Texans report fireball in sky, sonic booms

Texans report fireball in sky, sonic booms
http://www.cnn.com/2009/US/02/15/texas.sky.debris/index.html






Sonic booms and at least one fireball in the sky were reported in Texas on Sunday, less than a week after two satellites collided in space and a day after the Federal Aviation Administration asked U.S. pilots to watch for "falling space debris," authorities said.
There were no reports of ground strikes or interference with aircraft in flight, FAA spokesman Roland Herwig said.

Herwig told CNN the FAA received no reports from pilots in the air of any sightings but the agency recieved "numerous" calls from people on the ground from Dallas, Texas, south to Austin, Texas.

Video shot by a photographer from News 8 TV in Austin showed what appeared to be a meteor-like white fireball blazing across a clear blue sky Sunday morning. The photographer caught the incident while covering a marathon in Austin.

On Saturday, the FAA told pilots through its routine notification system that "a potential hazard may occur due to re-entry of satellite debris into the earth's atmosphere." The notice did not specify a time or location.

Herwig said most of the reports the FAA received came in about midday Sunday in an area of Texas from Dallas south to Austin. iReport.com: Did you see the fireball? Send photos, video

He said he was not certain where the information that sparked the FAA notification came from, but it was "probably from NORAD," or the North American Aerospace Defense Command, which tracks man-made objects in space. Calls to NORAD headquarters in Colorado were not immediately returned.

Lisa Block, spokeswoman for the Texas Department of Public Safety, said her agency had received calls from residents surprised by sonic booms about 11 a.m. She said calls came from an area from Dallas to Houston.

Last week, the Russian and U.S. space agencies said two satellites, one Russian and one American, collided about 496 miles (800 kilometers) above Siberia, Russia.

The collision on Tuesday produced two large debris clouds, NASA said. The satellites collided at 6.2 miles (10 kilometers) per second, producing 500 to 600 pieces of space debris, the U.S. Strategic Command said.

i think it was saturday that the weather channel had the same story about somewhere over kansas..
booms and lights in the sky


i don't think i buy that it was from the satilities colliding...something is up with it all
and did anyone have a strange feeling about the plane crash in buffallo...
feels very much like some type of power struggle to me

http://spaceweather.com/index.php
FIREBALL MANIA: Runners in Sunday's Austin marathon were astonished when a brilliant fireball raced across the Texas sky in broad daylight. The extremely-bright meteor descended at 11 am CST on Feb. 15th less than a day after the FAA reportedly warned U.S. pilots to watch for "falling space debris" from the recent satellite collision between Iridium 33 and Kosmos 2251. What you just saw was not satellite debris. The high speed of the fireball in the News 8 video is typical of a natural meteoroid hitting Earth's atmosphere at tens of km/s. Orbital debris, on the other hand, should crawl across the sky at a fraction of that speed. Astronomer Bill Cooke of NASA's Meteoroid Environment Office has reviewed the video and confirms "it's a natural meteor, definitely." According to his analysis, the source of the fireball was a meter-class asteroid traveling at about 20 km/s.


Fireball mania started on Friday the 13th, around 10 p.m. EST, when people in central Kentucky heard loud booms, felt their houses shake, and saw a fireball streaking through the sky: reports. "The world appeared to explode--in green!" said one eyewitness.

http://spaceweather.com/glossary/fireballreports_13feb09.htm?PHPSESSID=j23qobs70o4vk9k1fald9ct4c2

Once again, this appears to be a natural event caused by a meteoroid. Iridium 33 and Kosmos 2251 collided at a speed of about 10 km/s or 22,000 mph. None of the surviving fragments should have been big enough to shake houses in Kentucky. Furthermore, US Space Command, which monitors objects in Earth orbit, has not announced a reentry over Kentucky on Feb. 13th.

Just hours before the Kentucky event, around 20:03 UT on Feb. 13th, multiple cameras in Italy recorded a fireball some 10 times brighter than a full Moon. Astronomer Diego Valeri sends this image from the town of Rieti:
Image

Ferruccio Zanotti of Ferrara, Italy, recorded that same fireball and two others. Italian scientists are plotting the trajectory of the brightest fireball to estimate where it might have hit the ground; a meteorite hunt will soon be underway.



Although it is tempting to attribute the Kentucky and Italian fireballs to debris from the Feb. 10th collision of the Iridium 33 and Kosmos 2251 satellites, they seem to be meteoroids, not manmade objects.

Are we experiencing a "fireball shower?" Not necessarily. Meteoroids hit Earth every day. The daily fireballs they produce, however, are seldom reported: 70% streak over uninhabited ocean; half appear in glaring daylight; many are missed because people are asleep, at work, or not looking up. This current spate of fireballs could simply be a few ordinary, random meteoroids that have attracted extraordinary attention because of the recent satellite collision. The jury is still out.