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This is the question that keeps cropping up, and it deserves an answer. Images are being posted showing the fragments and they look like ordinary chondrites of asteroidal origin. This material is dark, and not very reflective, which makes it difficult to spot out in outer space, especially if the object is bus or house …

The bright blue line in the diagram above shows the orbit of the Russian meteor prior to the meteor breaking apart over the city of Chelyabinsk. The meteor hit the atmosphere at a speed of 18 km/s (11.2 miles per second or 40,300 mph). It was moving at a shallow entry angle (less than 20 …

 According to NASA scientists, the trajectory of the Russian meteor was significantly different than the trajectory of the asteroid 2012 DA14, making it a completely unrelated object. Information is still being collected about the Russian meteor and analysis is preliminary at this point. In videos of the meteor, it is seen to pass from left …

This image shows asteroid 2012 DA14 and the Eta Carinae Nebula, with the white box highlighting the asteroid’s path. The image was taken using a 3″ refractor equipped with a color CCD camera. The telescope is located at the Siding Spring Observatory in Australia and is maintained and owned by iTelescope.net.Image credit: NASA/MSFC/Aaron Kingery 

NASA experts will hold a teleconference for news media at 4 p.m. EST today to discuss a meteor that streaked through the skies over Russia’s Urals region this morning. Scientists have determined the Russia meteor is not related to asteroid 2012 DA14 that will pass safely pass Earth today at a distance of more than …

This is the most common question we are asked, and the answer is “maybe.” It all depends on where you are located and what sort of equipment you have. Closest approach will be around 19:25 UTC on February 15; this will be when the asteroid will be at its brightest. Even at this time, when 2012 …

The Marshall Meteoroid Environment office put together the plot below showing the distribution of end heights of Geminids seen with our fireball camera network. 85% of Geminids burn up 40 to 55 miles above Earth’s surface and 15% get below 40 miles altitude.  Geminids penetrate deeper into the atmosphere than the Perseids because they are …

Ever wonder what it takes to pull together our web chat series? The chats usually consist of two components, live streaming and web chats. The Automated Lunar and Meteor Observatory, or ALaMO, at NASA’s Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Ala., is where the live streaming component of “Watch the Skies” begins. The ALaMO consists …

This morning at 6:43 AM Central Standard Time, eyewitnesses across Texas and adjacent states saw a very bright fireball streaking across the sky, moving roughly east to west. It was also recorded by a NASA meteor camera in Mayhill, New Mexico some five hundred miles to the West, which is very unusual and testifies to …

Some computer models indicate that the Earth may pass near decades old debris left behind by Comet Wirtanen in mid December, creating a new meteor shower. In the most optimistic scenario, viewers could see as many as 10-30 meteors per hour radiating from a point in the constellation Pisces in the early evenings, sometime between …