Astronomers seek fireball witnesses

Astronomers seek fireball witnesses

Astronomy experts are appealing for witnesses to an extremely rare fireball believed to have blazed across the morning sky.

The spectacular sight, which star-gazers claim happened just before dawn on Monday, is being attributed to a massive meteor shower currently taking place over the northern hemisphere.

"The fireball is really very special and unusual," Astronomy Ireland chairman David Moore said.

A few things....

Isn't this a bizarre request???

What fireball? All of the northern hemisphere? What's so special and unusual about it?

In my opinion, what is unusual about it is this request. Am I the only one?

Thoughts?



[edit on 17-12-2009 by loam]

While looking up this David Moore guy, it appears he was behind a similar request back in September.

Link.

There have been meterors showers in the northern hemisphere and there was a meteor hitting Nebraska and at the same time there was an earthquake, not to say that these two things are connected.

I think the astronomers want to get all the reports that they can get about the metoers, from all the people who have seen the meteors

What i think is interesting is the fact that here in the uk we very rarely see any meteors or fire balls???? Yet theres always sightings everywhere else, isnt that unusual?
Sorry just realised although what i said was right, i think its something to do with cloud, rain fog or snow!! I have personally witnessed this phenomenon a great fireball a couple of times. When i reported it i was threatened with wasting police time
It turned out to be what you all call "The Sun"

I still think this is an unusual request. And I really don't understand this characterization:

"The fireball is really very special and unusual"

Why?

Why not just ask them Loam as they seem to be welcoming civilian input??
(BTW...you're my Gaia here at ATS and I LUV all your avatars! Sooo greeeen!!!

reply to post by loam


Every meteorite fall is unique, and valuable to science. In this case there us good reason to believe something may have survived and reached the ground. If enough reports can be gathered, it may be possible to recover meteorites from this event. It's not a bizarre request at all, as meteorites are worth more than their weight in in gold in some cases (for the less common types).

What may be confusing the issue here, is that a totally unconnected annual meteor was also peaking at the same time. I say "unconnected" since annual meteor showers have never been linked with the type of hard-objects that are capable of making it through the upper layers of our atmosphere, but perhaps there is a small chance in this case since the Geminids meteor shower is actually connected with an asteroid rather than a comet, which is the normal case with annual meteor showers.

Cometary material is generally much weaker, and not as dense as the material asteroids are made of, so when something males it far enough down into our atmosphere so that the air density is enough for sound waves to propagate to the ground, it's more than likely it was due to an asteroid.


reply to post by enca78


You are right about the cloud, but if you really want to you can see meteors, and lots of them if you have some patience. I'm also in the UK, and I saw over 500 meteors over Sunday/Monday night, many that were spectacular.

Our most active shower this year peaks in 2 weeks time (Jan 3/4). I'll post a thread about the Quadrantids in the Space Exploration forum in the next week or so with more details. Why not give it a try?

There's just time to get yourself a proper cold-weather sleeping bag if you don't already have one

Not to mention a sun-lounger that goes flat (although that may be hard to find this time of year). You'll want both if you are going to spend any time outdoors at this time of year (or any other for that matter) watching the stars.

It's just a small investment, but meteor showers are free, so make the most of it when you see an opportunity. The weather is always your greatest enemy, but if you use a strategy and aim to observe the peaks of 3-4 major showers a year, you'll probably get at least one good/clear shower peak, and possibly more.

Originally posted by loam
I still think this is an unusual request. And I really don't understand this characterization:

"The fireball is really very special and unusual"

Why?

Perhaps it's some man-made space-junk they want to get hold of.

Originally posted by loam
I still think this is an unusual request. And I really don't understand this characterization:

"The fireball is really very special and unusual"

Why?

Agreed.

They want to "Talk/Brief" the witnesses find out who they are so they can be kept quiet.
Aren't metors supposed to be illegal now or someting to that nature?

I drive in the southwestern USA a lot at night, and can tell you these events are not at all rare... The problem is they happen so quickly it is nearly impossible to capture with a camera.

Near the end of this summer I seen one in Arizona at about 2:45am driving through a remote area highway... It displayed amazing blue and green colors before exploding into an extremely bright white light that faded quickly to red and was gone.

I don't know why people believe these are rare events.... In my opinion it is rather common.

Originally posted by Walkswithfish
I don't know why people believe these are rare events.... In my opinion it is rather common.

Exactly, bright meteors are relatively common.

It's just that meteorites (the rocks that are sometimes found after a meteor is seen in the sky) are quite rare, so when there is a chance of finding a fresh fall, lots of people will be interested. Usually not enough people see/report fireballs to work out where meteorites may have landed, and even if they do, they may land in water or rough terrain where they are inaccessible.

Meteorite hunters will travel all the way to the arctic to look for meteorites since the terrain there makes it easy to spot dark objects against the surface of the ice, which is not an easy or cheap thing to do, so when one comes down this close to civilization, with witnesses, it would almost be a sin not to try and find it.