Mike's Astro Photos

More fireball reports keep coming in! This time from Minnesota and what makes this extra strange is — there are some reports of multiple fireballs. As few as 1 and as many as 3 fireballs have been reported from different parts of Minnesota. The primary event appears to have happened at approximately 6:30 PM CST.  This event was also seen from Iowa, Nebraska, South Dakota and Wisconsin.

Here are a few of the reports:

From Watkins MN, Debi writes:

“What is going on?  I saw one last night and two this morning!  Previously I’ve only seen two in my whole life.  Last night I saw it in the WSW shortly after sunset, while it was still light out.  This morning I saw two within 10 minutes in the ESE, before sunrise but while it was already light.  This morning the sky was overcast.  Last night I think it was a mix of clear and cloudy skies.”

From Richard in St Paul:

“There were two big flashes in a row, one a little below the other.  It seems to have been seen by many people. I would really like to know what it was.”

And Pip from Madrid Iowa:

“It started out very bright and was about the size of a large marble, ending roughly the size of a pea. From my angle, it actually looked like it was headed towards Ames, Iowa, but I realize that my estimate there is probably way off. It definitely appeared to be headed in a downward trajectory. (Of course, I’m not an expert at these sorts of things. It was however one of the largest, brightest, and definitely most colorful fireballs I’ve ever seen. (Ok, I’ve seen two now. This wasn’t as big as the first, but was brighter and more colorful.

I will update again as more information becomes available.

According to Twitter, Facebook and AMS reports, a massive fireball was seen all over the south last night at approximately 8:40 central time. Fireball reports are coming in from Alabama, Mississippi, Texas, Arkansas, Louisiana, Tennessee, Oklahoma and Florida. Sonic booms were reported and early analysis indicate it was traveling south west to north east.

There have been NO photographs of this event yet. There have been 2 FAKES floating around though.

 Last nights meteor probably looked like this:

 

Here are some news reports.
http://www.katc.com/news/huge-fireball-spotted-over-southeast-us/

http://www.todaysthv.com/news/local/story.aspx?storyid=137947&catid=2

Early reports indicate it may have hit near, Poteau Mountain OK, but this has not yet been confirmed.

There are most certainly meteorites on the ground somewhere left behind by this cosmic visitor. The meteorite hunting community is already in rally mode. I would expect a meteorite is found within the next few days.

There is always a lot of mis-information spread when a fireball hits, so just to clear up a few things people have been writing in about:
1) no this is not the meteor apocalypse. Everything is ok, so don’t panic!
2) meteorites don’t burn green because of copper, they burn green because of nickle and iron.
3) this meteor was most certainly bigger than a pebble. Without being dramatic, it was at least the size of a basketball and could have been as big as a small car.
4) There is probably NOT a crater on the ground somewhere, but while the chances are extremely rare, this might happen.
5) Regarding terminology: its a ‘meteoroid’ when its in space; its a ‘meteor’ when it is in the sky on fire in Earth’s atmosphere; its a ‘meteorite’ when it hits the ground.

If you have any pictures or videos of this event, please email them to me. If you saw this spectacular event, please leave a comment and also report what you saw to the American Meteor Society.

I will update again with the AMS plots and possible trajectory asap, so bookmark and check back again soon.

Update 1/12/2010 – 12:56 EST – Here’s a surveillance video that captured the flash of the meteor, but unfortunately no direct sighting:

http://www.kitv.com/video/26461600/detail.html

The 2011 Quadrantids Meteor Shower peaked this morning at 1:00 a.m.

I took photos last night continuously from about 8:00 PM till dawn and only caught one meteor, but it was a good one.

Here’s the meteor at full resolution:

To see the full shot, click here.

The cool thing about it is, the meteor left behind a visible smoke trail that showed up in 20+ consecutive frames after the flash. That’s more than 10 minutes! Its hard for me to say for sure, but I think this may have been a fireball.

Here’s an animated sequence of about 10 frames that shows the smoke trail left by the meteor.

This shower will be active until January 10th and with all the fireball activity happening lately, it is worth checking out!

Photo Details
Canon 50d DSLR
25 Seconds @ ISO 800
Canon EF 15mm f/2.8 fish eye lens
Mounted Piggy Back to CGEM

UPDATE: 1/4/2010

As I was driving home today I realized that I would have probably caught this picture on one of my new security cameras. I knew the exact time was 2:43, so when I got home I checked the video log. Sure enough, I just barely caught it at the edge of the screen.

Look in the center top of the video to see the fireball at the 2 second mark. You may need to replay the video a few times to get it.

On 12/29/2010 a second meteor shot through the skies west of Maryland at 8:30 PM. This made for an exciting week and is causing some confusion with peoples observations. Two big fireballs in the same location 26 hours apart is certainly an odd coincidence. Reports of the 12/28/2010 meteor touching down in Fredrick and being found are most certainly FALSE.

Tuesday night’s meteor (or meteor #1) was captured on video by York Water Company. That makes at least 3 significant meteors captured by York Water in about 18 months. Here is the latest York Water video:

Tuesday night’s meteor is looking to have touched ground somewhere in South Central Pennsylvania. We are not sure just yet where Wednesday night’s meteor landed, but it was somewhere West of Freeland MD. I’m working on the AMS plots for both events, but won’t have these together for a few more days.

All these meteor falls sure are exciting, but guess what…  Not one of the 6 meteors that have flown across the Maryland skies since July 6th, 2009 has come even close in size to the Mason Dixon Meteor. Nation wide, there has not been a single report of homes shaking to the level that the MDM caused since July 6th 2009. The closest was Wisconsin which resulted in 100+ meteorite finds, but even Wisconsin did not shake homes like the MDM. These facts are encouraging for those still searching for the Mason Dixon Meteor.

Reports are flying in regarding a fireball seen over Pennsylvania at 6:45 PM EST. Witnesses from South Carolina to Massachusetts are reporting a large bolide flying from south east to north west. Over 50 witness reports have been submitted to the AMS already. Early plotting suggests Michigan as the termination point. Will update on this event as more information becomes available. If you saw this fireball please report your sighting to the American Meteor Society Fireball Page.

Over 2 nights of mostly cloudy weather I was able to capture 21 total meteor photos (out of  2000+ images). One of these exposures caught two meteors within the same shot (a 25 second time frame).

Photo Details: Canon 40d camera with Canon EF 15mm f/2.8 fish eye lens; 25 second ISO 800 exposure

The Geminid Meteor Shower peaked before dawn this morning and observers around the globe are reporting one of the best showings in years boasting rates of over 100 meteors per hour. The east coast and much of the country was under clouds and snow storms. I setup my camera while it was cloudy hoping conditions might change. Fortunately between 2:30-4 am the clouds cleared up a bit and in that 1.5 hours I photographed 13 meteors. Its cloud tonight, but I’m trying the same plan again. Here’s one of the photos from last night. I’m still processing the other pictures and will post more later.

The Geminid Meteor Shower, one of the best showers of the year peaks this Tuesday right before dawn.  If you have clear skys this weekend and over the next few days take time to look up for a few hours.

http://www.usatoday.com/tech/science/2010-12-10-geminid-shower_N.htm

I was on my way home from meteorite hunting when I got a call from a neighbor in Freeland MD. He said he had just witnessed a huge fireball from the south-south-east headed to the north. The time was 8:30 on November 12th. He said it left a trail across the sky that stayed illuminated for several seconds after the meteor passed. It was bright enough to lighten the ground of the deck where he was standing. Based on his report it sounds like it would have started over Baltimore MD and ended in Harrisburg PA. I will post more information as it becomes available. Any witnesses to this event are encouraged to submit their account to the American Meteor Society Fireball Report.

Comet Hartley 2 was as close as it gets to Earth last week. I snapped these pictures the night after the peak (as peak night was cloudy.)

Here’s an animated GIF of a sequence of images taken over a 45 minute time period. Clouds were coming and going so I had to drop some frames at the beginning of the animation. The line that goes through one of the frames is a satellite.

The really really exciting thing about this comet is: NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory is currently operating the EPOXI mission and one of the goals of this mission is to send a NASA probe (space ship) on a close fly by of this comet. This fly by is scheduled to take place in just a few days. You can read more about the EPOXI mission here.

Photo Details
William Optics FLT 98 / CGEM Mount
Canon 20Da Camera
No Auto Guider
30 second ISO 400 exposures
No stacking / no flat frame processing
minimal photoshop cleanup

UPDATE November 4th, 2010 From Gary Fujihara @ Big Kahuna Meteorites

For those of you who missed the live webcast, EPOXI spacecraft flew by Comet Hartley 2 a few minutes ago and took some absolutely stunning pictures with its Medium Resolution Imager. Here is a composite of 3 of the 5 closest approach images:

http://bigkahuna-meteorites.com/Images/CometHartley-04.jpg

And here is an Associated Press Story about the NASA mission.

Another fireball meteor fell over Baltimore and PA on June 24th, 2010.

Orioles fans watched it streak across the Baltimore sky line during a night game Thursday. How cool would that have been!? Plus the O’s won.

Here’s a map of the AMS witness reports, some reports from Maryland Weather Blog and the York Water video (yes York Water captured this one too).

From an early analysis / quick eye up it looks like the termination point for this fireball is somewhere north west of Harrisburg. I have some new data that I’m working with while leads and information continue to come in. Its looking like meteorites may have landed in the Appalachian mountains which will be very difficult terrain to go meteorite hunting in.

Here are a view news stories. The York Daily Record story has a video of the fireball as it terminates.

http://weblogs.marylandweather.com/2010/06/meteor_during_orioles_game.html

http://www.ydr.com/ci_15379570?source=most_viewed

Will keep you posted.

A large fireball was reported along the east coast early Monday morning. Observations were reported all along the east coast including: South Carolina, Virginia, Maryland, Pennsylvanian, New Jersey, New York, Connecticut and Massachusetts. No videos of this great site have yet to be reported. Over 30 AMS reports where submitted and after reviewing the details on these observation it looks like the meteor landed in the Atlantic Ocean. Too bad, it sounded like it had all of the characteristics to be a meteorite dropper.

Here’s a map of the AMS reports along with an estimated meteor path based solely on these reports.

To help understand the image above: Green lines are the first point a witness observed; yellow lines are the second point observed; purple lines are from witnesses who only reported a single point; the red line is the estimated meteor path.

From what I can tell the meteor was headed on a south west to north east path, hugging the coast line.

This meteor path is an estimate based on the AMS reports. I think its safe to say this thing landed in the drink, so there’s not much point in refining the trajectory more than this. If you have a better idea about the path of this meteor lmk.

Here’s a write up on the fireball from Frank Roylance’s Blog. There are a lot of great comments about the event on this site.

Here’s a link to the google earth KMZ file for this fireball.

Coincidentally there was another large fireball reported over Wisconsin within 15 minutes of this one. The WI fireball was a different event all together and most likely not related, but this seems to be an odd and rare occurrence [two big fireballs so close to each other in terms of both distance and time].

I’m a little bummed out I still don’t have my allsky cam setup. I’ve missed two great fireballs since deciding to get an allsky cam setup. I’m on it now.

I recently bought a new telescope and I used it for the first time Saturday March 6th. I was really having a tough time with it the whole night. Between setup, polar alignment, balancing, tracking and then doing it all over again a few times, I didn’t get much time to do photography. I was really only taking test shots most of the evening and after several hours of frustration and not expecting to have taken any good photos, I chalked the perfectly dark no moon clear night up to a leaning experience. I was eager to review the test shots just to see how the new scope performed. During the session, I took 3 shots of the Flame Nebula to test focusing. While reviewing the photos at the end of the evening, I found this meteor looking streak right through it.

Here’s a zoom-crop of just the meteor part:

Here’s an inverted image of the meteor. The variation in light intensity and pixel width (a sign of a meteor) is clear in the inverted picture:

I haven’t gotten confirmation on what this is yet, but I’ve posted the picture to the meteor observing community to get some opinions. If it was in fact a meteor, it would have been a very teeny tiny one, probably the size of a grain of sand. This meteor would not have been visible to the human eye or normal camera lens.

Here’s a pretty cool picture of a meteor with a nifty spear like shape.

There are two distinctive bursts where the meteor gets wider and brighter. You can see these more easily in the inverted image:

Here’s the full image. Its no fireball but this is a bigger than average meteor with a distinctive shape.

The full moon on January 30th, 2010 was the biggest and brightest it will be all year according to space.com. The moon travels in an elliptical orbit around the Earth and it is closer at some times than others. About 2 times a year this closeness coincides with a full moon and that’s what happened Saturday night. Despite the extra big full moon I tried doing some meteor photography Sunday night. I actually caught a couple. You can see in this picture the moon is huge. Part of this is due to the 25 second exposure, but even still, that’s a big moon.

here’s a closeup of just the meteor. I’m surprised it was even visible with the light from the moon.