cyberattack. However, Welch also acknowledges the unique security challenges faced by international research institutions such as NOIRLab. Unlike independent private companies or banks, for example, who can easily isolate their systems, the very nature of astronomical research is open access and collaborative. “A best practice would be to firewall everything off,” Welch says. “But it’s like, well, no, you just broke all the scientific workflows.”
Despite lack of clarity over how the Gemini North and NOIRLab systems were compromised, astronomers say they are motivated by this latest attack to improve cybersecurity practices at their facilities. Narayan says the whole astronomical community needs to rethink how it manages its identity and access software—and understand how damaging something as simple as a lost password can be.
“It doesn’t help if you build the strongest, most impenetrable fortress in the world, if you forget to lock even a single door or window,” says Patrick Lin, who leads an NSF-funded space cybersecurity grant at California Polytechnic State University. “The weakest link is often with us, the humans.”

https://www.science.org/content/art...ters-major-nsf-funded-telescopes-more-2-weeks
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Somebody obviously does not want humanity to know what is out there🤔
 
Antony said:
Somebody obviously does not want humanity to know what is out there🤔
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Antony said:
The Earth is facing a new threat from outer space - the "meteor swarm of Taurids". This is a vast cloud of debris left after the collapse of a comet, which can cause catastrophic collisions. Researchers warn that in November 2032, the Earth will pass right through this swarm, which could have serious consequences.
Click to expand...
Saw this in the wave book 7 p. 26:

“We also note that the much derided Immanuel Velikovsky, in his book Worlds in Collision, gives a time frame of nine years as the time it would take for a comet to cover the distance between Jupiter and Earth…”
 
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