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Object Lights Night Sky Across Canadian Prairies
clarkn0va writes "Witnesses as far as 720 kilometers apart reported seeing what looked like a bright meteor falling somewhere on the Saskatchewan-Alberta boundary around 5:30 pm MT Thursday, according to the CBC. Here's video of the incident as seen from Edmonton."
Was it:
the aurora borealis shows its true face. the "northern lights" have lulled the canuckians into a false sense of security and now they are ready to attack.
lose != loose
Meteor my ass. More cover-up about the fucking space bugs now running our world. Christ, as if GWB wassn't proof enough.
that what's-her-name dropped from the ISS.
Chicken Little got it right after all.
Off to my bomb shelter. Let me know when it's all over.
I wonder if this is what I saw fly over Oklahoma.
I thought it was jet but it lacked the familiar colored blinking lights, was much brighter white, and moved faster.
It moved from the south-southwest to the north-northeast.
With many reports coming in about what direction the object was seen in, can't one simply disregard any wild guesses as to how close it was, and just draw vectors based on the directions of the observers? With this many observers, one should quickly be able to pinpoint the flash, and where to look for meteorites.
Filmed about 5:30pm Thursday November 20th 2008
/.?
This happened 2 days ago and it's just now making it on
The world could have ended and we'd have to wait 2 days before it makes it on here.
When I first saw video of this on the local news, I had a hard time figuring out how I missed the entire sky being lit up like that. Then I realized that, as a slashdotter, I was naturally indoors at that time in the afternoon. The basement habitat is not conductive to observing astronomical events.... I think I will have to put a webcam on the roof.
If you can create what looks like a meteor falling to Earth as your landing, then after the successful landing hide your ship and drop some space debris (rocks if you like) on the ground. Voila!
If we correlate the various observations, we should be able to get an estimate on its exact location.
I want to be the first to welcome our new martian overlords.
Unless they are from Uranus.
*cough*
Russian planes,
known as White Swans to deliver relief aid to collapsed United Gulags of America.
Cordially,
Kilgore Trout
...a weather balloon.
Operation Guillotine is in effect.
I believe 05:30 MT is 5:30 AM MT, not PM.
The mutant space spiders have arrived much sooner than expected. NASA has doomed us all!
I, for one, welcome our new mutant space arachnid overlords
I say don't drink and drive, you might spill your drink. Before you get behind the wheel just stop and think.
Now where's my tin-foil tuque when I need it??
Geesh, you canadians are so gullable.
Its obvious that it's a flare, likely fired from the cop's own flare gun.
It was a really big flare gun, probably a yard wide because the flare obviously goes behind distant clouds. I guess at that distance it would have to be a big flare also... may a few feet in diameter and to sustain the G-force from being fired from the cop's big-ass flare gun, it would have to be made of stone or something...maybe iron. So the hick canadians when they find this hot stone or blob of iron, they'll probably say it's a meteorite, but you and I (and the cop) will all know it's just a spent-flare and we'll all have a good laugh and go out for donuts at the local Tim Horton's
Unwitting test subjects in Edmonton, only question is, when full operation commences.
I live in the San Francisco Bay Area and I saw it this past week. I was leaving work and turned north out of the parking lot and it was shooting across the sky to the west. It was very green. I remember that much. If this thing landed in Canada then it must have been huge for me to see it from California.
Slashdot: Failed Car Analogies. Amateur Lawyering. Anecdote Battles.
Saw a small meteor go over the Ottawa area somewhere between 8h30pm local time, last night. Some fragment of or a smaller object traveling with this bigger object maybe?
I've seen a lot of "shooting stars" in my time, but they don't compare at all to seeing a meteor fireball like this.
I managed to see two in a one month period back in 2001, when leaving the office at 330-430 at night. (London, Ontario, August 20th for the first one)
One was silent, but the other one roared like a jet shortly after it passed. I assumed that the second one was smaller but appeared the same size because it was much closer, hence the sound.
Moments like that make me wish we had the ability to capture our memories digitally for playback.
Bruce
Bruce Perens.
Pause and click through seconds 12 - 14 on the video. It flashes bright, then dim then bright... multiple explosions... first the left Nacell then the right.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sv2Ozovf9Ls you can really see it fragmenting in some of those shots
I don't believe you, I'm here for a seat on the secret spaceship.
With many reports coming in about what direction the object was seen in, can't one simply disregard any wild guesses as to how close it was, and just draw vectors based on the directions of the observers? With this many observers, one should quickly be able to pinpoint the flash, and where to look for meteorites.
Ok, I'll start. It was traveling left to right and appeared to land, oh maybe, 100-150km away a little (10-20 degrees) to my right.
With a few more reports like this we should be able to pinpoint the impact to within a few meters.
;-)
I for one welcome our new bolide overlords.
[Insert pithy quote here]
A couple of problems that are likely to crop up:
Almost all of your observers are going to be located quite close together, in any urban centers. Particularly since there's going to be a lot of uncertainty in the direction they report.
You might be able to get an approximate track by triangulation, but the point at the end of that track is going to have a huge uncertainty associated with it.
As others have pointed out, you're unlikely to get more than a general idea where it fell. That path is a 3D track, so you need more than a few observers. The police video is real nice, since you've got a compass reading and you might be able to sync up the time using flashes. Someway saying, over that way, isn't going to help much.
Which reminds me of one of the problems with people sighting objects in the sky. They lack the usual reference points. When I hear people say, it was huge and flying really fast. I think, wasn't huge, but much closer and slower than you thought. Then they'll say, "It couldn't be man made. Something that large couldn't change directions at such high speeds." Yup, another kook.
The aliens are here! ... the aliens are here!! ... we interrupt this broadcast to bring you shocking news... "No one would have believed in the last years of...
Seeing the YouTube video, I was reminded of the Orson Welles first radio broadcast of The War of the Worlds, that shocked a lot of people, almost exactly 70 years ago this month. The world at least seems to have moved on a bit from the reaction back then. Now its more like, oh cool, light show. :)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_War_of_the_Worlds_(radio)
I guess now we have seen far worse in films, the world is a bit less scared of broadcasts like this. (In a way, I guess War of the Worlds was the first reality style story way before films like Cloverfield/Blair Witch made real broadcast like stories popular). Its interesting its almost exactly 70 years ago this month. :)
Now if they could just find three wise men and a virgin, they could do a nativity scene.
Yeah, it's not rocket science! Oh wait...
720 kilometers? How many football fields is that?
Not necessarily. Assuming the error made by people in reporting the direction is essentially random, by the law of large numbers the average of thousands or reports from a given city should be quite close to the actual direction of the impact point from that city.
Yes, but you're only going to get one reasonable vector per city. Take a look at a map of mid to northern Alberta. See all the cities? The meteor was visible over a wide area, but a given uncertainty in direction is going to give you a bigger uncertainty in location, the farther away you are, so nearby observations are much more valuable than far away ones. You'd also want to get some observations from north of the track as well.
However, in some of the footage the thing can be see to go through a layer of clouds.
Is it possible for clouds to be that high up?
FYI: the world did end. I hope this doesn't interfere with any plans you may have made. I wouldn't count on /. posting a story though. Truth be told, no one seems to have noticed except me. Very strange.
Win a signed Stephen Carpenter ESP Guitar from the Deftones: http://def-tag.com/?r=0008781
Why are you reacting like you're living in the 18th century? Nowadays there are tons of weather/military satellites monitoring the Earth, you just have to ask their operators.
A weather satellite captured a similar event in October:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:Eumetsat-composite-2008TC3-impact.jpg
"Oh boy..." http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/7736996.stm
$HOME is where the
-- silver_p
from the front page a minute ago:
Science: Object Lights Night Sky Across Canadian Prairies 75 of 70 comments
Operation Guillotine is in effect.
Roasted ET with Alfredo Sauce.
Tastes just like chicken!
> Assuming the error made by people in reporting the direction is essentially random...
I doubt that's a valid assumption. Besides, few, if any, are going to report the direction as anything more than "to the North" or "a little East of North".
Warning: this article may contain humor, sarcasm, parody, and perhaps even irony. Read at your own risk.
At last George Bush's final master stroke just weeks before his term ends - the invasion of Canada.
If you can read this... 01110101 01110010 00100000 01100001 00100000 01100111 01100101 01100101 01101011
They're already working on it. Reports have come in from as far away as British Columbia. Lots of people saw it in cities all over Alberta and Saskatchewan. Assuming they can get a good vector from the two major population centers that saw it (Edmonton and Saskatoon), finding it should be possible given enough time. They already have it narrowed down to somewhere in the south of Lloydminster, east of Wainwright, north of Provost, west of Cut Knife area. Granted that is a massive area (something the size of Yellowstone National park) but with futher refinements they'll come closer and closer. The real problem at this point is racing against the first snowfall that sticks. The area is having an unusually warm start to winter and snow could come any week. Once that happens the chances of finding any meteorite remains diminish considerably.
I'm presently in Saskatoon, SK and I was out driving around with the gf. I noticed a flash in the sky that was as bright as day for a few seconds. We both wondered what it was and figured it couldn't be lightning - it was snowing at the time. I guess we found that missing spider from the ISS...
this is worse than the time a racoon got in the copier
Perfect Tommy: "Space monsters, my ass."
If you had lived in London, England, then I would have said it was another damn Christmass invasion.
Don't complain. --Since the Doctor is partly funded by the CBC, I rather hope Canada will have its turn at being invaded this Christmas. Not getting my hopes up, though. The CN Tower being cast into shadow by a monolithic space vessel might look cool, but wouldn't carry the same emotional impact as any one of a half dozen London landmarks. On the plus side, though, the happy-go-lucky-superhuman Mounties (the fictional ones, anyway), would grasp what the Doctor is all about instantly, so there'd be plenty of enthusiastic ground support.
-FL
Paper lanterns.
Venus.
Mass hallucination.
A military jet.
Lens flare.
Two guys with planks.
In a swamp.
-FL
We've been having a lot of this sort of thing lately. --Not all of them get this much notice, or accurate coverage. --There was a report of a 'plane' going down over some American town a week or so back, creating a huge aerial show and loud bang, putting the residents and authorities into a tizzy. --The only thing was that no planes were reported missing and they didn't find any wreckage.
I half suspect when we get one of the big ones that the PTB will have chutzpah to call it a terrorist nuke if they can get away with it.
A skimming of noted events for October. . .
Astronomy enthusiast Howard Edin reports that he was looking in the opposite direction at the time, but saw the whole observing field light up and at first thought someone had turned on their car headlights.
Reports came from residents from Carmel Valley to Salinas of a fireball shooting through the Tuesday night sky and hitting the Earth. A sheriff's deputy patrolling Carmel Valley saw it and thought enough of it to call for reinforcements.
IT appeared against the early evening sky like a flare - moments later roofs rattled and verandas shook as it crashed to earth.
[...]The Evening Telegraph has been inundated with calls and e-mails from readers who saw a strange fireball cutting a swath across the heavens[...]
For the second time this year, The University of Western Ontario Meteor Group has captured incredibly rare video footage of a meteor falling to Earth.
A bright light sped across the sky, followed by a loud explosion. Osborne County Sheriff Curtis Miner tells KSAL News that it was not an unidentified flying object, or anything sinister. It was a large meteor.
-FL
While the meteor was visible over a wide enough area that triangulation of its location at any single instant would be possible, unfortunately it was moving kind of fast, so the timing of the separate observations becomes critical. Unfortunately, the observers neither synchronized their watches beforehand, nor in most cases recorded the exact time of their observations.
AIR, there was an ammonia tank cast off by the ISS recently that was expected to mostly burn up on reentry, but some pieces were probably going to make it to ground. Could this have been it?
The real deal must be the size of Texas!
Cue Aerosmith and fly in Bruce Willis and his drilling team.