Meteorite Crashes in Southeast U.S.

wish i lived in the area i would have gone hunting for it. dont know if any1 asked this but what makes a green flame on entry? im gonna look that up.

found out barium or copper burn green that might have been worth somthing. wouldnt that be awsome finding a meteorit worth abunch of money$$$.

Originally posted by SpunGCake
wish i lived in the area i would have gone hunting for it. dont know if any1 asked this but what makes a green flame on entry? im gonna look that up.

The presence of some amount of copper in the meteorite will usually produce a greenish flare. It's a very rough way of determining what kind of meteorite it might be.

reply to post by Blue Shift


imo that would be 1 of the first ways to see what elements it holds im no scientist but makes sence to me.

Originally posted by SpunGCake
found out barium or copper burn green that might have been worth somthing. wouldnt that be awsome finding a meteorit worth abunch of money$$$.

Yeah, but you gotta beat everybody else to it, or be really lucky. It might be easier to find gold. At least you kind of know where gold might be. A meteorite could be anywhere.

But it would be nice to find a nice little carbonaceous condritic meteorite with some living ET material in it. Although that would probably make you more famous than rich, since the meteorite would then be seen as "priceless," and therefore not worth any money.

Copper is already high iirc. Imagine how much interstellar copper could go for. Lol

This is pretty cool stuff, when I was eating lunch today they had a recording off somebody's security cameras at their house in Mississippi on the news that was pretty weird looking, showing the huge bright flash in the sky.. it didn't look like a meteorite to me but then again I never saw one explode in the sky before either.. so who knows. I'll try and hunt the video down on the internet, if I can find it I'll post it up on here.

Anyway, on the video footage the entire sky lights up.. it definately looks like some kind of explosion - but it was crazy how damn bright it was; only lasted a couple seconds but it looked like a giant spotlight was on everything in the area.

Sweet, that didn't take too long - gotta love the net sometimes

www.wapt.com...

What part of Mississippi, I live down here near Gulfport and haven't heard anything.

Originally posted by pazcat
reply to post by St Udio

 

Why would a meteor have to have a set trajectory?
They can and do enter the Earth from any angle and direction.

With the case of known showers that just points out the direction of where they seem to originate, passing through the debris field still throws up random directions.

sciencenw.com...

edit on 12-1-2011 by pazcat because: (no reason given)

Exactly. It should also be noted that our annual meteor showers come from cometary sources, while most big fireballs (like this one) tend to come from asteroidal sources, which tend to be more random. Either can produce meteors that come from any direction in the sky, but in the case of cometary meteors belonging to an annual shower, they will always appear to travel away from a specific point (or area) in the sky that is known as the radiant. The radiant however, moves along with the background stars through the course of the night, so these meteors will also seem to come from different directions depending on the time at which they are observed.

reply to post by candide


if that link brings you to the picture.. I swear I saw that bright light a few days ago.. like 9 maybe.. I didnt think much of it.. I had been sitting outside, thinking of UFO's, wishing, and saw a greenish light dip out of the sky.. looked like firework almost, except it didnt explode, just lit up, and I only saw it for less than 3 seconds.. before went out of view..it was crazy

is it possible it was in orbit for a few days? perhaps its not what I saw, but looked similar, except no tail.. just light dropping

reply to post by Spriggs

JACKSON, Miss. -- A mysterious flashing light caused a lot of confusion around the south Tuesday night.

WAPT viewers Scott and Paula King, of Ridgeland, were among many who reported seeing the flashes of light at about 9 p.m. The couple checked out their surveillance cameras and captured the sky suddenly lighting up for a moment.

Police received about two dozen calls about the flash of light. The 16 WAPT newsroom also received calls.

There were reports of thunderous booms that shook houses and windows in Scott and Jones counties.

The flash was seen as far away as the Florida Panhandle and Arizona.

KTHV-TV reported that the flash was a meteor and it touched down near Potaeu Mountain, Okla.

Possible Meteor Flashes Across Mississippi Sky

Originally posted by tasim
Is there anyway to know when these meteors, if they are in fact from the Alpha Centaurids Meteor Shower, would be seen? I would love to see one but its way too cold to sit out there for hours waiting.

The meteor being discussed in this thread was almost certainly not an Alpha Centaurid. As I said before, events like this are asteroidal in origin. Annual meteor showers are caused by comets in most cases, and are therefore more predictable in terms of the peak time, since we are passing though the tail of a comet, which contains billions of meteoroids.

Asteroids tend to be more random in nature, and its very rare for us to spot incoming asteroids before they hit since they are usually on their own. Small asteroids like this one are very hard to spot (even with the best equipment), although we are steadily getting better at it.

The upshot of all this is that you are unlikely to see a large event like this even if you look for it at the best times. It's just luck if you see one.

Your best bet is to observe the major annual meteor showers that occur throughout the year, and you can catch smaller (but by no means unimpressive!) fireballs that occur at the peaks of these showers if you put in enough observing time.

The real trick to seeing them is to be prepared so that you are not cold. Firstly you need to put on lots of layers of cloths, and then you want to lay down flat on a sunbed/camp-bed/air-bed, and use a sleeping bag (or two if it's really cold).

If you do that, you'll be able to observe for long periods of time without getting too uncomfortable, and your chances of seeing something impressive go up dramatically.Although it won't help with seeing a bright fireball. you will see lots more smaller meteors (and other stuff too) if you get away from the city/town, and make the time pass quicker since you will encounter less lulls when nothing is going on. It makes for a much better experience overall if you can find a good observing site that is dark, and also has good all round views.

The major meteor showers I would recommend are the Quadrantids (January), Perseids (August), Taurids (November), and the Geminids (December). If you observe around the peak nights of these showers, you will soon start to see bright meteors and fireballs which can sometimes rival the brightness of a full moon. You will also see sporadic meteors, which include the occasional fireball of asteroidal origin. I've lost count of the asteroidal meteors and fireballs I've seen over the years while observing annual meteor showers. They are usually quite easy to tell apart from cometary meteors since they are relatively slow and long lasting, and they tend to flare wildly and sometimes visibly break up into pieces.

A little planning ahead will go a long way, especially if you are clouded out a lot where you are. Plan to observe at least 2 or 3 major showers, and on the nights before or after the peak night, or the weather will likely spoil your plans, unless you are fortunate to be somewhere where you get lots of clear nights.


If you want to learn a bit more on the subject, I have written a sort of FAQ on meteors which has lots of useful links and info which can be found here.

Originally posted by Time2Think
This is pretty cool stuff, when I was eating lunch today they had a recording off somebody's security cameras at their house in Mississippi on the news that was pretty weird looking, showing the huge bright flash in the sky.. it didn't look like a meteorite to me but then again I never saw one explode in the sky before either.

Here is one recent example:


another from the same event:


I've also uploaded a small compilation of footage showing flashes produced by bright meteors here (.mov format)

Originally posted by Myendica
reply to post by candide

 

if that link brings you to the picture.. I swear I saw that bright light a few days ago.. like 9 maybe.. I didnt think much of it.. I had been sitting outside, thinking of UFO's, wishing, and saw a greenish light dip out of the sky.. looked like firework almost, except it didnt explode, just lit up, and I only saw it for less than 3 seconds.. before went out of view..it was crazy

is it possible it was in orbit for a few days? perhaps its not what I saw, but looked similar, except no tail.. just light dropping

edit on 12-1-2011 by Myendica because: (no reason given)

It's not very likely that what you saw was a directly related event to this one, although you may have seen another meteor. We are constantly bombarded with fireball class meteors from many sources. It's also highly unlikely that a meteoroid/asteroid would be captured by Earth's gravity, although it is possible.

Meteors come in all shapes, sizes and colors. No two are exactly the same, although meteors belonging to the same source will show similar characteristics more often than not.

Taking your example, weather or not a meteor explodes depends on may factors, not least of which is angle of entry. Meteors from a related source can have very different angles of entry, and if one only skims through the upper atmosphere, where the air is extremely thin, it will probably not explode, where as one which has a steep angle of entry (and is large enough for it to keep going long enough to hit really dense atmosphere at high velocity) might well explode.

Further reports of bright green fireballs have been posted. It seems like there were at least 3 on the 11th and as many as 3 more on the 12th.

From Watkins MN, Debi writes:

“What is going on? I saw one last night and two this morning! Previously I’ve only seen two in my whole life. Last night I saw it in the WSW shortly after sunset, while it was still light out. This morning I saw two within 10 minutes in the ESE, before sunrise but while it was already light. This morning the sky was overcast. Last night I think it was a mix of clear and cloudy skies.”

Source: click here


Here is some footage of one of the events on the 11th.



More at : this site including footage of the flashes.




It looks like we just passed through a part of space that is strewn with debris, perhaps asteroidal in origin. We will have to wait and see what comes out when all the data is analyzed, and if anything of the object is found.

This is interesting. This is a short article from my local news site:

www.katc.com...

Seems it was larger than they thought. On the tv, they just said it was about 3 feet across and weighed about a ton.

reply to post by cidrolls4s


If that was larger than they thought, they must have had very little actual experience of events like this, which does not surprise me... it seems to be standard practice that they take advice from astronomers (who usually don't know much more than your average member of the general public), when they should have asked an expert in meteors and meteorites.

1m is not really a big rock. Most big fireballs are produced by objects on the order of 5m (and larger), but they are usually not as dense as this one appears to have been. This seems to fit with the theory that this was a nickel/iron meteorite. That's fairly unusual - most events that I have come across have been larger and non-metalic.