Near-Earth objects and close calls

Was out walking the dog 4 nights ago when, looking up, I noticed a fireball streaking across the sky with a rather long tail trailing behind. The neo wasn't particularly bright or close but still pretty hard to miss if one happened to be looking up at the time. This was in Western North Carolina, btw. Didn't see anything reported about it the following day when I checked.

This is the third fireball I've ever scene with the naked eye. The first two were brighter and disappeared in close to a flash after seeing them. I imagine there will be a time when spotting one of these will become much more commonplace, and less "oh wow!" But in the meantime, they still maintain their 'novelty' for me and a good reminder of what's in the process of occurring (along with the Earth Changes videos and SOTT coverage).

A good place to check on, and report, sightings is American Meteor Society Report a Fireball: it's fun and easy! it's relatively quick and the interface is very user friendly.

I saw my first proper meteor-fireball in France a few years back and, whilst i didn't see it reported on the news or social media, it was logged onto AMS by quite a few people.

I added my report on AMS and it was very easy to do and quite forgiving considering i'm not particularly tech savvy, nor would i consider myself to be comfortable with measurements used for reporting that kind of thing.

They ask for basic information like the time, location, the colour/s of the fireball, length of time that it was visible, as well as the declination in the sky. A photograph of the fireball is not necessary. It was interesting to read what details of the same sighting others had reported.
 
A good place to check on, and report, sightings is American Meteor Society Report a Fireball: it's fun and easy! it's relatively quick and the interface is very user friendly.

Cool site. It has a nice stats page that breaks down the number of events seen by the ranges of the number of folks who reported in. And all this broken down by year as one can see in the screenshot below. It would be interesting to know just how much of an increase there's been in the number of these things entering the atmosphere over the past however many years given the fact that the increase in reporting can have as much to do with ever greater public awareness, and use of, reporting sites such as this one. (Didn't see any mention of one when I saw mine, btw, and may enter the info for that).


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TBS: Residents of the Japanese prefecture of Okinawa saw objects similar to fireballs in the sky.

Residents of the Japanese prefecture of Okinawa on the evening of May 10 saw unknown objects in the sky, similar to fireballs or meteorites, the TBS TV channel reports.

These items were visible from different parts of the region. They glowed brightly and flew across the sky for several seconds. One of the eyewitnesses said that he saw how the "meteorite" burned for about 20 seconds, and then disappeared into the evening sky.

According to the Okinawa Meteorological Observatory, so far no weather anomalies have been confirmed. The Japanese Defense Ministry said it had no information about the launch of military reconnaissance satellites from North Korea.


Video 👇on rbc:

To me it looks like re-entry of some human made spacecraft/part of it🧐
 
Cool site. It has a nice stats page that breaks down the number of events seen by the ranges of the number of folks who reported in. And all this broken down by year as one can see in the screenshot below. It would be interesting to know just how much of an increase there's been in the number of these things entering the atmosphere over the past however many years given the fact that the increase in reporting can have as much to do with ever greater public awareness, and use of, reporting sites such as this one. (Didn't see any mention of one when I saw mine, btw, and may enter the info for that).


View attachment 74220

You can find exactly such an analysis starting here, and in particular the fireball data above, in this post:

Zooming in, arriving at earth...

For the first time, 2022 has broken all records, in all departments. Fireballs!

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Which looks like this in numbers:

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Japan data is not available yet and will be added as soon as it is out.
 
TBS: Residents of the Japanese prefecture of Okinawa saw objects similar to fireballs in the sky.

Residents of the Japanese prefecture of Okinawa on the evening of May 10 saw unknown objects in the sky, similar to fireballs or meteorites, the TBS TV channel reports.

These items were visible from different parts of the region. They glowed brightly and flew across the sky for several seconds. One of the eyewitnesses said that he saw how the "meteorite" burned for about 20 seconds, and then disappeared into the evening sky.

According to the Okinawa Meteorological Observatory, so far no weather anomalies have been confirmed. The Japanese Defense Ministry said it had no information about the launch of military reconnaissance satellites from North Korea.


Video 👇on rbc:

To me it looks like re-entry of some human made spacecraft/part of it🧐


Experts are not yet able to accurately determine the origin of these objects and their nature. The trajectory of the movement was not like a comet or a meteor, and the fiery tail was longer than that of an ordinary meteor. Scientists continue to study the data and analyze photo and video materials to find out what it really was.

3 more videos:
 
The fireball data for Japan has been published now. So, it looks like 2022 was also the busiest year on the record over Japan in terms of fireballs, in the same way it was the busiest over the US:

[...]

Update 14.05.2023:

Japan data has been published and it looks like this:

View attachment 74336
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Which looks like this in numbers:

View attachment 74337
 
I had a recent dream (as many others have had) where the scene opens to a 180-degree view of the chain of snow-capped mountains in the distance with rolling foothills in the foreground and what appears to be very early dawn.

As I viewed the panoramic vista my attention was suddenly drawn to my right high above the snow-topped mountains as a small (high-atmospheric skimming) meteor fireball broke the vista at an incredible speed. Covering 180 degrees view faster than I can turn my head, and leaving a thin glowing plum of white light in its wake. Just like Red SPMN's recent capture below.

For a half-heartbeat after thinking about the vision it almost moved like a Hypersonic missile. But the head of the meteor had no visible hardware just a flaming sphere at its head moving at Mach speed.

It was truly mind-blowing, as the dream lasted only what seemed like only a few seconds.

1)SPORADIC ROZADOR BOLIDO #SPMN150523D RECORDED TODAY ON #JAÉN AND #ALMERÍA at 3h31m24s TUC (5h31 CEST). This is how we see it captured from Cehegín, #Murcia by Sensi Pastor @PastorSensi and José A. de los Reyes @AARM_Oficial
. Soon on our list: http://spmn.uji.es/ESP/SPMNlist.html

2) HERE WE CAN SEE IT IN ITS SLOW TRANSIT OVER #ANDALUCÍA , fragmenting progressively in full color. These types of fireballs are very showy and are produced by meteoroids that intercept the Earth almost flush Antonio Robles @AJ_Robles from Estepa, #Sevilla



This can't be good?

Video
A metallic-looking rock that smashed through the roof of a residential home in New Jersey's Hopewell Township earlier this week is indeed a meteorite — a rare one about 4.6 billion years old, scientists confirmed on Thursday (May 11).

"It was obvious right away from looking at it that it was a meteorite in a class called stony chondrite," Nathan Magee, chair of the physics department at The College of New Jersey (TCNJ), whose office was contacted by the Hopewell Township police soon after the rock was found on Monday (May 8), told Space.com.

Chondrites are primitive rocks that make up 85% of meteorites found on Earth. Most chondrites found to date have been discovered in Antarctica; only rarely does one crash in populated areas.

Screenshot 2023-05-16 at 12-45-50 Rock that punched hole in New Jersey house confirmed to be 4...png

This apparent meteorite struck a house in Hopewell Township, New Jersey on May 8, 2023. (Image credit: Hopewell Township Police Department)

The New Jersey rock, which is about 6 inches long by 4 inches wide (15 by 10 centimeters), is a notable exception. It slammed into the Hopewell Township house, dented the floorboard, punched two holes in the ceiling and was still warm when it was discovered by Suzy Kop in her father's bedroom around noon on Monday.

"I'm looking up on the ceiling and there's these two holes, and I'm like, 'What in the world has happened here?'" Kop told 6 ABC's Trish Hartman (opens in new tab).

Once emergency responders cleared Kop, her family and their home of any harmful radioactive residues, Kop handed over the space rock to the nearby college for further inspection.

At TCNJ, Magee's team consulted Jerry Delaney, a retired meteorite expert who had worked on the meteorite collection at the American Museum of Natural History in New York. The team confirmed the space rock to be about 4.56 billion years old, which means it has been around since the beginning of our solar system and represents the leftover fragments from its creation.

Screenshot 2023-05-16 at 12-44-33 Rock that punched hole in New Jersey house confirmed to be 4...png

Researchers at The College of New Jersey have confirmed that this rock, which struck a house in Hopewell Township, New Jersey on May 8, 2023, is a 4.6-billion-year-old meteorite. (Image credit: The College of New Jersey)

The 2.2-pound (0.9 kilograms) meteorite, which will likely be named Titusville, NJ — the postal address closest to its landing site — is "in excellent condition, and one of a very small number of similar witnessed chondrite falls known to science," Magee said in a statement on Thursday.

The top layer of the meteorite has a blackened crust a few millimeters thick from partially burning up in Earth's atmosphere. Using a hand lens designed to look at rocks closely, his team found that the meteroite's minerals are blue and gray in color, with a small amount of other metals mixed in, Magee told Space.com.


The team studied the rock's texture and composition by placing it inside a large chamber of a scanning electron microscope. Based on initial estimates, the meteorite is a chondrite of class LL-6, which has less iron than other members of its family and is at least 30 to 40% denser than the most common rocks on Earth, like slate or granite.

"So it was clear it was not an Earth rock," Magee told Space.com.

Even before the space rock had breached Earth's atmosphere, it was exposed to a lot of heat in outer space that had heavily altered its structure and composition, so much so that it is difficult to easily distinguish individual grains or chondrules that make up the meteorite, scientists shared in Thursday's update (opens in new tab).

Video-Calculations-Diagram-Data

Scott Sistek May 4, 2023·5 min read
There are scales for measuring hurricanes, tornadoes and earthquakes, but did you know there is also a scale for assessing the risk of any impeding asteroid collisions?

Asteroids harmlessly buzz by Earth (relatively speaking) all the time, such as the Eiffel-Tower-sized asteroid that passed within six moon lengths. But what if one appears as if it will get too close for comfort?

Astronomers use the Torino Scale, which gives a risk assessment from 0 to 10 of any asteroid determined to have an orbit that could bring it relatively near Earth or perhaps even strike someday.

A rating of 0 means the asteroid poses no threat to Earth, which, so far, is the rating for every near-Earth asteroid currently being tracked.

On the other hand, a rating of 10 would mean a global catastrophe is imminent. Each number in between covers scenarios from tiny asteroids making a calculated close pass with a greater than background chance of hitting Earth to large asteroids that make a near-miss.

Here is the scale (larger version can be found here):

The original scale was developed by MIT professor Richard Binzel and adopted in 1999, but since revised in 2005 to better clarify that many asteroids eventually given an initial rating will likely later be deemed harmless.

When an asteroid is discovered, astronomers will initially only have rough calculations of its orbit with a wide range of paths – remember, we're dealing with a galactic scale of measurements on the order of millions of miles. Earth is only about 7,900 miles across.

"Often when new objects are first discovered, it takes several weeks of data to reduce the uncertainties and adequately predict their orbits years into the future," NASA wrote in a Tweet in March.

If some of those initial calculations indicate an asteroid could theoretically make an impact within its wide range of orbit possibilities, it could get assigned a number on the scale – most typically a 1. As more observations come in and the orbit becomes more refined, astronomers can confidently move the asteroid to a 0 rating.

EVERYTHING SCIENTISTS WOULD WANT TO KNOW IF AN ASTEROID WAS HEADING TOWARD EARTH

A recent example of this occurred in late February and March when astronomers discovered small asteroid 2023 DW, whose initial rough orbit calculations had a minuscule chance of hitting Earth on Valentine's Day in 2046. It was even given an investigatory rating of 1 on the Tornio Scale and made the news rounds.

By mid-March, further observations showed the asteroid had a near-zero chance, dropping it to a 0 Torino rating. A few days later, more observations confirmed what was "near zero" was now a "zero" chance, and the asteroid has since been removed from the Near Earth Object tracking database.

But even if an asteroid were to someday get a 2, 3 or 4 rating, it means astronomers believe it will eventually drop to 0.

Of all the asteroids NASA has tracked, none warrant any current concern to Earth. However, two asteroids being tracked have not yet been assigned a 0 rating – or any rating – on the scale: 101955 Bennu and the extraordinary tale of asteroid 1950 DA.

Bennu, discovered in 1999 and about a half-kilometer wide, has some initial calculations that exhibit extremely low but non-zero probabilities of potential impacts in the late 22nd century. The chances of impact begin in the year 2178, with September 2182 having the "best" chance – though still currently at just 0.037% probability. Yet that is, as of early May, the asteroid with the greatest known probability of striking Earth someday, despite having such a small chance. It doesn't merit a rating because any impacts are more than a century in the future.

DINOSAUR-KILLING ASTEROID TRIGGERED A TSUNAMI WITH MILE-HIGH WAVES, NEW STUDY SAYS

1950 DA is 1.2 kilometers across and has one potential impact – in the year 2880. This is a rare feat that astronomers can calculate such an orbit some 850-plus years into the future because the asteroid was discovered in 1950, and astronomers have over 70 years and more than 900 observations to track and hone its orbit.

Earlier this century, observations showed the orbit of 1950 DA had the highest probability of significant impact of any asteroid they were tracking (though still very remote – about a 1-in-8,000 chance). However, newer observing technology has recently updated 1950 DA's orbit calculations that can put our distant future ancestors at ease – the risk level of a 2880 impact has dropped significantly and is now down to about a 1-in-29,000 chance (0.0029%). Again, there is no rating on the Torino Scale anyway because either way, there is obviously no concern for the planet for centuries.

NASA has been busy lately building an asteroid planetary defense system just in case something concerning is discovered in the future. The agency took an important first step with a successful test of the DART Mission in October 2022 by smashing an appliance-sized spacecraft into a small asteroid that was orbiting another small asteroid about 7 million miles from Earth.

HOW NASA IS WORKING TO PROTECT EARTH FROM AN ASTEROID STRIKE

The impact made an ever-so-slight change in the orbit of the smaller asteroid. The hope is we could similarly force a tiny change in the orbit of any threatening asteroid that, when factored over an orbit of millions of miles, would be enough to nudge it out of a collision course. NASA and other space and government agencies also conduct annual exercises that practice what would be an appropriate response should an asteroid ever threaten the planet.

Meanwhile, NASA is always working to increase our celestial surveillance capabilities to find and track all objects that would aim to someday literally rock our world.


By: Jeff Hecht May 12, 2023
Orbits of newly discovered moons


This diagram shows the present-day orbits of the 41 new moons published so far, color-coded by the direction of their orbits (blue for prograde, in the direction of Saturn's rotation, and red for retrograde). The diagram is shown to scale; the size of the Earth's moon's orbit is shown for comparison at the lower left.K Ly

Saturn has reclaimed the record for most moons in the solar system with the discovery of 62 new moons. All are only a few kilometers in size and have orbits far from the planet that indicate their origin: Saturn captured these rocks at some point in the past.

As of press time, the Minor Planet Center (MPC) has published the orbits of 41 new moons in a series of announcements, called Minor Planet Electronic Circulars, issued between May 3rd and 10th. Brett Gladman (University of British Columbia, Canada) said May 11th that the center would release orbits for an additional 21 moons shortly. That will bring Saturn's total moon count to 145, including 24 “regular” moons, which formed around the planet, and 121 smaller, “irregular” moons on wide, elongated, and tilted orbits. The new reports more than double Saturn’s number of irregular moons, leaving Saturn far ahead of Jupiter’s 95 moons, which had put Jupiter in first place earlier this year.

The torrent of Saturnian discoveries comes from a series of observations that Edward Ashton (now at Academia Sinica Institute of Astronomy and Astrophysics, Taiwan) and colleagues, including Gladman, made with the Canada France Hawaii Telescope from 2019 to 2021. Their initial goal was to study the sizes of moons orbiting Saturn, and in 2021 they reported the size distribution of the small irregular moons. The larger amount of smaller moons indicates a recent (100 million years ago) collision between two objects around Saturn. To record faint moons down to a couple kilometers in size, the group stacked series of images, a method used previously to search for moons around Uranus and Neptune, but not previously for Saturn.

The group’s next project was to calculate orbits for the objects over the period for which the researchers had obtained observations. The process is laborious but essential and involves tracking the motion of small objects across the sky over time. “Linking [observations of] moons within the same year was fairly straightforward,” Ashton says, “but since there were only a few observations per year, linking the moons between different years was very time-consuming and involved a lot of trial and error.”

Orbit tracking is difficult. “These moons are far from the planet, their orbits are not trivial closed ones ... and you're seeing them from a moving Earth,” Gladman says.

The next step was to take the finds to the MPC. “We have been slowly submitting our observations to the MPC since 2020,” says Ashton. The center’s archives go back many years. Comparing new discoveries to archived objects is difficult because it requires running orbits backward over many years. At the same time, successfully matching a new object’s orbit with older observations improves the accuracy of its orbital parameters.

How many more Saturnian moons remain undiscovered? The 2021 survey covered only 2.2 square degrees of the 26 square degrees of sky in which Saturn's gravity dominates, a region called the Hill sphere. However, irregular moons rarely go more than more than half the radius of the Hill sphere from a planet, Ashton says: “In reality, about 75% of the known moons were in our fields at any one time.” In their 2021 paper Ashton and Gladman estimated that Saturn has about 150 irregular moons at least 3 kilometers (2 miles) in diameter. With about 120 such moons now known, Ashton says, “there are about 30 left [undiscovered] in this size range [and] likely many hundreds, if not thousands, of Saturnian moons with smaller sizes.”

Fortuitous discoveries of remaining moons are unlikely, says K Ly, an independent citizen scientist who specializes in archival astronomical data. An observer looking for something else would not be likely to recognize a new moon and would instead assume it was an unremarkable asteroid.
 
Another video of the meteor from another angle in this article. Also created a sonic boom.

 
Meteor over Cairns and Townsville Queensland 20/5/23.
Another video of the meteor from another angle in this article. Also created a sonic boom.

It entered US Government Sensor list, the coordinates were 17.8S 141.9E which confirms it was Northern Australia, Queensland.
Quite substantial, 7.2kT of TNT of total impact energy, 60 times less than Chelyabinsk, slightly more powerful than the one east of Beira in Mozambique in April, 6.3 kT.
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See Meteor fireball lights up sky in an epic spectacle over north Queensland, Australia on May 20 -- Sott.net

Last, time there was one of the same size that was also measured was in February 2022, just before the SMO!
 
Two meteors flew across the skies of Italy on 24th May, the first one being spotted in Northern Italy around midnight and the second one across Sardinia in the early hours of the morning. Article below with details, translated using Deepl.

Between Cremona and the Po you may come across a meteorite that fell tonight

Two meteors spotted over the Po Valley and Sardinia, with the first possibly landing fragments on the ground​

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Last night, two very bright meteors ('bolides') crossed the Italian skies, the first shortly after midnight and the second at about half past four in the morning. The first affected the northern skies, the second Sardinia. The midnight one, in particular, was picked up by no less than 11 cameras of Prisma, the First Italian Network for the Systematic Surveillance of Meteors and Atmosphere, an initiative promoted by the National Institute of Astrophysics (Inaf).

Initial calculations indicate that the bolide was spotted at an altitude of 75 kilometres, while falling at 15.8 kilometres per second, and disappeared at an altitude of 28 km, when its speed had been reduced by two thirds due to friction with the atmosphere. Trajectory and speed are compatible with those of an asteroid, intercepted by the Earth's gravity.

Now the search is on for any fragments that may have reached the ground intact: according to Prisma's calculations, the area to watch for is the municipalities of Sospiro, San Daniele Po and Pieve d'Olmi, south-east of Cremona.

The 'Sardinian' meteor, on the other hand, passed through the atmosphere too quickly and extinguished at too high an altitude to have resulted in a meteorite fall.
 
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