Meteor/Meteorite News 15DEC2010

Geminid Meteor Show  2010 Chris Peterson (c) 2010
 http://www.cloudbait.com/science/geminid2010.html

Reported by Chris Peterson- Cloudbait Observatory
The annual Geminid meteor shower occurs when debris from the asteroid 3200 Phaethon intercepts the Earth. This is an unusual type of shower in having an asteroidal, rather than cometary parent. However, evidence suggests that Phaethon is actually the rocky core of an evaporated comet. These meteors intercept the Earth at a fairly low speed of 35 km/s (79,000 mph). Because of this, Geminids tend to be slow and colorful- probably the prettiest of the major showers.

This is a composite image of 363 Geminid meteors collected between sunset on December 10 and sunrise on December 14 (19, 31, 89, and 229 meteors respectively). Since the images were collected over many hours, the radiant of the shower is not in a fixed location. Conditions this year were good, with little interference from the Moon and largely clear skies.

Long necklace-like trails on the image are the paths of stars and planets, circling the north celestial pole in the upper left.

This image contains only meteors identified as Geminids. Several other showers are currently active as well. Recorded, but not shown in the composite, are 30 Puppid-Velids, 58 Monocerotids, 7 Chi Orionids, 49 Sigma Hydrids, and 80 sporadics.  (more)  see  http://www.cloudbait.com/science/geminid2010.html


Catch a falling star and find out where it came from
Imperial College London
by Colin Smith Scientists are celebrating the discovery of a second meteorite in the Western Australian desert using 'star gazing' cameras. ...


Meteorite Men' Star Clears Up Misconceptions About Meteors
Yahoo! News
"Hollywood has done a really good job misrepresenting meteors," says Steve Arnold, one of the Science Channel's Meteorite Men. They always show meteors as ...


Geminids 2010: visual data quicklook
gem2010_rate.csv (number of meteors per interval per observer) ... Handbook for meteorobservations; Chapter 9, Analyses and Calculations. ...
www.imo.net/live/geminids2010/


elp allsky: Meteor News...Oklahoma City, Edmond, Ardmore, Enid ...
By El Paso AllSky Camera
Reports coming in to ELPALLSKY of an Oklahoma Fireball... Dec 13 2010, 6:33 PM wulfpig (guest) Reports: Traveling North on 1-35 in Edmond Oklahoma 12-13-10 just before 6:00pm central standard time and saw a meteor (?) in the northwest. ...


NASA MSFC on USTREAM: .
NASA MSFC @ USTREAM: Ready to stay up all night? On Monday, Dec. 13 from 11:00 pm to 5:00 am EST, meteor experts Bill ...


"Aurora Fireball" by Yuichi Takasaka (TWAN)
A bright meteor streaks the sky of Yellowknife in the Northwest Territories, Canada. The area is best known for viewing the northern nights. ...


SPACE.com: Image of GEM with Sentinel All Sky Camera , Hillo, Mex.
Max Peak of GEM and Images:

http://www.space.com/nightsky/geminid-meteor-shower-photos-101214.html
and image of All Sky Camera Sentinel ( Sandia National Labs) Hillo, Son,
Mexico. http://bit.ly/gARUQG

Reported by Salvador Aguirre

Skywatchers Capture Gorgeous Photos of Geminid Meteor ShowerLiveScience.com
By Clara Moskowitz, SPACE.com Senior Writer The year's best meteor shower peaked last night (Dec. 13), giving skywatchers around the world an incredible ...

Darwin vs. the Sun

Universe Today
These ranged from burning coal to a constant bombardment of comets and meteors to slow contraction. Each of these methods seemed initially plausible, ...

Geminid Meteor Shower 2010: Videos From December 13, 14
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As we reported yesterday, the 2010 Geminid meteor shower peaked late last night and early this morning. Fortunately, for those who missed it, ...

Texas, Montana, Canada, Oklahoma Meteors 13DEC2010 14DEC2010

Readers of Meteor/Meteorite News Report:
Jeffery H. wrote,
Oklahoma City, Oklahoma. 6pm December 13, 2010. I saw a green meteor go from the south to the north lasting about 5 seconds. 



London Ontario Canada, 10:15pm 13DEC2010
Bennett (guest): I just saw a bright orange and red meteor for at least 6 seconds goin from east to west december 13 London Ontario Canada, 10:15pm it was beautiful


Guest445 (guest): We are seeing Meteorites here in ST. Marie Montana about every 50 seconds rite now.Mostly white streaks but very interesting and beautiful.


Anon. wrote:
Saw a white meteor in ST. Marie, Montana at 12:40 am Dec. 14th 2010. Lasted 7 seconds and looked like it landed very close by, with in about 20 miles. Had a very long trail of bright white smoke. Now it looks like there is smoke blowing my way. I think I am going to drive around and see if I can find it. Maybe it hit a building or something, and maybe there is a fire close by. 


Guest738 (guest): I'm in el paso texas at 12midnight I was seeing streaks of light go by 1-2 here and there for 5min I wanted to know as it gets later will I see more or less? its 1:30am right now?

Meteor/Meteorite News 14DEC2010

Reader Photo: Geminid Meteor Streaks Across the Everglades
Wired News
By Lisa Grossman An early arrival from the annual Gemenid meteor shower burns bright in this stunning photo from Wired.com reader Chris Acuña. ...


Get Ready for the Year's Best Meteor Shower
CBS News
What promises to be the best meteor shower of the year is hitting its peak just in time for the holidays, but skywatchers should act fast: This sky show ...

Brightest meteor shower to appear

Viet Nam News - 8 hours ago

HA NOI — The brightest meteor shower of the year, named Geminids, is expected to be seen tonight and early morning on Wednesday throughout Viet Nam, ...

Meteor shower building to Tuesday peak UPI.com 13 (UPI) -- The annual Geminid meteor shower, one of the biggest and brightest of the year, has arrived and will be at its best on Tuesday, US astronomers ...

Tonight's meteor show could be a heavenly sight Fort Worth Star Telegram By Terry Evans Experts said the Geminid meteor shower will be one of the best because of cloudless skies, an early setting moon and the number of meteors. ... Keep an eye on the sky for Geminid meteor light show tonight Toronto Star The Geminid meteor shower will make its annual appearance later tonight and early Tuesday, just in time for Christmas. Astronomers consider it the best ... Group to gather at Mare Island for lunar eclipse Contra Costa Times The weeklong Germinid meteor shower will peak just before dawn Tuesday. The "Moon Over Mare Island" party will start at 7 pm Dec. ... Meteor Shower Tonight: Geminid 2010 To Peak December 13, 14 (PHOTOS) Huffington Post Stargazers are in for a treat tonight as the annual Geminid meteor shower is set to peak in the early hours of December 14, 2010. According to The AP, ... A "Gem" of a Meteor Shower is Coming | Hayden Planetarium The Leonid Meteor Shower has long passed us by, but that doesn't mean that there aren't any goodmeteor displays to look forward to. ... Newbury astronomer says Monday is best meteor night BBC News By Emma Midgley A Hungerford astronomer is urging people in Berkshire to go into their back gardens tonight to spot hundreds of meteors. ... Geminid Meteor Shower Peaks Tonight; Best of 2010? National Geographic For sky-watchers willing to brave frosty winter temperatures, more than a hundredmeteors an hour may fall overnight on December 13 and 14, the peak of the ... PLANETARY SOCIETY, INDIA: Geminid Meteor Shower 2010 By PLANETARY SOCIETY, INDIA Organisation for Promotion of Space Sciences. Geminid Meteor Shower 2010. For more details/sky maps and other instructions come back here after 5.00 p.m.. Here is the Animation of Geminid as it would appear in the sky : Older Post Home ... Meteor showers expected tonight The Hindu Stargazers can look forward to one of the most spectacular annual event among celestial phenomenon as the Geminid meteor shower is predicted to peak on ...

Meteor/Meteorite News 13DEC2010

U.S. Military in Talks to Share Fireball Data from Secret Satellites 
By Leonard David
SPACE.com's Space Insider Columnist posted: 10 December 2010 07:37 am ET
For decades, the U.S. Department of Defense has operated classified spacecraft loaded with high-tech gear to carry out a range of reconnaissance duties. But the satellites have also spotted the high-altitude explosions of natural fireballs that routinely dive into the Earth's atmosphere, and talks are


Maryland Weather: Geminid meteor shower peaks this week - Weather ...
By Frank Roylance
Geminid meteor shower peaks this week. Meteor shower 2010 FROM TODAY'S PRINT EDITIONS: Watch for “shooting stars” this week as we near the peak of the annual Geminid meteor shower, late Tuesday evening and early Wednesday. ...


Meteor showers tomorrow
Times of India
The Geminid meteor shower - peaking on December 13 night before making its way into the wee hours of December 14 - is the most intense of such celestial ...


Star Stuff: Moon eclipse will provide a rare treat
Muscatine Journal
Don't forget the always great meteor shower called the "Geminids." These guys really put on a great show the nights of Monday and Tuesday, Dec. 13-14. ...

SkyandTelescope.com - Homepage Observing - It's Geminid Time!
The radiant (apparent source point) of the Geminid meteor shower is near Castor ... But the Geminidmeteor shower of mid-December ties or even surpasses the ...

Geminid meteor shower set for clear skies
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Some experts believe the annual Geminid meteor shower is becoming more spectacular – though if it is, nobody is sure why – and with cloudless skies possible ..


Giant Jupiter -- sentry of the solar system
Dubuque Telegraph Herald
"Jupiter is a vacuum cleaner placed in our solar system by God to protect us Earth-dwellers from comet, asteroid and meteor strikes. ...

Tough to see the meteore through the burnout smoke Glens Falls Post-Star The same can be said of one of my favorite natural phenomenon - meteors. During some of the predictable meteor events my son and I set up lounge chairs and ...

Nation and World: Meteor shower to hit its peak Tuesday Fort Worth Star Telegram Astronomers consider it the best meteor shower of the year, with more than 100 meteors streaking through the night sky every hour. The peak will occur early ... How to observe the 2010 Geminid meteor shower During the early morning hours of December 14 the peak rate for the 2010 Geminid meteor shower is predicted to be as high as 120 meteors per hour. ... Geminid meteor shower to illuminate sky in next few days Khabrein It is the year's best time to watch meteor showers The year's brightest meteor showers are to become visible in the sky next week. ... http://www.aolnews.com Full Lunar Eclipse to Dazzle December Sky AOL News 9) -- Holiday stargazers are in for a December treat: a huge meteor shower and the year's only full lunar eclipse. The annual Geminid meteor shower ... It's Geminid Time! Sky & Telescope But the Geminid meteor shower of mid-December ties or even surpasses the Perseids as the year's richest and most reliable meteor display. ...

Geminid meteor shower to dazzle stargazers; best night for viewing to be ... New York Daily News By Michael Sheridan Astronomers call the Geminid meteor shower the best of the year, and more than 100 of the space rocks are expected to light up the night ... Reader of Meteor/Meteorite News reports: Claremore OK 1:45AM CST Dec 12 2010 just south of old rt66 on the south side of the city of Claremore, Oklahoma Saw a meteorite glowing green and moving incredibly fast as it burned up with possible large orange spark of material descending after the main flare of the burn out was facing north while taking out the trash and it seemed to come from behind me so it was falling at a  south to north orientation and it burned up what looked like "airliner circling an airport" height and an orange spark continued from it  a bit further down and went out of sight beyond the houses and trees to the north of me.I never saw one this close, usually waaay far off and barely visible and it almost scared me until I realized what I was seeing was just a much closer version of meteorites burning up.  (contact info on file)

UK Meteor Fireball 8DEC2010 Video 12DEC2010

UK Meteor Fireball 8DEC2010 video

posted on YouTube by johnnythefixer 93views


This  looks to be a genuine video of this event posted to Youtube by johnnythefixer. The video is taken from a moving vehicle travelling on a bearing of approximately 35 degrees east of north (NNE), along 
Brookside Avenue, Knotty Ash, Merseyside. The video shows a the passage of the meteor from 17:35:09 UT to 17:35:13 UT.


With respect to the fragmenting fireball of 2010 December 08th 17:30 - 17:45 UT, seen from across Britain, Alastair has updated the forum posting detailed above as follows:

I've analysed the available data from 58 reports on the December 8-9 fireball now. The meteor probably happened within five minutes or so of 17:36 UT that evening.

Places across Britain were treated to a view the event, between Swansea in south Wales, Somerset, Dorset and Berkshire in southern England, north to Renfrewshire, Stirlingshire and Fife in central Scotland, as well as across the country from Anglesey off north Wales to the northeast coast of Norfolk in East Anglia.

While the data did not all confirm a single pattern for where the meteor may have been, there was a high probability it had a generally east to west trajectory above central-northern England. Two early reports suggested it had passed almost overhead from the York-Leeds area of Yorkshire. Further analysis indicated a reasonable probability that the fireball had started somewhere above North Yorkshire, the East Riding, or the North Sea offshore of there, as the first point of a "central line" to this broader area, possibly around 10 km east of Filey near 100 km altitude. The visible end was then plausibly over central-western North Yorkshire, or perhaps the adjacent parts of southern County Durham or northern West Yorkshire around the Leeds-Bradford region, centrally again, possibly above the eastern Pennines around the Lofthouse-Masham Moor area of upper Nidderdale, around 55 km altitude. These central line specific locations were around 54.2° N, 0.1° W to 54.2° N, 1.7° W. Likely errors for the heights were at least +/- 10 km, for points along the central line path +/- ~40 km, and for the geographic coordinates,
roughly +/- 0.5°.

This central line is not definitive, merely a best-estimate drawing on what most of the available sightings would at least partly support. However, if we assume it to have been approximately correct, the projected surface path would have been ~105 km long. The fireball's atmospheric trajectory would have been descending at about 23°-24° to the horizontal (or between about 12° to 30° dependent on the error margin), giving an atmospheric path length of ~115 km (or between 108-123 km).

Estimates for the object's visible flight ranged from 1.5 to 10 seconds, according to those who saw all or most of the event, but most (87%), including the few more experienced astronomical observers, favoured a duration of six seconds or less, the majority (68%) between 2 to 4 seconds, with an overall average for all the estimates of 4 seconds. Using this average with the atmospheric path lengths proposed above gives an atmospheric velocity for the meteor, not allowing for deceleration, of ~29 km/sec (error range ~27-31 km/sec), so meteorically slow. This would be consistent with the relatively low start height, as slower meteors tend to ablate lower in the typical ~90-120 km altitude meteor zone.

With this path direction and length, the meteor was likely a sporadic or possibly a late Northern Taurid (recent International Meteor Organization video results have indicated the Northern Taurids probably continue their activity until December 10, rather than ending in late November as we have long supposed). The path direction would have to have been much more northeast to southwest, the estimated velocity somewhat swifter, the path length greater and angled more shallowly to the horizontal for the event to have been a potential Geminid, given that that shower's radiant had barely risen to the northeast when the meteor happened.

Thirty-five observers commented that the object broke apart, probably in a severe fragmentation event quite late in its apparition, producing around 4 to 7 main pieces and likely a lot of smaller sparkling droplets. Seven people suggested the meteor had left a short-lived persistent train for around two seconds, though two people saw no train at all (possibly because of different local observing conditions).

Colours mentioned in the main fireball included white (30%), green and orange (21% each), yellow (19%), blue (7%) and red (2%), while those in the tail or the persistent train (not everyone was clear about the distinction) were orange and blue (29% each), green and yellow (14% each), or red and white (7% each). Nobody in the open air reported hearing any sounds associated with the meteor.

The lack of acoustics and the relatively high end height counted against the possibility of any meteorites having fallen from the event, and increased the difficulty of identifying the more likely fall zone. Any solid objects continuing along the centre line would have splashed-down into the Irish Sea around 20 km offshore of the Barrow coastline of Cumbria. The Irish Sea would have been the more probable fall area overall, or the adjacent lands of the British Isles. No such fall reports consistent with the timing of this event have yet been received, however.

Other links, and any updates that may be possible to this report subsequently, will be found on the SPA's "Recent Fireball Sightings" webpage, at:

http://www.popastro.com/sections/meteor/fireball_sightings.htm 

Many thanks to all contributors so far. Any further reports would still be most welcome!

Alastair McBeath,
Meteor Director, Society for Popular Astronomy.
Meteor homepage: http://www.popastro.com/sections/meteor.htm
E-mail: <meteor@popastro.com> (messages under 150 kB in size only, 
please)
-- 
reported by David Entwistle

Meteor/Meteorite News 11DEC2010

Reports from Readers of Meteor/Meteorite News:
Dec 10 2010, 5:18 PM

Guest471 (guest) wrote: i m living in tokyo today december 10 at around 630 am i saw a fireball crossing the sky it had a long fire tail