On Tuesday, Sept. 23, a second fireball occurred about 40 minutes after the fireball in Tennessee. The Michigan fireball is close to the edge of the camera because the meteor was at extreme range, over 200 miles away, for the camera.
The Michigan fireball was produced by a piece of a comet over 2 feet across, probably weighing around 40 pounds. It hit Earth’s atmosphere at a speed of 54,000 mph.
At 8:26:38 pm CDT on Tuesday, Sept. 23, a 2 inch piece of an asteroid entered the atmosphere above the town of Lutts in southern Tennessee. Moving almost due west at a speed of 46,300 miles per hour, it traveled some 52 miles before burning up 25 miles above the Tennessee farmland. At its peak, the fireball was about twice as bright as the planet Venus, and was seen by many in north Alabama, Mississippi, and Tennessee.
At approximately midnight local time on the night of September 6 (September 7, 6 UTC), a loud explosion was heard in an area near Managua, Nicaragua. A crater some 39 feet in diameter was found near 86.2 degrees west longitude, 12.2 degrees north latitude, in good agreement with the reports of explosive sounds. It has been suggested that a meteorite may have caused this crater; however, the lack of fireball reports from the surrounding populated area seems to suggest some other cause. The skies were partially clear, and an object capable of producing a crater this large would have also generated a very bright fireball (brighter than the Full Moon) that should have been seen over a wide area. Some have drawn analogies to the September 2007 Carancas meteorite fall in Peru; however, there were fireball reports associated with this event, even though it occurred in the daytime near noon.
While a meteoritic origin for this crater cannot be ruled out with absolute certainty, the information available at this time suggests that some other cause is responsible for its creation.
North America has a pretty good seat for this cosmic event.
1. First, check the visibility map to make sure it’s visible from your location.
2. Then check the weather – if you are expecting clouds, then Mother Nature has just rained on your parade and you won’t be able to see any meteors from outside your home. However, we will continue to stream clear skies here overnight, trying to find the best view of the night sky from our network of ground based telescopes.
3. If the weather gods are smiling down upon you, find a safe, dark location – away from city lights and lay out beneath the stars. You don’t need to look in any particular direction, just straight up, but away from the moon. Meteors can appear all over the sky.
4. Add a lawn chair or sleeping bag and some snacks and you should be set!
The annual Perseid meteor shower will peak in the skies over Earth on the night of Aug. 12-13. Despite a bright moon, there should still be a good show from this prolific shower. Projected peak rates are 30-40 meteors/hour. Much of the world can see Perseids any time after full dark, with peak viewing projected early on the morning of Aug. 13 (3-4 a.m., your local time).
Dr. Bill Cooke, Rhiannon Blaauw and Danielle Moser of the NASA Meteoroid Environment Office will take your Perseid questions via live web chat. The chat module will appear on this page on Aug. 12 at 11 p.m. EDT (Aug. 13, 3:00 UTC). A Ustream view of the skies over Marshall Space Flight Center will be embedded on this page on Aug. 12 at 9:30 p.m. EDT (Aug. 13, 1:30 UTC).
The map below shows global viewing for the Perseids. Click on the map for a larger view. (NASA/MSFC/Danielle Moser)
From our Meteoroid Environment Office here at Marshall Space Flight Center, courtesy of Danielle Moser, showing the speeds of several meteor showers. (NASA/MSFC/Danielle Moser)
We have completed our analyses and here’s what we know:
At 10:19 PM Central Daylight Time on August 2 (Saturday night), NASA meteor cameras detected a very bright fireball at an altitude of 57 miles above Hoodoo Road just east of the town of Beechgrove, TN. The meteoroid, which was about 15 inches in diameter and weighed close to 100 lbs, travelled just over 100 miles to the south south east at 47,000 miles per hour, breaking apart in a brilliant flash of light above the Alabama town of Henagar. The cameras continued to track a large fragment until it disappeared 18 miles above Gaylesville, located near Lake Weiss close to the Georgia state line. At last sight, the fragment was still traveling at 11,000 miles per hour. Based on the meteor’s speed, final altitude, and weak doppler radar signatures, it is believed that this fireball produced small meteorites on the ground somewhere between Borden Springs, AL and Lake Weiss.
The meteoroid’s orbit has its farthest point between the orbits of Mars and Jupiter, and is inclined to that of the Earth (which explains its southerly direction).
Check out the video!
The NASA Meteoroid Environment Office would like to hear from those in the area around Alabama’s Lake Weiss who may have heard sonic booms or like sounds around 10:20 PM Saturday night. Please contact Dr. Bill Cooke at william.j.cooke@nasa.gov if you have reports of such.
The first-ever Camelopardalid meteor shower peaked in the wee hours of Saturday, May 24, offering stargazers a rare sight — the debut meteor display from the dusty Comet 209P/LINEAR. Below is video footage of a Camelopardalid meteor recorded by our NASA camera at Allegheny Observatory near Pittsburg, PA at 11:22 PM EDT on May 24. Still images of Camelopardalids are available in our Flickr gallery.
Part of our team of experts is in Kingman, Arizona, getting ready for the highly anticipated May Camelopardalid meteor shower tonight. They sent back some black & white and false color (blue) meteor image composites from two NASA meteor cameras deployed to Arizona for this meteor shower. This first night of observational results comes before the expected May Camelopardalid activity. Meteors shown therefore do not belong to that shower, but were observed on 5/23/2014 UTC.
Camera Location # meteors in image
03 Hualapai Valley Observatory, Kingman, AZ 20
04 Alpacas of the Southwest, Kingman, AZ 16
Twelve meteors were common to both cameras, allowing for meteor trajectory calculations.
They also sent this picture to show us that even the alpacas are excited and ready to assist our experts tonight!
Left to Right – Chris Hozian, Aaron Kingery, Danielle Moser, Herschel, Ted, and Rhiannon Blaauw
As the date of the possible new May Camelopardalid meteor shower looms, we wanted to offer some answers to frequently asked questions. We hope this question and answer post will be helpful as you observe the shower.
Frequently Asked Questions
Q: How do you pronounce the name of this meteor shower?
A: Ask a different person and you’ll get a different answer! Common pronunciations are camel-oh-PAR-dahl-idz, kah-MEL-oh-PAR-dal-idz, and camel-oh-par-DAL-idz. It it’s too much of a tongue twister, you are camelopardon-ed. 🙂
Q: Why does this shower have such a funny name?
A: Meteor showers are named after the location of their radiant – or the point in the sky from which the meteors appear to originate. This shower is expected to produce meteors in May with a radiant in the constellation Camelopardalis.
Q: Can I see the May Camelopardalids from my location in _____?
A: Check out the visibility map below. If your location is in the yellow zone, and you have clear dark skies, you should be able to see May Camelopardalids during the expected peak, if it occurs.
Q: When can I see May Camelopardalids?
A: The expected peak is between 1 and 3 am CDT on May 24.
Q: Where is the May Camelopardalid radiant?
A: The radiant is in the constellation Camelopardalis. It’s not a well-known constellation, but you can find the general direction if you look between Ursa Major and Cassiopeia.
Q: Should I look at the radiant to see May Camelopardalids?
A: Nope!
Q: Ok, where should I look then, smarty-pants?
A: If it’s not cloudy, get as far away from bright lights as you can, lie on your back, and look up. You should be able to see May Camelopardalids over the whole sky.
Q: How do I know if the meteor I just saw is a May Camelopardalid?
A: If you see a meteor, try to trace it’s path backwards. If you end up in the constellation Camelopardalis, there’s a good chance you’ve seen a May Camelopardalid!
Q: My skies are dark and cloud-free but I’m still not seeing any meteors! Why not?!
A: There are a couple of possibilities. (1) The comet wasn’t very active 200+ years ago, and therefore didn’t produce many meteoroids. So the meteor shower is much weaker than predicted. (2) You need to have patience. You also need to make sure your eyes are adapted to the dark – this takes about 45 minutes. Make sure you don’t keep looking at your phone or other sources of light, else your eyes will have to start the dark adaptation process all over again.
Q: Has a satellite ever been hit by a meteoroid?
A: Yes. Here are a few examples: Mariner IV, a NASA planetary exploration spacecraft encountered a meteoroid stream between the orbits of Earth and Mars in Sept 1967. The encounter damaged the thermal shield. Olympus, an ESA communication satellite, was struck by a Perseid near the time of the shower peak in August 1993. It was sent tumbling and exhausted its fuel supply.
Q: How big are May Camelopardalid meteoroids?
A: These meteoroids are expected to be anywhere from dust-grain sized to millimeter sized.
Q: How can a small bit of rock damage a satellite?
A: Meteoroids travel very fast and therefore have a lot of energy. The May Camelopardalids will be traveling slowly, as far as meteors go, but they will still be moving at 36,000 mph! That’s about 27 times faster than the Concorde jet!
You can get more facts about the May Camelopardalids here.
How do you say Camelopardalids? Find out here!
Watch our live feed of the shower: http://www.ustream.tv/channel/nasa-msfc
Step outside and take a look at the skies on the evening of May 23 into the early morning of May 24. Scientists are anticipating a new meteor shower, the May Camelopardalids. No one has seen it before, but the shower could put on a show that would rival the prolific Perseid meteor shower in August. The Camelopardalids shower would be dust resulting from a periodic comet, 209P/LINEAR.
“Some forecasters have predicted a meteor storm of more than 200 meteors per hour,” said Bill Cooke, lead for NASA’s Meteoroid Environment Office. “We have no idea what the comet was doing in the 1800s. The parent comet doesn’t appear to be very active now, so there could be a great show, or there could be little activity.”
The best time to look is during the hours between 06:00 and 08:00 Universal Time on May 24, or between 2-4 a.m. EDT. That’s when forecast models say Earth is most likely to encounter the comet’s debris. North Americans are favored because their peak occurs during nighttime hours while the radiant is high in the sky.
On the night of May 23-24, NASA meteor expert Bill Cooke will host a live web chat from 11 p.m. to 3 a.m. EDT. Go to this page to learn more about the May Camelopardalids, to get information about the live chat and to view the live Ustream view that will be available during the chat.
