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Explanation: In this predawn skyscape recorded during the early morning hours of August 13, mostly Perseid meteors are raining down on planet Earth. You can easily identify the Perseid meteor streaks. They're the ones with trails that seem to converge on the annual meteor shower's radiant, a spot in the heroic constellation Perseus, located off the top of the frame. That's the direction in Earth's sky that looks along the orbit of this meteor shower's parent, periodic Comet Swift-Tuttle. Of course the scene is a composite, a combination of about 500 digital exposures to capture meteors registered with a single...

A meteorite that recently crashed through the roof of a U.S. home has been found to be older than Earth itself, according to scientists. NASA confirmed the object blazed across the Georgia sky in broad daylight on June 26 before exploding. A fragment from the meteorite struck a house in McDonough, where researchers from the University of Georgia later conducted an analysis. According to CBS, their examination revealed the meteorite likely formed around 4.56 billion years ago — approximately 20 million years before Earth came into existence. The dramatic event was witnessed by hundreds across Georgia and neighboring states, many...

On November 7, 1492, the Ensisheim meteorite was observed to fall in a wheat field outside the walled town of Ensisheim in then Alsace, Further Austria (now France).It was a stony, triangular-shaped meteorite weighing 127 kilograms. The object can still be seen in Ensisheim's Museum, the sixteenth-century Musée de la Régence.Upon impact, the meteorite created a 1-meter (3 ft 3 in) deep hole. Its fall through the Earth's atmosphere was witnessed at a distance of up to 150 kilometers from where it eventually landed.People living in neighboring areas gathered at the location to raise the meteorite from its impact hole....

Explanation: Have you ever seen a fireball? In astronomy, a fireball is a very bright meteor -- one at least as bright as Venus and possibly brighter than even a full Moon. Fireballs are rare -- if you see one you are likely to remember it for your whole life. Physically, a fireball is a small rock that originated from an asteroid or comet that typically leaves a fading smoke trail of gas and dust as it shoots through the Earth's atmosphere. It is unlikely that any single large ground strike occurred -- much of the rock likely vaporized as...

NEW YORK — For sale: A 54-pound (25-kilogram) rock. Estimated auction price: $2 million to $4 million. Why so expensive? It's the largest piece of Mars ever found on Earth. Sotheby's in New York will be auctioning what's known as NWA 16788 on Wednesday as part of a natural history-themed sale that also includes a juvenile Ceratosaurus dinosaur skeleton that's more than 6 feet (2 meters) tall and nearly 11 feet (3 meters) long. According to the auction house, the meteorite is believed to have been blown off the surface of Mars by a massive asteroid strike before traveling 140...

Screenshot of fireball via Collin Rugg on X This isn’t something you see every day! Residents in the southeastern part of the United States spotted a massive fireball streak through the skies on Thursday afternoon. The American Meteor Society reported receiving over 140 reports from residents of Georgia, Alabama, Florida, North Carolina, and South Carolina who had spotted a fireball. Residents in Georgia reported feeling an earthquake as the fireball crossed the sky. The National Weather Service assured residents in Georgia that the earthquake they felt was “the result of the sonic boom from the meteor or space junk.” WATCH:...

A meteorite, complete with shock wave, light trail, and flight noises (rumbles, light a train or close airplane) struck the ground northeast of Atlanta this afternoon, 26 June 2025. Impact was visible from dash cameras in vehicles on I85 near the South Carolina border. Meteor is any solid object hitting the atmosphere but burning up before it hits the ground. A meteorite is a rocky solid that survives its flight through the atmosphere and hits the ground as a solid. Damage is unknown, some reports claim a house was struck.

MAGNOLIA, N.J. (WPVI) -- In the small town of Magnolia, New Jersey, there's a lot of talk about a giant boom heard early Wednesday morning. Around 2:30 a.m. Wednesday, residents were woken up by the sound. When Sebastian Leonardo arrived at his auto body shop on Atlantic Avenue later that morning, he noticed a giant hole in the ceiling. When employees climbed up to look at the damage to the roof and ceiling, they saw where the unidentified object had made impact. "A sizable dent in a thick steel gage box. That's when I went to all of my cameras...

According to the West Valley City Police Department, callers from West Valley City, Taylorsville and even Murray reported hearing the loud boom just before 3 a.m. Wednesday. Outdoor home surveillance camera footage from one residence also showed a flash of light. Officers responded in the area of some reports and couldn’t locate any odd activity or objects that could have fallen. Then, the reports kept coming. “If we get like a shots fired call then, you know, we’ll get several calls within a neighborhood or maybe a quarter mile,” Merritt said. “But to get calls that are coming in miles...

The impact was captured using a door camera. Image credit: Compass Media/Joe Velaidum For possibly the first time ever, a meteorite has been captured on video and audio as it struck the Earth, just outside one man's home. Joe Velaidum, of Marshfield, Prince Edward Island, Canada, was standing outside his home last July, before setting off for a walk with his dog. If he had lingered a little longer, he may have become the second person in history to have been confirmed to be hit by a meteorite. "It is surreal to think about just rare and how close this...

As 2024 comes to a close, so does the final celestial show for skywatchers of the year: the Ursid meteor shower. The Ursids will be most active between Dec. 21 and 22, peaking on the 22nd. This makes it a perfect focus for nighttime winter solstice skywatching in the Northern Hemisphere. The shower is expected to produce up to around ten meteors per hour that will be visible at most dark locations. Marc Dantonio, an astronomer and founder of Sky Tour Live Stream Observatories, told The Debrief that although the Ursids’ forthcoming appearance won’t technically peak on the solstice, they...

Explanation: It was a night of 100,000 meteors. The Great Meteor Storm of 1833 was perhaps the most impressive meteor event in recent history. Best visible over eastern North America during the pre-dawn hours of November 13, many people -- including a young Abraham Lincoln -- were woken up to see the sky erupt in streaks and flashes. Hundreds of thousands of meteors blazed across the sky, seemingly pouring out of the constellation of the Lion (Leo). The featured image is a digitization of a wood engraving which itself was based on a painting from a first-person account. We know...

A bright green fireball illuminated the night sky over Montana, U.S., at approximately 05:45 UTC on May 21, 2024 (23:45 LT, May 20). The American Meteor Society (AMS) received 65 reports from users in Idaho, Montana, Nevada, Oregon, Utah, and Washington, U.S., as well as in Alberta, Canada. This event follows an exceptionally bright meteor over Spain and Portugal on May 18. The meteor was described as unreal, massive, and a once-in-a-lifetime event. “That’s crazy! Mad props to the person that was able to get this footage,” one eyewitness wrote on X.

Scientists have calculated the rotational speed of asteroid 2024 BX1, which exploded over Berlin earlier this year, by letting it trail in images of the sky. It turns out, 2024 BX1 was spinning faster than any other near-Earth object ever seen...The space rock, dubbed 2024 BX1, turned into a fireball and exploded over Berlin in the early hours of Jan. 21. Although small asteroids on collision courses with Earth are typically detected only when they crash into the atmosphere, scientists spotted this one roughly three hours before impact.That's not the only way 2024 BX1 was unusual, according to a paper...

A team of European researchers says that hundreds of thousands of meteorites, which may provide valuable information about the dawn of life on Earth, are disappearing from Antarctica at an alarming rate. Based on their research, the scientists behind the alarming findings say that as many as three-quarters of the approximately 300,000-800,000 meteorites resting on the surface of the Antarctic ice sheet could be lost by 2050. Published in the journal Nature Climate Change, the research says the culprit behind the wholesale disappearance is the steady rise in global temperature. “For every tenth of a degree of increase in global...

Explanation: A cosmic dust grain plowing through the upper atmosphere much faster than a falling leaf created this brilliant meteor streak. In a serendipitous moment, the sublime night sky view was captured from the resort island of Capri, in the Bay of Naples, on the evening of February 8. Looking across the bay, the camera faces northeast toward the lights of Naples and surrounding cities. Pointing toward the horizon, the meteor streak by chance ends above the silhouette of Mount Vesuvius. One of planet Earth's most famous volcanos, an eruption of Mount Vesuvius destroyed the city of Pompeii in 79...

NEO 2003 SD220 on screen. ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ How can humans protect the Earth from "devastating asteroid and comet impacts?" According to the National Academies and their 2023-2032 Planetary Science and Astrobiology Decadal Survey, ground based astronomical radar systems will have a "unique role" to play in planetary defense. There is currently only one system in the world concentrating on these efforts, NASA's Goldstone Solar System Radar, part of the Deep Space Network (DSN). However, a new instrument concept from the National Radio Astronomy Observatory (NRAO) called the next generation RADAR (ngRADAR) system will use the National Science Foundation's Green Bank Telescope...

The eighth-ever prediction of an asteroid impact has delivered some bounty! The discoverer with the little meteorite in hand. Image Credit: Cevin Dettlaff Earlier this week, for only the eighth time ever, an asteroid that actually came with a rare 95-minute warning exploded in the sky over Germany and the hunt began for any potential pieces of meteorite that survived burning up in the atmosphere and fell to Earth. Now, researchers think they have found them. Fragments of asteroid 2024 BX1 about the size of a walnut have been recovered by researchers from the Museum für Naturkunde Berlin and colleagues,...

Oct. 26 (UPI) -- An Arkansas family who awoke to the smell of fire discovered a smoking hole in their deck -- and they suspect a meteorite may have been to blame. John Devane of Greenwood said he and his family awoke to the smell of smoke inside their house about 3 a.m. and set about searching for the source. They discovered the smoke was coming from a hole in their deck, which had apparently caught fire. Devane said the flames had been extinguished when a corner of the family's hot tub melted from the heat, causing it to pour...

Scientists are reporting that a “horned” comet three times bigger than Mount Everest is hurtling toward Earth after encountering a large explosion. The blast originated on October 5 from 12P/Pons-Brooks a cryovolcanic — or cold volcano — comet. According to Live Science, the comet, nicknamed the “Devil” due to its apparent horns, measures a colossal 18.6 miles in diameter, or the size of a small city. For reference, Mount Everest, the highest mountain on Earth, is about 5.5 miles high. This marked the second time this interstellar ice cube erupted in the last four months. The Science Times reports that...