We were without power for 3-4 days this week due to hurricane Irene. The power outage coincided with the new moon phase leaving the skies in northern Maryland darker than I have ever seen before. I was a little bummed that I couldn’t fire up the observatory, so I made the most of it and took some tripod shots of the Milky Way Galaxy.

Here’s a lucky shot of a bright meteor, low on the horizon. Based on the elevation angle of 8º and assuming a 80km starting point for illuminated flight, this meteor would have been about 569km SE of my location or half the distance between Maryland and Bermuda.

Milky Way Galaxy and Meteor - August 28, 2011 11:28 PM EST

Here’s the meteor at full zoom resolution. At a magnitude of 2.0, the bright star directly above the meteor is Diphda.

Milky Way Galaxy and Meteor - August 28, 2011 11:28 PM EST

Here’s another shot of the Milky Way Galaxy from the backyard.

Milky Way Galaxy - August 2011

The power went out early sunday morning. I finally got a generator on Tuesday. The first thing plugged into the generator was my observatory. I was happy to learn that all equipment and PC fired up and operated perfectly on the generator power.

Milky Way Galaxy from Freeland Observatory - August 2011

We were happy to get our power turned back on Wednesday night. Many thanks to all of the utility workers from around the country who came to the east coast to fix our power lines. You guys are much appreciated! I’m hoping hurricane Katia will be a dud or misses us.

I recently attended a NASA meteor workshop at the Pisgah Astronomical Research Institute in Western North Carolina. The workshop consisted of two days of talks put on by the world’s foremost meteor scientists. The talks centered around meteors and video cameras and all sky camera networks and topics relating to the operation and analysis of meteors using different types of cameras and software. There were some VERY cool advanced technologies showcased at this event. I was invited to speak and gave two presentations. The first presentation was about the recent work my company did for the AMS website and the second was an update on the Mason Dixon Meteor hunt. Both presentations were well received and I got a lot of new pointers and ideas that will recharge the meteorite hunt. It was really great to meet the upper echelon of the meteor community and I consider it a privilege being invited to such an exclusive event.

Here is a PDF of the workshop program which contains an agenda and abstracts of each presentation.

Here are the slides from my power point presentation.

For the MDM hunt update I used The Official Page of the Mason Dixon Meteor, as I guide for my presentation.

Here are a few astro photos I took from the PARI site.

NASA Meteor Workshop, PARI NC - August 3rd 2011

Nestled inside the Shenandoah Mountains, PARI has very nice dark skies.

NASA Meteor Workshop, PARI NC - August 3rd 2011

Allowing for a prominent Milky Way.

NASA Meteor Workshop, PARI NC - August 3rd, 2011

Here’s a picasa photo gallery with a few more pics from the trip.

And a time lapse video of all photos taken over the three days.

I imaged the Perseid Meteor Shower three nights this week capturing an average of four meteors each night. Here are the best two from the peak night. Both are fairly large, bright and long.

Perseid Meteor High Res - August 12th, 2011

I think this one may be a small fireball. You can see Cassiopeia in the shot for reference.

Perseid Meteor - August 12th, 2011

Some light cloud cover rolled in but it wasn’t enough to block this Perseid .

Perseid Meteor - August 12th, 2011

Here’s the full sized picture:

Perseid Meteor - August 12th, 2011

The north east was graced with yet another fireball early yesterday morning. Witnesses from Ontario, Michigan, Ohio, Vermont, New York, Pennsylvania and Maryland all reported seeing a bright green fireball in the sky at approximately 5:15 AM EST.

The AMS received over 40 witness reports. The initial run through my plotting software was a bit confusing. This is what all of the plotted witness reports look like: (red icon means movement left to right; green icon means movement right to left; green line is starting point, yellow line is ending point)

Green Fireball - February 23rd, 2011

At first glance, this looks to be a tricky fireball. Usually the green and red icons will delineate the flight path pretty well, but in this instance, the green and red icons, don’t help make much sense of the flight path.

One of the biggest challenges with making sense of the witness reports is eliminating the noise (or bad reports). For big events (and small ones) there are always reports that conflict with each other, so its a bit of an art to determine which reports are good and which are bad. To help combat this, I recently added a field to the AMS fireball report form called observer experience. The purpose of the field is for the witness to rate his or her observing experience — 1 = no experience and 5 = very experienced.

I made some changes to the plotting software today so I could filter the witnesses by their level of experience. Here is what the witnesses with observing experience of 2 or higher looks like:

Green Fireball - February 23rd, 2011

Things are starting to shape up a bit, but lets see what the plot looks like with only level 3 observers and higher:

February 23, 2011 - Green Fireball

Now it looks like we have a clear ending point. To determine this we try to find a common intersection among all of the yellow lines.

The flight path, is still a bit unclear to me, but there are two reports on the western side of the track that indicate “Up To Down” movement. This generally means the witnesses’ field of view is usually parallel to the meteors flight path and the meteor is moving away from the witness. For this reason they do not see side-to-side movement. Because of this, my initial estimate is West to East movement, starting in Michigan flying over Lake Ontario and ending on the Pennsylvania-New York border near Addison, Lawrenceville and Horseheads New York.

February 23rd, 2011 - Green Fireball - Possible Drop Zone

A daytime fireball seen today from Philadelphia, New York City, New Jersey and other parts of the east coast turned heads and made waves. Over 20 AMS reports were filed within an hour of the fall and almost all of them put the space rock somewhere in the Atlantic.

The image below represents the plotting of the witness reports received by the AMS website in the first hour of this fall. 20+ reports in 1 hour for a daytime fireball, means this was a significant meteor event. The red person icon means the witness saw the meteor traveling left to right. The green icon means the person saw the meteor traveling right to left. The green line is the direction the witness first saw the fireball. The yellow line is where they last saw it. The red line is my ‘quick guess’ at the path of this fireball based on early reports.

Philly Fireball - Febuary 14, 2011 12:40 PM

If you witnessed this spectacular event, please leave a comment and tell us what you saw. Also please report the fireball to the AMS.

UPDATE 2/14/2011 – 8:23 PM –  Reports keep coming into the AMS. We have had over 50 already making this a heavily sighted event. I updated the above plot with the latest reports.

Marc Fries thinks he found the meteor on doppler radar. Here’s what he had to say:

I think I may have found it on radar.  The radar data is noisy on all the radars in range, but there is one feature that appears in the 1736 UTC data set of the KDIX radar outside Philly.  It features multiple altitude signals and a Doppler velocity pair (i.e. turbulence).  Location is 40.19498, -73.6645.  If it is a meteorite signature then it is roughly the size of the Grimsby fall.

Two words: Scuba gear.  Or two other words: Fishy Squisher.

The AMS Fireball logs for this event have been published.

Update 2/15/2011 – Radar Images

Marc Fries of Radar Meteorites sent me these 3D radar images of a possible hit of yesterday’s fireball.

KDIX 20110214 1736

KDIX 20110214 1736-SRV

This is what Marc had to say about the radar data:

This was the product of a quick 15-minute data exam before I had to take my son to his doctor’s appointment.  I’ve looked a bit more and there are a few interesting items in there that I would suggest as search targets if this were over land, but this is the only one that features both multi-sweep returns and observed turbulence.  The first image is a reflectivity image – note how freakin’ noisy the data is.  I don’t know why but all the radars in view are seeing this.  It might be multi-bounce returns from high waves, if there happens to be high winds running at the time.  The second image is the Doppler measurement.  Note the paired towards (green) and away from (red) the radar values.  This indicates that there was turbulence in that region. Both of these features show up in known meteorite falls, although there is currently nothing that is 100% accurate indicator of a meteorite fall.  Still, this feature is roughly in the time and space indicated by your data.

I went looking through the Nexrad files myself to poke around and found this bright return in one of the views. Its pretty close to the red arrow in the trajectory estimate based on witness reports. If this were the meteor (big if), then there would be a possibility of meteorites on Long Island, possibly between Levittown and East Massapequa.

Possible Meteor on Doppler Radar

Update 2/15/2011 – Over 230 observations of the NYC February 14th have been submitted to the AMS website making 2/14/11 NYC/Philly Meteor the 2nd most reported meteor of all time. Second only to The Wisconsin Meteor of 2010. There is still time to beat out WI, which holds the record at 323 witness reports. If you witnessed this meteor, please report it to the AMS.

Update 2/16/2011 – Bill Cooke from NASA’s meteoroid office sent me the results from his analysis of infrasound data which enables him to estimate the total energy and total mass of the meteor. This is what Bill had to say:

We did pick up this event at the Bermuda station, with the back azimuth consistent with the doppler radar as reported by Mark Fries. Energy estimate is ~10 tons TNT, which equates to ~0.9 m diameter rock, with a mass of about 850 kg. A bit lower than my initial guesstimate, but I did not have the infrasound available then.

Update 2/17/2011 00:23 – I received this interesting comment and image from Peter.

I looked at one of the 1736 images from the DIX radar…definately the meteoroid. Lots of echos, some indicating hard targets and also a trail of smoke returns. I have an image, but don’t know how to load it to this site. I would not rule out some iron landing on Long Island.


Possible Meteor Radar Signal Over Long Island

Bob Lunsford from the American Meteor Society sent out this email today to the meteor observing mailing list:

The American Meteor Society has received 39 reports of seven separate fireball events over North America on January 19th. Two of these were widely seen events. Both of these events occurred near 21:00 EST. The first occurred  over the northern Midwest and southern Canada. There is some wide scattered timing of this event and the possibility exists that this may be more than one fireball. The second occurred over the southeastern states and was seen from Florida north to North Carolina. There is good
agreement for the timing plus it seems to been a bit brighter with a majority of those reporting that the peak brightness exceeded that of the full moon.

For more details please visit the AMS website at:
http://www.amsmeteors.org/fireball2/public.php?start_date=2011-01-19&end_date=2011-01-19&state=&event_id=&submit=Find+Reports

Refer to reports 83 and 86.

Clear Skies!

Robert Lunsford
American Meteor Society

Dirk Ross from Toyko tipped me off to an increase in meteor activity on January 10th, 2011. Since that time there has been at least 7 significant fireball events in the US alone. If you pay attention to the reports, stories and witness accounts you will see that subsequent fireballs are being observed after the main event. This is a recurring theme with several of these events. There is not much support in the community for the NEO theory being the reason for the increase. There is also not a consensus that there even is an increase in activity to begin with. I believe the multiple events reported yesterday in conjunction with all of the recent big fireballs we have been having is potential evidence for a new meteor stream or some other phenomena.

Reports are now coming in from North Carolina and Georgia about a large green meteor that just came down. The reported times are between 20:50 – 21:00 EST.

From Charlotte, NC

it was really cool ball of green glow. my husband thought it was a firework left over from new years but there was no sound but a big ball of green glowing something with a glowing trail

from Burlington, NC

I was driving in my truck talking with a friend. We had the windows rolled up and the heater fan on. I didn\’t hear anything from outside the vehicle.
General_Remarks = I was driving towrds work on Forestdale Dr between the Forestdale apartments and the K-Mart. Through the windsheild I saw a very bright fireball with a tail streaking across the sky. I lost sight very quickly when it went down behind trees/buildings.

Charlotte, NC

This happened on a very clear night, and it was an amazing sight. The best shooting star I have ever witnessed. It was so bright and large that I was waiting for an impact!

Could this be more evidence of a new meteor stream? Approaching asteroids? Solar grazing comets? Inquiring and paranoid minds want to know….

If you witnessed this event, please report it to the American Meteor Society and also leave a comment here or email me.

I’ve been wanting to post an update about each of the meteors that have fallen recently, but because there have been so many I don’t have time to give each the attention it deserves, so I’ve decided to do a multi-meteor-update. In this update I will include AMS meteor plots and any other publicly available information on the following falls: 12/28/10 – PA, 12/29/10 – PA, 1/08/11 – Mississippi and 1/12/11 – Minnesota.  I consider these falls to be significant because they were seen from multiple states and the number of ams reported witnesses is in the top percentile of reported falls.

Additionally each of these falls is curious from the stand point that the timing is so close to each other. Reason tells us that sporadic meteor falls are random unrelated events and there is nothing linking a fall today in Pennsylvania to a fall tomorrow in Mississippi, HOWEVER, the sheer random coincidence of time and space for all of these events is at the very least odd. Further more several of these falls were accompanied with reports of subsequent falls in the same locations shortly there after — meaning multiple meteors falls.  There is not enough data here to make any conclusions, but I’ve been keeping close tabs on the large meteor fall rates over the last 2 years and the last 2-3 weeks has been heavy in meteor falls IMO.

12/28/2010 – Pennsylvania

2010/12/28 - PA Fireball

AMS Event ID: 929
Time: 16:45
Videos: York Water Company Security Video
AMS Witness Reports: 155
Sonic Boom Reported: Yes
Additional Information: Second largest reported fall of 2010. Wisconsin was the first.
Estimated Fall Area: Lancaster, PA
Possibility For Meteorites on the Ground: 80%

12/29/2010 – Pennsylvania

2010-12-29 / PA Fireball

AMS Event ID: 935
Time: 18:30
Videos: None
AMS Witness Reports: 30
Sonic Boom Reported: No
Additional Information:
Estimated Fall Area: Unknown
Possibility For Meteorites on the Ground: 50%

1/11/11 – Mississippi

2010/01/11 - Mississippi Fireball

AMS Event ID: 52
Time: 21:45
Videos: Trailer Park Video
AMS Witness Reports: 61
Sonic Boom Reported: Yes
Additional Information:
Estimated Fall Area: Southern Mississippi
Possibility For Meteorites on the Ground: 90%

1/12/2011 – Minnesota

01/12/2011 - Minnesota Fireball

AMS Event ID: 53
Time: 18:30
Videos: None
AMS Witness Reports: 21
Sonic Boom Reported:
Additional Information:
Estimated Fall Area:
Possibility For Meteorites on the Ground: 50%

There was a good conversation on the meteor observing list today regarding the ‘perceived increase in fireball activity’. The conclusion from all participants was there was no link to the recent fireballs and the passing of near Earth asteroids. Most agreed there was also no reason to conclude we are even experiencing an increase in fireballs anyway.

Carl Hergenrother, a NEO researcher, explained there is no correlation to witnessed fireball activity on Earth and NEOs that are reported in close approach to Earth, because, these reported NEOs are only a small subset of the actual NEOs flying by everyday anyway.

My understanding of what Chris Peterson of Cloudbait Observatory said is — sometimes fireball rates are going to go up and sometimes they are going to go down and that is just the way it is. Rates will ebb and flow, and correlating a
perceived increase in fireball rates for a certain time with approaching NEOs in that same time frame is a fallacy. It would be like saying, fireball rates went up right after christmas, that must be why those dead birds are falling from the sky.

Bob Lunsford of the American Meteor Society pointed out that an increase in reported fireballs does not correlate to an increase in actual fireball rates. It just means more people are seeing them and reporting them. This is a trend he has seen with the AMS reports since they were started. Explanations for this can include: more people with computers and internet access, increased interest in meteors and fireballs, better news coverage and better promotion of the AMS reporting form.

As humans we have a need to find meaning and explanation for things that happen when often times there is none. Sometimes rocks just fall from the sky and it doesn’t mean anything at all.

This appears to be the first video of the Mississippi 1/11/11 fireball.

From goldieblue2005

Here is a video of surveillance camera that shows a flash at 8:47 pm. In Louisiana. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uWXpT0cQXKU

I don’t know the location where this video was shot, or the direction the camera is facing. I have been in touch with the author and hope to get more details soon. Goldie if you’re reading this please contact me

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:

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

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.

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).

Doubel Geminid - December 15th, 2010

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