Mike's Astro Photos

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:

Photo By Howard Edin September 30, 2008

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

Within the last week two significant fireballs have been reported from Tucson, Arizona.

The first was on: 2011-01-08 @ 00:10:00 MST.

The second was this morning: 2011-01-11 @ 01:20:00 MST.

Here is a video from all sky camera that captured the 1/11/11 fireball:

You can see the fireball at the 7 second mark. This may have been a late Quadrantid?

Be on the lookout for extra fireballs today and tomorrow. On January 11th, 2011 (tomorrow) 5 different NEOs (Near Earth Asteroids) will fly past Earth. There is an increased chance that fragments from these NEOs may hit Earth, creating large bright green fireballs. Have your cameras ready and please let me know if you see one.

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.

Quadrantid Meteor - Jan 4th, 2011

Here’s the meteor at full resolution:

Quadrantid Meteor - January 4th, 2011

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.

Quadrantid Meteor Animation - Smoke Trail

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.