Dust off your telescope and prepare for a spectacular viewing opportunity of Mars in the night sky. The Earth will fly between the sun and Mars on April 8, 2014, and, for the several weeks around that time, Mars will be rising in the east when the sun is setting in the west. Mars will …
Researchers from Western University have released footage of a basketball-sized meteor that was almost as bright as the full moon. The meteor lit up the skies of southwestern Ontario last week. Astronomers are hoping to enlist the help of local residents in recovering one or more possible meteorites that may have crashed in the area …
A bright fireball was detected at extreme range (hundreds of kilometers) by two NASA meteor cameras located at the Pisgah Astronomical Research Institute (PARI) in North Carolina, and at Hiram College in Ohio. At such distances (286 miles in the case of the PARI camera), trajectory determination is quite difficult. The fireball was first detected on …
Update: Reddit AMA with Bill Cooke has been rescheduled to March 6 at 1 p.m. CST. NASA meteor and fireball experts Dr. Bill Cooke, Danielle Moser and Rhiannon Blaauw are participating in Reddit Ask Me Anything event on Thursday, Feb. 13, 2014 at 1 p.m. CST on the Reddit “IAmA” forum. Reddit is a popular online …
A bright fireball event occurred on Dec. 17 at 8:20:40 PM CST. It started out 52 miles above I-24 just south of Manchester, TN and moved to the northwest at 50,000 mph. The all sky camera lost track of it at an altitude of 23 miles just to the northwest of Shelbyville. Below is a …
Watch closely and you will see the International Space Station, or ISS, cross the disk of the gibbous moon. Traveling at more than 17,000 mph, the ISS occasionally appears to pass in front of the moon or sun. These events go largely unnoticed, however, because viewers have to be along a very narrow path on Earth, …
On Sunday evening, a bright fireball was reported by visual observers in Tennessee. Occurring about 7:22 PM Central, the meteor was detected by 4 of our All Sky cameras – those in Huntsville; Chickamauga, GA; Cartersville, GA; and Dahlonega, GA. The fireball was picked up at an altitude of 55 miles moving east of south at …
The fireball over southern California last night at 7:49 PM PST was a North Taurid. Brighter than the Full Moon, it was caused by a piece of Comet Encke about 2 feet in diameter hitting the atmosphere at 56,000 mph. Information about the fireball was provided by NASA’s Meteoroid Environment Office (MEO) and is the NASA organization responsible for …
We never know what we are going to see when we check the NASA Marshall meteor cameras each morning. Over time, we’ve acquired quite a collection of startling and fascinating images captured by various cameras. In the spirit of Halloween fun, we’ve put together a collection that reminds us of All Hallow’s Eve. We’ve found …
In the early morning of October 25, 5:45 a.m. CDT, a scientist at NASA’s Marshall Space Flight Center, using a 14” inch telescope captured this image of Comet C/2012 S1 (ISON), which is brightening as it approaches the Sun. The comet shines with a faint green color just to the left of center; the diagonal …
