Near-Earth objects and close calls

A newly-discovered asteroid will fly by Earth on March 8, 2021.

Posted by Teo Blašković on March 7, 2021

 
From NASA Meteor Watch (Facebook page) March 7-
Fireball over northern Vermont
Eyewitnesses in the North East and Canada are reporting seeing a bright fireball this evening around 5:38 PM Eastern Standard Time. Analysis of their reports shows that the meteor occurred over northern Vermont, first appearing at a height of 52 miles (84 kilometers) above Mount Mansfield State Forest. Moving northeast at 47,000 miles per hour (21 kilometers per second), it traversed 33 miles (53 kilometers) through the upper atmosphere before burning up 33 miles (53 kilometers) above Beach Hill in Orleans County south of Newport.
We hope to refine the trajectory as more reports and hopefully some videos filter in.
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From NASA Meteor Watch (Facebook page) March 7-
Fireball over northern Vermont
Eyewitnesses in the North East and Canada are reporting seeing a bright fireball this evening around 5:38 PM Eastern Standard Time. Analysis of their reports shows that the meteor occurred over northern Vermont, first appearing at a height of 52 miles (84 kilometers) above Mount Mansfield State Forest. Moving northeast at 47,000 miles per hour (21 kilometers per second), it traversed 33 miles (53 kilometers) through the upper atmosphere before burning up 33 miles (53 kilometers) above Beach Hill in Orleans County south of Newport.
We hope to refine the trajectory as more reports and hopefully some videos filter in.

View attachment 43495
Update:


More here:

By Rafi Letzter - Staff Writer 19 hours ago
 
This morning the American Meteor Society (AMS) had received 1066 reports, which makes it the most widely reported event in the UK since their modern database system began in 1980.

BBC News reports meteorites are likely north of Cheltenham and that a sonic boom had been reported.

Space.com reports:

Meteorite from brilliant UK fireball is England's first in 30 years

A chunk of the meteorite that was recovered from Winchcombe in England on March 1, 2021 — the first meteorite found in the United Kingdom since 1991.


A chunk of the meteorite that was recovered from Winchcombe in England on March 1, 2021 — the first meteorite found in the United Kingdom since 1991. (Image credit: The Trustees of the Natural History Museum, London)


A piece of the space rock that lit up skies over England on Feb. 28 has been found.

The singed hunk of asteroid was discovered in the driveway of a house in Winchcombe, a small town in the county of Gloucestershire in southwestern England. The rock, which weighs nearly 10.6 ounces (300 grams), is the first meteorite found in the UK since 1991, experts said, and the first known carbonaceous chondrite ever discovered in the country.

Carbonaceous chondrites are especially pristine and primitive meteorites that generally contain lots of organic material, including complex molecules such as amino acids. Studying carbonaceous chondrites can shed light on the early solar system and how the building blocks of life found their way to Earth, researchers say.

Such study is already under way at the Natural History Museum in London, where the meteorite now resides.

"This is really exciting. There are about 65,000 known meteorites in the entire world, and of those only 51 of them are carbonaceous chondrites that have been seen to fall like this one," Sara Russell, a meteorite scientist at the museum, said in a statement.

Rest of article here.

See also: Blazing meteor fireball observed across UK - Update: Sonic boom reported
 
Thought this was curious:

Something changed in 2015 where a bunch of those organizations (besides AMS) got a spike of events reported. You can't really see it from just looking at the grand totals, but it's pretty obvious when you break it out by organization. Wonder if the political climate in 2015 and onwards served as a cosmic attractor.
 
Thought this was curious:

Something changed in 2015 where a bunch of those organizations (besides AMS) got a spike of events reported. You can't really see it from just looking at the grand totals, but it's pretty obvious when you break it out by organization. Wonder if the political climate in 2015 and onwards served as a cosmic attractor.
I think what that's showing is the setting up of new observation orgs in recent years (or the setting up by pre-existing orgs of reporting systems like the one the AMS has). It's still interesting data because it shows a major recent uptick in 'official' interest in meteor fireballs.
 
I think what that's showing is the setting up of new observation orgs in recent years (or the setting up by pre-existing orgs of reporting systems like the one the AMS has). It's still interesting data because it shows a major recent uptick in 'official' interest in meteor fireballs.
Ahh good point! I figure since there were a couple of 1’s in the preceding years that some of those organizations were around for a while. But maybe it was some beta test phase or whatever. But yeah there’s a bunch of them around now to collect data, they definitely want this data from everyone.
 
A newly-discovered asteroid will flyby Earth on March 16, 2021.

Posted by Teo Blašković on March 12, 2021

 
So...this was not a fireball, but a SpaceX launch from Cape Canaveral, Florida?! 🤔


From the AMS Facebook page -
We received about 120 reports and many photos from East Coast States (CT, DE, FL, MA, MD, ME, NC, NJ, NY, OH, PA, RI, VA, WV and Ontario) of an object observed in the sky on March 14th just after 6 AM EDT. This was not a fireball but a SpaceX Rocket. SpaceX launched the 22nd mission of the constellation of networked satellites known as Starlink that will provide satellite Internet access to millions and ruin the night sky for everybody.
 
A newly discovered asteroid made a close approach to Earth on March 15, 2021.

Posted by Teo Blašković on March 16, 2021

 
And right after a meteor was sighted over Rome, another one flew across the skies of Naples and Sorrento the following day!

(Translated using DeepL).

Huge meteor in the skies of Naples and Sorrento: the enchanting images of the entrance into the atmosphere.

Yet another meteor was sighted over the skies of Rome in the evening of 15 March.

They keep on coming.
__________________________________

The sighting: a meteor illuminates Rome's night sky

Meteor illuminates the sky over the capital. The luminous body was captured by a Meteo Lazio webcam installed in the Batteria Nomentana area, to the north east of the capital. A passage of a few seconds, but it has been noticed by many citizens of Rome, the Castelli Romani and Lazio in general.

meteora-roma-638x425.jpg


At 20.57 yesterday, 15 March 2021, a very bright meteor crossed the sky over Rome. The luminous body was captured by a Meteo Lazio webcam installed in the Batteria Nomentana area, to the north east of the capital. It only passed by for a few seconds, but was noticed by many citizens of Rome, the Castelli Romani and Lazio in general. On various Facebook groups in the neighbourhoods of Rome, some people wondered about the very bright trail that lit up the night sky of the capital. The solution to the mystery, as anticipated, was published on the Meteo Lazio Facebook page (below the video posted on YouTube.

Meteor or fireball? Definitely not a meteorite​

It is a large meteor, or shooting star. Asteroids and comets are celestial bodies, but unlike meteors they do not collide with the earth. Meteors or shooting stars are consumed in the atmosphere, while meteors touch the earth's surface. A meteor is an asteroid fragment that ignites upon entering the Earth's atmosphere and is consumed before it hits the ground. The speed is between 11 and 72 kilometres per second. The head of the meteor is the progressively disintegrating meteorite, while the trail is a column of plasma visible for a few seconds. A particularly bright meteor (and perhaps this is the case) is called a bolide. As mentioned if the meteor dissolves in the air the light ceases, as in this case, but if the object survives the atmosphere it crashes to the surface and is called a 'meteorite' in this case. Striking the earth's surface can produce a meteor crater.


Translated with www.DeepL.com/Translator
 
A huge fireball lit up night skies over Banggai Regency, Central Sulawesi.
Mar 17, 2021

Meteor in Sulawesi, Indonesia 2021​


A bright meteor has lit up the sky in Sulawesi, Indonesia on 16 March 2021 at 9:20 PM. Videos from the event show a bright fireball streaking across Pagimana District, Banggai Regency, Central Sulawesi lighting the dark sky.

Residents of Gorontalo Province who saw the meteor said that they heard a loud boom sound when the meteor lights up the night sky. Some experts believe that the flying object was a bolide, a very bright meteor.

 
I think what that's showing is the setting up of new observation orgs in recent years (or the setting up by pre-existing orgs of reporting systems like the one the AMS has). It's still interesting data because it shows a major recent uptick in 'official' interest in meteor fireballs.

According to this article published in Nature (published 11th March 2021) there sure has been an uptick in near-Earth asteroid activity over recent years.

Record number of asteroids seen whizzing past Earth in 2020


A 340-metre-wide space rock named Apophis whizzed safely past Earth on 6 March. The next time it returns, in 2029, won't be so uneventful: Apophis will come within 40,000 kilometres of the planet, skimming just above the region where some high-flying satellites orbit. It will be the first time that astronomers will be able to watch such a big asteroid pass so close to us.

Last week's fly-by gave scientists a chance to test the worldwide planetary defence system, in which astronomers quickly assess the chances of an asteroid hitting Earth as they follow its path across the night sky. "It's a fire drill with a real asteroid," says Vishnu Reddy, a planetary scientist at the University of Arizona in Tucson who coordinated the observing campaign.

The Apophis fly-by highlights how much astronomers have learnt about near-Earth asteroids — and how much they still have to learn. Since 1998, when NASA kicked off the biggest search for near-Earth asteroids, scientists have detected more than 25,000 of them. And 2020 turned out to be a record year for discoveries. Despite the COVID-19 pandemic interrupting many of the surveys, astronomers catalogued 2,958 previously unknown near-Earth asteroids over the course of the year (see 'Space rocks').

NASA Center for Near Earth Object Studies graph

Source: NASA Center for Near Earth Object Studies


A large number came from the Catalina Sky Survey, which uses three telescopes in Arizona to hunt for threatening space rocks. Operations closed briefly last spring because of the pandemic, and a wildfire in June caused a longer closure, yet the Catalina survey still discovered 1,548 near-Earth objects. These included a rare 'minimoon' named 2020 CD3, a tiny asteroid less than 3 metres in diameter that had been temporarily captured by Earth's gravity. The minimoon broke away from Earth's pull last April.

Another batch of discoveries last year — 1,152 — came from the Pan-STARRS survey telescopes in Hawaii. The finds included an object named 2020 SO, which turned out to be not an asteroid, but a leftover rocket booster that had been looping around in space since it helped to launch a NASA mission to the Moon in 1966.

Close calls

Some of the asteroids discovered last year came close to Earth — at least 107 of them passed the planet at a distance less than that of the Moon. Last year's close shaves included the tiny asteroid 2020 QG, which skimmed just 2,950 kilometres above the Indian Ocean in August. That made it the closest known approach — a record broken just three months later by another small object, 2020 VT4. That one passed less than 400 kilometres from the planet, and wasn't spotted until 15 hours after it had whizzed by. Had it hit, it would probably have broken apart in Earth's atmosphere.

All of these discoveries are making astronomers more conscious of the billiard-ball nature of the Solar System, where plenty of asteroids ping around in the space near Earth. The recent push to observe Apophis highlights how astronomers around the world can work together to assess the threat posed by asteroids, says Reddy. "It's been a huge international effort," he says, "and a lot of fun." By the time Apophis comes around again, in eight years' time, scientists will have an even more detailed census of threatening space rocks.

Nature 591, 358 (2021)

doi: https://doi.org/10.1038/d41586-021-00641-8


Lest we forget, this was posted on SOTT way back in 2007!

Something Wicked This Way Comes

War, rumors of war, corrupt governments run by psychopaths, phony terrorism, burgeoning police states...but is that all we have to worry about? What if there was something to put it all in context? Or rather, what if there is something else we are missing, something that is beyond the control of even the political and corporate elite; something that is driving them to attempt to herd the global population to an ever finer order of control...

A new sott.net video production:


My emphasis in bold above. Together with increasing signs of an Ice Age upon us, it may explain the global covid-1984 lockdown mania we are witnessing?
 
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