BOLIDE Confirmed!!-update
October 6th, 2008 at 8:04 pm by Bill Steffen under Bill's Blog
Around the Earth there are any telescopes are dedicated to scanning the sky, looking for asteroids, comets and space debris that might potentially hit the Earth’s surface. Thousands of candidates have been found, but they’ve all turned out to be false alarms — until now! A meteoroid first spotted Sunday NIght hit Earth’s atmosphere at 10:43 PM over northern Sudan, creating a spectacular explosion high above Earth’s surface. Click here for more! (Bolide is an astronomical term – referring to the impact of an extraterrestrial object up to 10 km wide that impacts the Earth’s atmosphere at a speed considerably higher than a speeding bullet). At 3:30 AM, the fireball has been confirmed by a KLM airliner that was 750 miles SW of the expected location of the entrance into the atmosphere. Click here for more on that. Here’s more from spaceweather.com:
No pictures of the fireball have been submitted; the impact occurred in a very remote area with few and possibly no onlookers capable of recording the event. So far, the only report of a visual sighting comes from Jacob Kuiper,
This is what I love about this blog – it’s not limited to rain, snow or shine…we get Bolides – whataconcept! Thanks Bill, for expanding our horizons
Cool I hope someone films it and uploads it to YouTube or something. That will be fun to watch.
its too bad we can not see Bolide tonight that would be some thing to see..also its too bad we can not have the nice warm weather we had last year…I am not ready for fall and less ready for winter…..talking about winter accuweather’s Henry Margusity has his winter guess out and he thinks we are going to have a cold and snowy winter..lets hope he is wrong LOL SlimJim
Man we are gonna miss something worst seeing. Let’s hope it’s as small as they say it is.
Yep Bill we need to run for the hills now while we still have a chance. LOL
That’s awesome! thanks for sharing, too bad we miss out.
Alright… here we go.. Winter Storm Watch up for I-94 to the north.. 6-10 inches of snow by wednesday night… hahah ah I just had to see what it felt like… haha. Sorry guys.
Harry i cant wait for that day
Too bad this didn’t occur over North America. What a spectacular sight it would have been for us. Can’t wait to see the pictures and film.
Harry…..3-6 inches of snow predicted for Anchorage bowl tonight…personally I’d rather have the cold, dry snow then the cold, damp rain.
Does anyone know what happened? I cant find anything after the Bolide.
If “they are looking for asteroids, comets and space debris that might potentially hit the Earth’s surface. Thousands of candidates have been found, but they’ve all turned out to be false alarms — until now!” How come they didn’t detect it until it entered the Earth’s atmosphere? Doesn’t make me feel very safe that we would have time before an impact!!
I can see it now…Forecast cloudy with a 30% chance of rain and a 15% chance of asteroids frangments hitting around 3PM……looks like a nice warm spell comming up..I like the sound of that..SlimJim
well, if it’s large enough…we wouldnt want to know anyway!!
What warm spell? 72F is a warm spell? Since when? I will still need my warm clothes during that time LOL That’s sweatshirt weather…
Awesome.
I don’t know… 76 degrees might be hard to take… especially on a saturday! haha Especially friday night… good night for football
Was that Superman making his entrance?
I’m just glad they didn’t think it was a nuclear weapon and fire back.
@ Sandy…
The statement you quoted is not exactly accurate.
Earth gets hit by stuff every day. In fact, this object was only about 10 feet across. there wasn’t much chance of it making it to the ground. Also, objects of this size enter our atmosphere a few times each year. Why this is news is that it was actually discovered before entering the atmosphere.
And to be accurate again, astronomers consider a “Bolide” an exceptionally bright fireball with a terminal “burst”, or explosion. It doesn’t necessarily have to impact the ground.
Mr. Steffen-
I heard you talk about the approaching asteroid on the news on Monday night. On either Tuesday or Wednesday I was listening to the the radio and I heard about an Austrialian plane that experienced very severe turbulence causing injury to passengers. Both events happened on October 7th.
I did some internet research and Qantas Airline Flight 72 leaves Singapore at 9 a.m. WST (1:00 GMT) on the way to Perth, Australia in a 5 hour flight. The asteroid exploded in the atmosphere over Sudan at 2:46 GMT (10:46 a.m. WST). Would it be possible that the asteroid could have set off a compression wave that traveled though the upper troposphere and causing the severe turbulence? Passengers and crew that were not buckled into their seats were thrown to the ceiling of the plane and at times experienced “weightlessness”. The plane had to make an emergency landing.
Let me know what you think. I have not seen any links between these events on the internet. I am a 7th and 8th grade science teacher. I appreciate your interest in climate and weather as well as astronomy and I use some of your links in my classroom.
Julie Leavitt
Baseline Middle School