Slashdot Mirror
Meteor Spotted Yesterday Over Midwestern United States
the1337g33k writes "The National Weather Service is reporting that a fireball that many people witnessed last night is a meteor that entered the atmosphere last night around 10:10 pm Central Time. This meteor was spotted by many in Minnesota, Wisconsin, Iowa, and Illinois."
Fox11 News in Milwaukee has a dramatic video of the meteor taken looking slightly north of west in downtown Milwaukee, WI.
Any idea where it actually landed? DID it actually land -- or just burn up in the atmosphere?
Part of the meteor trail was captured here by NWS weather radar. The end of this trail might be a good place to start.
None of the video I've seen comes close to the spectacular sight. There was a huge tail of plasma and it was green, orange white with a hint of blue. It was huge and looked like it was close by.
I would bet that pieces will be found of the meteor. FIrst, the orbit / path will be well known, with so many multiple videos of it from different locations.
Second, astronomer Mark Hammergren, of the Adler Planetarium in Chicago, predicts that it may have weighed as much as 1000 pounds.
"One of the misconceptions about bright meteors is that they're due to very tiny objects," said Hammergren. But "if something is bright enough to light up the sky like daytime and cause sonic booms throughout the entire area, it's big. It was major," he said. "If it was daytime, people would have undoubtedly seen smoke trails."
I think that this is very sound reasoning. Happy hunting to rockhounds in Wisconsin !
Now, why do we never get such multiple confirmations of UFOs ?
If any dotters have a taste for adventure and have a weekend to kill near the area that this impacted, you should go out and see what you can find. It might pay off.
FYI - Before you go wandering around the hillsides looking for rocks, keep in mind that anything you find properly belongs to the landowner.
Proper rock hunters spend a lot of effort to get all the proper permissions for their searches.
[Fuck Beta]
o0t!
The orbit of this will be found very quickly - probably within 24 hours. That will rule in or out whether it was in Earth orbit.
Note that
- there are orbits for all satellites bigger than a few kilograms, secret or no. It's hard to hide up there and
- there have been number of multi-state meteors in the past. This, if a meteor, would not be very unusual.
"It's a once in a lifetime find (potentially)"
Go out to the Lucerne dry lake bed, or any desert spot in southern California, and with a good pair of binocs you can pretty much just spot them sitting out in the open.
Still waiting on Serviscope_minor to wake up to fucking reality and realize that Jessica Price isn't going to fuck him.
15 minutes is a looooong time. For how long would you be able to make out a jet air-liner?
Since the meteor was making multiple sonic booms (realistically that's really bits breaking off and making their own booms), we're looking at a minimum of mach 1. That means it'll cover an absolute minimum distance of 306 km from the time it was first seen as standing still until it disappeared. Now, obviously the object needs to be at a fair distance already, for that to be the case. It can't start overhead, as that will mean it's moving.
And how far can you really see?
Also, 306 km is a HUGE distance. The smallest detail we can make out are about 1 arc minute. At 306 km that is 89 meters. Granted, it's glowing/burning, so that should help, but how much? 10 fold? Would you be able to make out a 9 meter fireball at 300 km?
And I'm rather curious to know, just how far a meteor would actually travel during those 15 minutes.