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Sunday, May 22, 2016

METEOR - Fireball! Brilliant Meteor Streaks Over Northeastern US (Video)

Fireball! Brilliant Meteor Streaks Over Northeastern US (Video):

A huge fireball lit up the night sky over the northeastern United States Tuesday (May 17), sparking hundreds of reports by skywatchers lucky enough to have witnessed the dazzling meteor event. And if you want to go meteorite hunting, there may be a rich reward if you find a piece of the object.

Views of the fireball, including these awesome videos from police car dashcams in Maine and New York, show a brilliant streak across the late-night sky (it occured at 12:50 a.m. EDT, or 0450 GMT, on Tuesday). One particularly striking photo, included in this report, shows the fireball over the Piscataqua River in Portsmouth, New Hampshire, and was captured by a Portsmouthwebcam.com camera by Mike McCormack.

A dazzling fireball lights up the night sky over the Piscataqua River in Portsmouth, New Hampshire on May 17, 2016 in this stunning still image captured by a camera with Portsmouthwebcam.com and provided by Mike McCormack. The meteor was widely visible across the U.S. northeast and the Maine Mineral and Gem Museum is offering a reward for any meteorites from the event.

Credit: Mike McCormack portsmouthwebcam.com

According to the American Meteor Society (AMS), two separate objects entered the Earth's atmosphere. The AMS posted screenshots on its website showing the fireball streaking across the sky. The fireball was best visible in Maine, but nearly 700 reports also poured in from eight neighboring states and two Canadian provinces (Ontario and Quebec). [Related: 5 Amazing Fireballs Caught on Video]

"Fireball detected by @westernu meteor cameras last night. Probable meteorite fall," planetary astronomer Peter Brown of Western University wrote on Twitter; his institution is based in London, Ontario, in Canada. In an interview he conducted later with CBC News, Brown estimated the fireball to be between a basketball and a shopping cart in size.

Fireball detected by @westernu meteor cameras last night. Probable meteorite fall https://t.co/gGuKSr8ldb #meteor pic.twitter.com/vlQgTDxqgm
— Peter Brown (@pgbrown) May 17, 2016

The Maine Mineral and Gem Museum of Bethel, Maine, offered $20,000 to anyone who can find the first chunk of the meteorite that weighs at least a kilogram (2.2 lbs.). That meteorite, once confirmed, will be put on display in the museum's Meteorite Hall.

"It's clear that the meteoroid entered Earth's atmosphere over Maine and its terminal explosion occurred about 30 kilometers [18.6 miles] west of Rangeley, Maine, in Franklin County," the museum wrote in the press release.

"This is an exciting opportunity, and we need the public's help," Museum Director Barbra Barrett said in the statement. Coincidentally, the museum is working on implementing a statewide network of cameras to capture fireballs and better pin down their locations. The network will be ready in 2017, the museum said.

This still image from a Plattsburgh Police Department car dashboard camera video shows the brilliant fireball over Plattsburgh, New York on May 17, 2016. The fireball was visible across the northeastern U.S. and parts of eastern Canada.

Credit: Plattsburgh Police Department

Fireballs occur when small objects (such as space rocks) break up high in the Earth's atmosphere. In this case, the fireball was too small to pose a threat to people or property. A much larger object caused broken glass and injuries after crashing down in Chelyabinsk, Russia, in February 2013.

A meteor is a small space rock that streaks through Earth's atmosphere as a dazzling fireball. Meteoroids are small objects in space, while any pieces that reach the Earth are called meteorites.

Most meteors burn up before reaching the ground. Periodically, the Earth goes through a dust cloud left behind by a comet, which produces a series of meteors known as a meteor shower.

Editor's note: If you captured an awesome photo of Tuesday's meteor and would like to share it with Space.com and our news partners for a story or gallery, send images and comments in to Managing Editor Tariq Malik at: spacephotos@space.com. If you believe you have found a piece of a meteorite from the fireball, you can contact the Maine Mineral and Gem Museum at (207) 824-3036 or bbarrett@mainemineralmuseum.org.

Follow Elizabeth Howell @howellspace, or Space.com @Spacedotcom. We're also on Facebook and Google+. Original article on Space.com.

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The National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) is the United States government agency responsible for the civilian space program as well as aeronautics and aerospace research. President Dwight D. Eisenhower established the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) in 1958 with a distinctly civilian (rather than military) orientation encouraging peaceful applications in space science. The National Aeronautics and Space Act was passed on July 29, 1958, disestablishing NASA's predecessor, the National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics (NACA). The new agency became operational on October 1, 1958.

UFO SIGHTINGS PHOTO PHOTOGRAPHY

The Oxford English Dictionary defines a UFO as "An unidentified flying object; a 'flying saucer'." The first published book to use the word was authored by Donald E. Keyhoe. The acronym "UFO" was coined by Captain Edward J. Ruppelt, who headed Project Blue Book, then the USAF's official investigation of UFOs. He wrote, "Obviously the term 'flying saucer' is misleading when applied to objects of every conceivable shape and performance. For this reason the military prefers the more general, if less colorful, name: unidentified flying objects. UFO (pronounced Yoo-foe) for short." Other phrases that were used officially and that predate the UFO acronym include "flying flapjack", "flying disc", "unexplained flying discs", "unidentifiable object", and "flying saucer". The phrase "flying saucer" had gained widespread attention after the summer of 1947. On June 24, a civilian pilot named Kenneth Arnold reported seeing nine objects flying in formation near Mount Rainier. Arnold timed the sighting and estimated the speed of discs to be over 1,200 mph (1,931 km/h). At the time, he described the objects' shape as being somewhat disc-like or saucer-like, leading to newspaper accounts of "flying saucers" and "flying discs". In popular usage the term UFO came to be used to refer to claims of alien spacecraft. and because of the public and media ridicule associated with the topic, some investigators prefer to use such terms as unidentified aerial phenomenon (or UAP) or anomalous phenomena, as in the title of the National Aviation Reporting Center on Anomalous Phenomena (NARCAP).

UFO PHOTO PHOTOGRAPHY

UFO - Unidentified Flying Object An unidentified flying object, or UFO, in its most general definition, is any apparent anomaly in the sky that is not identifiable as a known object or phenomenon. Culturally, UFOs are associated with claims of visitation by extraterrestrial life or government-related conspiracy theories, and have become popular subjects in fiction. While UFOs are often later identified, sometimes identification may not be possible owing to the usually low quality of evidence related to UFO sightings (generally anecdotal evidence and eyewitness accounts). Stories of fantastical celestial apparitions have been told since antiquity, but the term "UFO" (or "UFOB") was officially created in 1953 by the United States Air Force (USAF) to serve as a catch-all for all such reports. In its initial definition, the USAF stated that a "UFOB" was "any airborne object which by performance, aerodynamic characteristics, or unusual features, does not conform to any presently known aircraft or missile type, or which cannot be positively identified as a familiar object." Accordingly, the term was initially restricted to that fraction of cases which remained unidentified after investigation, as the USAF was interested in potential national security reasons and/or "technical aspects" (see Air Force Regulation 200-2). During the late 1940s and through the 1950s, UFOs were often referred to popularly as "flying saucers" or "flying discs". The term UFO became more widespread during the 1950s, at first in technical literature, but later in popular use. UFOs garnered considerable interest during the Cold War, an era associated with a heightened concern for national security. Various studies have concluded that the phenomenon does not represent a threat to national security nor does it contain anything worthy of scientific pursuit (e.g., 1951 Flying Saucer Working Party, 1953 CIA Robertson Panel, USAF Project Blue Book, Condon Committee).