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.
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.
...a weather balloon.
Operation Guillotine is in effect.
Matt, there was a forecast meteor shower that peaked on Tuesday morning. At about 5:40 AM Tuesday morning I saw a bright meteor over Oakland airport from the central parking lot. At about 6:45 PM Wednesday I saw another looking South in Las Vegas.
Bruce Perens.
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.
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.
;-)
No. I have never seen Iridium flares. The only satellites I have seen are constantly moving dots of light with non-varying brightness. They look exactly like a star moving in a straight line at around the speed you would imagine an airplane to move at high altitude a great distance away. Here is a random link showing 75 different satellites that happened to be observed over a nine-day period.
Here is a video of a great Iridium flare, and here is a video of a not-quite-so-great Iridium flare.
Too bad they caught fire on atmospheric entry. But yeah.
I, for one, welcome our new burnt-to-a-crisp-exploded-on-impact-mutant-space-arachnid-overlords.
Win a signed Stephen Carpenter ESP Guitar from the Deftones: http://def-tag.com/?r=0008781
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