Hubble caught this one last month.
Posted on 02/03/2010 11:50:31 AM PST by TaraP
Astronomy Ireland says a major fireball was spotted over Ireland at around 6pm this evening.
It says the rock from space was seen blazing in the air by people all over the country and would have been travelling with the force of a small nuclear weapon.
Astronomy Ireland says there is a very good chance it has landed inland, but it is unlikely to have injured anyone.
It is not clear yet where it might have landed because the fireball was spotted by people all over the country.
While it would have been travelling at high speed when it was spotted, the rock would have slowed down when it hit the atmosphere.
The fireball could have been as large as a desk.
Valentia Coastguard said it has had reports of sightings from people living in Mullingar, Limerick, Ballybunion and Bantry.
I have never seen a Fireball..
But these stories to be seem pretty common now.
"The devil is in the details" -- as I always like to say. Or in this case, the devil is in the "definition"... LOL...
I think more people than one may realize has actually seen a fireball. Look at the following definition.
A fireball is a brighter-than-usual meteor. The International Astronomical Union defines a fireball as "a meteor brighter than any of the planets" (magnitude -4 or greater). The International Meteor Organization (an amateur organization that studies meteors) has a more rigid definition. It defines a fireball as a meteor that would have a magnitude of -3 or brighter if seen at zenith. This definition corrects for the greater distance between an observer and a meteor near the horizon. For example, a meteor of magnitude -1 at 5 degrees above the horizon would be classified as a fireball because if the observer had been directly below the meteor it would have appeared as magnitude -6.
By that definition, I've seen a fireball several times in my life... :-) [the planet Venus is at a magnitude -4 ...]
POSTED Feb 3rd, 2010
Comet could be behind death of dinosaurs
Updated Wed Feb 3, 2010 2:57pm AEDT
This Hubble Space Telescope image clearly shows something voilent has occurred to asteroid P/2010 A2 ( NASA, ESA, D Jewitt (UCLA))
Astronomers have found a comet-like object they believe was created by the collision of two asteroids, and may be linked to the rogue rock blamed for wiping out the dinosaurs.
The object, known as P/2010 A2, was circling about 144 million kilometres from Earth in the main asteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter when it was spotted last week by the Hubble Space Telescope.
“The truth is we’re still struggling to understand what this means
What does it mean?
http://www.abc.net.au/news/stories/2010/02/03/2809016.htm
Yep, that’s a sight I would rather see..., than a crusty old crater... LOL...
Hubble caught this one last month.
What does it mean?
To me it doesn't mean too much more than it meant to me about 50 years ago, as I was learning about asteroids and the asteroid belt...
It means that there are a bunch of rocks out there, flying around at incredible speeds and they bump into one another and break up and/or go off in different directions than before. In other words, it's "chaos" out there ... :-)
And, yes..., there's a whole lot more that we don't know about... But, just because we don't know about some stuff and all of a sudden we find out (what we didn't know before) doesn't mean that there's any impending disaster, any more than there was when we "ignorantly" didn't know about what was going on.
It went on anyway, whether we saw it or not and whether we knew it or not.
I have been there... after a brutal hike to reach it.
Take a look at that definition of “meteor” in post #59... :-) [click the link...]
I have been there... after a brutal hike to reach it.
When were you there?
At the time I saw it, I just drove my car up to the parking lot and walked over to the edge of it... LOL...
My statement was "A meteor is the path it takes as it travels through the atmosphere."
Close enough, I thought.
It is not - I corrected my misstatement in Post 50
Do you see any Biblical Significance?
Like from this Article today and the Asteroid Collision..
Astronomers have found a comet-like object they believe was created by the collision of two asteroids, and may be linked to the rogue rock blamed for wiping out the dinosaurs.
The object, known as P/2010 A2, was circling about 144 million kilometres from Earth in the main asteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter when it was spotted last week by the Hubble Space Telescope.
“The truth is we’re still struggling to understand what this means,” says lead scientist Dr David Jewitt, with the University of California at Los Angeles.
144? (As in the 144,000?) million kilometres from Earth in the main asteroid belt between Mars (The Planet of War) and Jupiter (The Planet of Expansion?) Just a thought...
Either one works.
I thought so too... :-)
A meteor is the path it takes as it travels through the atmosphere.
Because of his handle?
Don’t poke it with a stick.
Take it easy.
1989. Of course, our tour guides loved to take us on brutal hikes anyway, so maybe “forgot” about an easier route.
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