Meteor News...Latest El Paso Meteor Event Oct. 31/2010 09:50:10 UTC

The Taurid Meteor Shower is underway and if this event is any indication, it should produce some nice fireballs. This one occured at 09:50:10 UTC (02:50:12 MDT) over El Paso, Tx. and lasted about 2 seconds. Hopefully, there are more to come!

Meteor News...Williamson Iowa Meteor/Fireball

Fireball Meteor over southern Iowa - Williamson,Iowa, KCCI's u ...
Fireball Meteor captured with my all sky camera at my Observatory the morning
of October 30,2010,,at 12:30am....Tim Cline,,Lucas County Iowa.... (video link)...

Will Comet Hartley 2 spawn a new meteor shower?

It’s very unlikely, but two intriguing pieces of evidence point to Hartley 2, the comet of the moment,  as a possible source of two recent bright fireballs seen over Canada and the southeastern U.S. On Oct. 16, two NASA all-sky cameras (more)...

Comet Hartley sports a short tail extending to the lower right in this photo taken earlier this month. Credit: Michael Jaeger

Full Moon Doesn't Phase Orionids Viewing

Despite the fullness of the moon, the all-sky meteor camera at NASA's Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Ala., managed to detect a decent number of Orionid meteors this October -- 41 in total! These meteors, produced by debris from Halley's Comet, travel at 146,000 miles per hour and burn up high in the atmosphere. (more)...

 

Shown above are two Orionid meteors observed on Oct. 21, 2010.  The shower radiant, located near the constellation Orion, is easily visible.

Unusual Meteor Activity Over Mexico

Dr. Salvador Aguirre of Hermosillo, Sonora NW Mexico captured an unusual outburst of activity on his Sentinel All Sky Camera Oct. 26. 6 events in a 4.5 hour period occured between 07:15 UTC and 11:25 UTC. A check of the El Paso, TX camera 491km (305mi) away did not reveal the outburst. (Hermosillo camera images below courtesy Dr. Salvador Aguirre). No speculation yet as to a possible radiant. Updates later on this site.

 

composite of 6 events over NW Mexico 10-26-10

Celestial News: Halloween Fireballs

Don’t be surprised if you see a blazing fireball or two streaking across the heavens while you are out trick-or-treating this weekend.  There’s no reason for alarm.  It’s just the annual Taurid meteor showers reaching their peak of activity. (more)...

The Taurid meteor shower, currently under way, will peak in Early November. Watch for slow, colorful fireballs that point backwards toward the Pleiades star cluster in Taurus, the Bull. The Pleiades are at top center in this image. Photo by Jimmy Westlake, 2008.

 

Oct 25/26/27/28 Meteors

October 29, 2010 by Carl Hergenrother
In the last ‘Meteor’ post, I was all excited about getting a clear night (Oct 25/26) to catch some Orionids. I guess I spoke too soon. Even though there were no obvious clouds in all of AZ on the IR satellite image, there were clouds over Tucson. I’ve seen this before where the entire state is clear but the Tucson valley forms a cap of clouds. Luckily, the conditions have gotten better and last night (Oct 27/28) was crystal clear. (more)...

Deep Impact spacecraft readies for comet encounter

LOS ANGELES (AP) - A NASA spacecraft is about to have another close look at a comet. Next week, the Deep Impact spacecraft is set to pass within 435 miles of a half-mile-wide comet named Hartley 2. It will use its telescopes and other instruments to examine the surface and record gas outbursts. (more)...

Scientists Watch for a "Hartley-id" Meteor Shower

This month, Comet Hartley 2 has put on a good show for backyard astronomers. The comet’s vivid green atmosphere and auburn tail of dust look great through small telescopes, and NASA’s Deep Impact/EPOXI probe is about to return even more dramatic pictures when it flies past the comet’s nucleus on Nov. 4th. (more)...

This image of comet Hartley 2 was captured by amateur astronomer Byron Bergert on Oct. 6 in Gainesville, Florida using a 106 mm Takahashi astrograph. Image credit: Byron Berger

Meteor News...Michigan Fireball OCT 16 2010

Crackle' sound precedes flash and glowing space in Michigan night sky

Michigan witnesses report hearing a "fizzle, pop, crackle" sound as an "intense" white flash of light went off in the sky followed by a "wide, long, glowing space" that seemed to sparkle for 20 seconds on October 16, 2010, according to testimony from the Mutual UFO Network (MUFON) witness reporting database. (more)...

Meteor News...North Texas Fireball OCT 16 2010

As I walked out of my garage at about 7:10 CDT this morning, I saw a very nice bolide in the eastern sky. It ran from about 35 degrees down to about 15 degrees altitude. It HAD to be very bright as it was quite prominent even right above the dawning sun (still below the horizon, but close). Anyone else see it? (more)...

More News....Ireland Fireball

 The fireball of 10th October 2010 as imaged by one of the Armagh Observatory cameras at 02:32 am.
Armagh Observatory received many telephone and internet reports from members of the public regarding sightings of a bright meteor or fireball which crossed over Northern Ireland in the early morning of Sunday, 10th October. (more)...

ORIONID METEOR SHOWER

http://spaceweather.com/http://meteor.uwo.ca/Earth is entering a broad stream of debris from Halley's Comet, and this is causing the annual Orionid meteor shower. "The best time to look is during the hours before dawn on Thursday, Oct. 21st, and again on Friday, Oct 22nd," advises Bill Cooke of NASA's Meteoroid Environment Office. "Unfortunately, we have a bright Moon this year. Even so, I'd expect some bright Orionids to shine through the moonlight." An all-sky camera at the University of Western Ontario recorded this early Orionid fireball on Oct. 18th: (more)...

Stargazers Can watch Orionid Meteor Shower, Debris From Halley's Comet

The 2010 Orionid meteor shower peaks during the day of October 21, 2010. For stargazers wanting to observe Orionid meteors, the best times will me the mornings of October 21 and October 22. (more)...

Fireball streaks across Northern Ireland skies

The cause was actually a meteoroid, an orange-sized piece of a comet or asteroid, burning up over Northern Ireland early last Sunday. (more)...

San Diego Fireball OCT 10 2010

METEOR SIGHTING CONFIRMED BY 2ND WITNESS; EXPERTS SEEKS MORE INFO TO LAUNCH RECOVERY EFFORT.

October 14, 2010 (San Diego’s East County) – Earlier this week we published an inquiry from a Deerhorn Valley/Jamul reader who believed she saw a large meteor possibly crashing to earth over East County on Monday night, October 10. (more)...

Latest El Paso All Sky Camera Detections

OCT 16 2010
01:14:00 UTC
ELP All Sky

OCT 14 2010
02:46:39 UTC
ELP All Sky

OCT 11 2010
11:56:32 UTC
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OCT 11 2010 
05:31:12 UTC
ELP All Sky

Elusive Constellation Appears With Oct. Meteors

Camel Leopards and Comets Posted on Oct 08, 2010 02:43:20 PM | William Cooke

Camelopardalis.
It's a strange-sounding name for a constellation, coming from the Greco-Roman word for giraffe, or "camel leopard". The October Camelopardalids are a collection of faint stars that have no mythology associated with them -- in fact, they didn't begin to appear on star charts until the 17th century.
Even experienced amateur astronomers are hard-pressed to find the constellation in the night sky. But in early October, it comes to prominence in the minds of meteor scientists as they wrestle with the mystery of this shower of meteors, which appears to radiate from the giraffe's innards.
The October Camelopardalids are not terribly spectacular, with only a handful of bright meteors seen on the night of Oct. 5. It may have been first noticed back in 1902, but definite confirmation had to wait until Oct. 2005, when meteor cameras videotaped 12 meteors belonging to the shower. Moving at a speed of 105,000 miles per hour, Camelopardalids ablate, or burn up, somewhere around 61 miles altitude, according to observations from the NASA allsky meteor cameras on the night of Oct. 5, 2010.

So they aren't spectacular. Their speed is calculated. Their "burn up" altitudes and orbits are known. So what's the mystery?
Camelopardalids have orbits, which indicates that they come from a long period comet, like Halley's Comet. But the Camelopardalids don't come from Halley, nor from any of the other comets that have been discovered. Hence the mystery: somewhere out there is -- or was -- a comet that passes close to Earth which has eluded detection. These tiny, millimeter size bits of ice leaving pale streaks of light in the heavens are our only clues about a comet of a mile, maybe more, in diameter.
This is why astronomers keep looking at the Camelopardalids meteors. They hope that measuring more orbits may eventually help determine the orbit of the comet, enabling us to finally locate and track this shadowy visitor to Earth's neighborhood.
You can see the brief burst of a Camelopardalids meteor in this video. 

NASA Spacecraft To Explore 103P/Hartley 2

Space Weather
Sat, 02 Oct 2010 12:26 CDT

Green comet 103P/Hartley 2 is approaching Earth for a close encounter on Oct. 20th. At that time, the comet will be only 11 million miles from Earth and should be dimly visible to the naked eye from dark sky sites. It already looks great through backyard telescopes:

© Rolando Ligustri

Amateur astronomer Rolando Ligustri took this picture on Oct. 1st using a 14-inch Global Rent-a-Scope in New Mexico. It shows Comet Hartley beside the spectacular Pacman Nebula (NGC 281), a star-forming cloud some ten thousand light years from Earth. "This is a very nice comet for telescopes and binoculars," says Martin Gembec who took a similar picture from his backyard observatory in the Czech Republic last night. "It has a [green atmosphere] almost 0.5 degrees wide and shines like a 7th magnitude star."

Two weeks after Comet Hartley has its close encounter with Earth, NASA will have a close encounter with the comet. The EPOXI spacecraft (formerly known as Deep Impact) is hurtling toward Comet Hartley now, and on Nov. 4th it will fly 435 miles from the comet's active icy nucleus. The encounter will mark only the fifth time in history that a spacecraft has been close enough to image a comet's core.

Until then, amateur astronomers can monitor the comet as it glides through the constellation Cassiopeia in the evening sky. A finder chart from Sky and Telescope shows the comet passing by a variety of stars and deep-sky objects, offering many photo-ops in the nights ahead.

More images: from Dale Ireland of Silverdale, Washington; from Kevin Black of Winnipeg, Manitoba Canada; from Alan Dyer of near Cluny, Alberta, Canada

Comet To Brighten in October

Comet Hartley 2 Seen in Cassiopeia

Posted on Oct 06, 2010 11:49:04 AM | William Cooke |

In the image below, taken on the evening of  Friday, Oct. 1, Comet Hartley 2 can be seen in the constellation Cassiopeia (north-east sky, not far from horizon)...more 

Early October SE U.S. Fireball

Fireball in the Sky!

Posted on Oct 04, 2010 04:34:27 PM | William Cooke

It was brief, but it was brilliant! On Saturday, Oct. 2, 2010 at approximately 8:50 p.m. CDT, cameras operated by NASA's Meteoroid Environment Office at Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Ala., recorded a slow moving fireball moving from the north to the southwest...more

Bright SE U.S. Fireball 09/23/10

Bright September Meteor
Posted on Sep 23, 2010 10:06:10 AM | William Cooke |

Marshall Space Flight Center PAO Steve Roy was out jogging early Friday morning with his dogs, Lilly and Scout, when he couldn't help but notice this bright meteor low in the eastern sky...more