A meteor that NASA estimates hit the atmosphere at 45,000 miles per hour lit up the Pennsylvania sky Tuesday morning.
The meteor broke up over Kittanning and Brendan Mullen of the Carnegie Science Center said the rock was close to 500 pounds when it blew apart.
“Usually, the whole thing burns up, and that’s what causes shooting stars and things like that. But it’s possible that pieces of this meteor fragmented off, and shattered and scattered all across Kittanning,” he said.
Mullen speculated the asteroid came from the belt that circles the solar system.
“A lot of chunks of space rocks and debris are gravitationally tugged out of their orbit within that ring up there, and find their way into the atmospheres of planets,” Mullen said.
“There’s a lot of meteoroids out there, a lot of space garbage,” Mullen told CBS Pittsburgh. “And a lot of it gets tugged around gravitationally by the planets. And sometimes they get tugged into orbits that intersect the orbits of the planets, like earth.”
An asteroid about 1/3 of a mile in width will rush past earth on January 26th and mark the closest an asteroid of its size will come to Earth until 2027.
The asteroid, 2004 BL86, will pass the planet at a range of 745,000 miles, or three times the distance between the Earth and the moon. That will be the closest this asteroid will come to Earth in our lifetime according to NASA.
“While 2004 BL86 poses no threat to Earth for the foreseeable future, it’s a relatively close approach by a relatively large asteroid, so it provides us a unique opportunity to observe and learn more,” Don Yeomans, of NASA’s Near Earth Object Program Office at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California, said in a statement.
NASA will track the asteroid from the Deep Space Network in Goldstone, California and the Arecibo Observatory in Puerto Rico.
The asteroid was first detected January 30, 2004 in New Mexico by the LINEAR telescope. NASA says it should be visible in the Northern Hemisphere with small telescopes and strong binoculars.
Witnesses across the eastern part of the U.S. and in western Japan both reported seeing fireballs in the sky on Monday night.
NASA says reports of the meteor have been registered from South Carolina to Chicago.
Most of the reports describe the meteor as “greenish to white” colored as it crossed the sky. The reports covered over an hour between the initial reports on the east coast and the times the fireball was spotted in the Chicago area sky.
The American Meteor Society said they are investigating over 200 reports connected to the meteor and that no one has reported any impact from the sight.
Meanwhile, in western Japan, witnesses say a “fireball” roared across the sky Monday night. Various security cameras were able to capture what appears to be a strong green light or a faint orange light tracking across the sky.
Scientists say any fragments from that meteor would have ended up in the sea.
A giant sunspot on the sun has erupted for the sixth time in a week.
The sunspot, which is 14 times larger than Earth, has erupted with three flares in the last 48 hours.
‘A giant active region on the sun erupted on Oct. 26, 2014, with its sixth substantial flare since Oct. 19,’ NASA said. ‘This flare was classified as an X2-class flare and it peaked at 6:56 a.m. EDT. This is the third X-class flare in 48 hours, erupting from the largest active region seen on the sun in 24 years.”
Christopher Balch of the Space Weather Prediction Center said that the flare had an impact on radio signals that used the upper atmosphere. A few radio communications systems were completely blacked out by the flare for a short time.
The sun has been in an aggressive time of activity after months of almost silence.
The sunspot, which continues to grow, has been described as “menacing” by astronomy experts.
A NASA radar device has found previously unknown Napa Valley fault lines in the wake of the massive 6.0 Napa quake.
The 6.0 quake, which killed one woman and injured 170 people, was the biggest to shake northern California in 25 years. Over 800 homes were damaged and so far 103 are officially too damaged to repair.
As scientists from NASA and the U.S. Geological Survey discovered the West Napa Fault moved 18 inches along its 9.3-mile long length, they discovered a series of smaller faults that run parallel to West Napa Fault. The new small faults are believed to let off some of the strain on the region but are likely not significant enough to cause major quakes on their own.
“These really tiny ones are probably not big enough faults to have a significant earthquake, but it’s a good thing to have people go out and check whether they are part of a larger fault system,” said Eric Fielding, a geophysicist at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory.
USGS scientists say that the data is likely going to cause a revision in the quake’s magnitude up a tenth of a point to 6.1 when final data is assimilated.
A huge explosion struck Managua, Nicaragua and officials say that a small meteorite caused it.
The meteor struck near the international airport just outside the city of 1.2 million people. Officials say that the impact left a crater 39 feet wide and the impact shook the entire city.
Amazingly, no one was reported injured by the strike.
“We are convinced that this was a meteorite. We have seen the crater from the impact,” said Wilfredo Strauss of the Seismic Institute. Strauss said that seismographs show a small wave when the meteorite hit the ground and a stronger one when the sound impacted the area.
Witnesses near the impact site say they heard a blast they thought was an explosion and then smelled something as if something had burned.
NASA had said last week that 2014 RC at the time of its closest approach should have been 25,000 miles from the planet and should have been over New Zealand at its closest approach.
Tuesday’s X1-class solar flare isn’t satisfied with silencing Earth’s radio communications only once this week.
According to the U.S. Space Weather Prediction Center (SWPC), communications could go down again on Friday as a coronal mass ejection (CME) glances Earth. A CME is a burst of plasma associated with some solar flares that can cause polar geomagnetic storms.
The massive amounts of radiation that will be released from the impact is expected to disrupt communications for GPS devices, broadcasters, aviators, and weather stations.
NASA officials claim the sun’s activity is current at “its maximum.” They also report that this recent solar activity is weak compared to the solar activity in 2013.
NASA reported a series of three X-class solar flares over the last two days that have produced a coronal mass ejection that will strike Earth on Friday.
The CME is part of two X-class flares that struck Tuesday, a X 2.2 and X 1.5. Both created a coronal ejection but the second moved fast enough to join the first and project it toward Earth. The Wednesday flare, an X 1.0, caused disruption to radio signals for a brief time but did not cause a CME.
Officials with the Space Weather Prediction Center say that CME will strike Earth sometime Friday. The strike is believed to be a “glancing blow” that will cause geomagnetic storms at the planet’s poles.
The CME will disrupt GPS signals and satellite communications. The disruption will be worse on the daylight side of the planet during the solar strike.
NASA says the sun is now officially at the “solar maximum” of its 11-year cycle. However, the scientists say this cycle’s solar max is significantly weaker than previous cycles.
A fireball was spotted flying across the skies of western New York and Ontario, Canada.
The object was caught on dashboard cameras of drivers throughout the region. A streaking object as bright as the sun is seen flying around 4:16 p.m. Sunday afternoon.
The American Meteor Society is looking into the available footage.
Witnesses say that a large boom accompanied the object. There has been no impact zone found so if it was a meteor it did not make it to the planet’s surface.
The Eta Aquarid meteor shower happened on Monday. The meteor shower happens around the same time every year according to NASA.
NASA said that man’s concept of the galaxy was made woefully obsolete yesterday with the discovery of 715 newly discovered planets outside our solar system.
The Kepler telescope almost doubled the number of known planets in the universe. NASA scientist Jack Lissauer said that many of the planets are in multiple grouping around stars making them similar to our galaxy.
Four of those planets orbit in what NASA scientists call a “habitable zone” and believe it’s a major step toward their desire to find “Earth 2.0.” However, the scientists admitted because the planets are twice the size of Earth, they’re likely gas giants that cannot harbor life.
The Kepler telescope has suffered damage and NASA officials say it’s unlikely they will discover more planets in the same time frame.
