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Object Lights Night Sky Across Canadian Prairies
Posted by
timothy
on Sat Nov 22, 2008 01:57 PM
from the interrupting-the-existing-total-darkness dept.
from the interrupting-the-existing-total-darkness dept.
clarkn0va writes "Witnesses as far as 720 kilometers apart reported seeing what looked like a bright meteor falling somewhere on the Saskatchewan-Alberta boundary around 5:30 pm MT Thursday, according to the CBC. Here's video of the incident as seen from Edmonton."
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Quick Poll (Score:4, Funny)
Was it:
Re:Quick Poll (Score:4, Informative)
If it reaches the ground, it's called a meteorite.
Parent
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What do you call it if to hits the ground and comes out the other side back into space?
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Back in the radio days, it was actually quite common to deliver fiction in a "you're there" format. WotW actually changed all that, what with the mass panic, dozens of suicides, and general craziness that followed it. You'll notice that the format of WotW still isn't followed: they don't do live news coverage of fake events.
There was a bad remake of WotW back in the late eighties or early nineties done in a live news format. There was a near-constant scroll at the bottom reminding viewers this was fiction a
Re:Quick Poll (Score:5, Funny)
Parent
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4. A $2M tool belt
finally (Score:5, Funny)
the aurora borealis shows its true face. the "northern lights" have lulled the canuckians into a false sense of security and now they are ready to attack.
Leonids (Score:2)
Bruce
Bullshit. (Score:5, Funny)
It's probably that tool bag (Score:5, Funny)
Re:It's probably that tool bag (Score:5, Funny)
I was thinking that missing spider, after being exposed to radiation from solar flares while in a hard vacuum, finally returned to earth.
And it's mad.
Parent
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And don't forget, it has tools too.
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I was thinking that missing spider, after being exposed to radiation from solar flares while in a hard vacuum, finally returned to earth. And it's mad.
And don't forget, it has tools too.
Tools?
Great! See if it can fix that '77 Chevette rusting in your backyard!
Triangulate! Triangulate! (Score:5, Insightful)
With many reports coming in about what direction the object was seen in, can't one simply disregard any wild guesses as to how close it was, and just draw vectors based on the directions of the observers? With this many observers, one should quickly be able to pinpoint the flash, and where to look for meteorites.
Re:Triangulate! Triangulate! (Score:5, Funny)
Ok, I'll start. It was traveling left to right and appeared to land, oh maybe, 100-150km away a little (10-20 degrees) to my right.
With a few more reports like this we should be able to pinpoint the impact to within a few meters.
;-)
Parent
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A couple of problems that are likely to crop up:
Almost all of your observers are going to be located quite close together, in any urban centers. Particularly since there's going to be a lot of uncertainty in the direction they report.
You might be able to get an approximate track by triangulation, but the point at the end of that track is going to have a huge uncertainty associated with it.
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Yes, but you're only going to get one reasonable vector per city. Take a look at a map of mid to northern Alberta [watertoninfo.ab.ca]. See all the cities? The meteor was visible over a wide area, but a given uncertainty in direction is going to give you a bigger uncertainty in location, the farther away you are, so nearby observations are much more valuable than far away ones. You'd also want to get some observations from north of the track as well.
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> Assuming the error made by people in reporting the direction is essentially random...
I doubt that's a valid assumption. Besides, few, if any, are going to report the direction as anything more than "to the North" or "a little East of North".
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Yeah, it's not rocket science! Oh wait...
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thursday?? (Score:4, Funny)
This happened 2 days ago and it's just now making it on
The world could have ended and we'd have to wait 2 days before it makes it on here.
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why else visit slashdot from cleveland? when the world ends it will take a couple of days to register with both hence adding several days to your life.
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Slashdot never could get the hang of Thursdays.
FYI (Score:2)
FYI: the world did end. I hope this doesn't interfere with any plans you may have made. I wouldn't count on /. posting a story though. Truth be told, no one seems to have noticed except me. Very strange.
Re:thursday?? (Score:5, Funny)
If it's any consolation, it'll probably be posted several more times before next Thursday.
Parent
Missed this completely (Score:5, Funny)
It was... (Score:5, Funny)
...a weather balloon.
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PM? (Score:2, Informative)
I believe 05:30 MT is 5:30 AM MT, not PM.
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thats OK
Montana is so far back in the sticks that they don't get the Grand Ole Opry till Monday morning so maybe the meteor did go through in the morning everywhere else.
There's only one logical explanation... (Score:2, Funny)
The mutant space spiders have arrived much sooner than expected. NASA has doomed us all!
I, for one, welcome our new mutant space arachnid overlords
Re:There's only one logical explanation... (Score:5, Funny)
Too bad they caught fire on atmospheric entry. But yeah.
I, for one, welcome our new burnt-to-a-crisp-exploded-on-impact-mutant-space-arachnid-overlords.
Parent
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It was just another QANTAS jet having problems!
I saw it from the SF Bay Area (Score:3, Interesting)
I live in the San Francisco Bay Area and I saw it this past week. I was leaving work and turned north out of the parking lot and it was shooting across the sky to the west. It was very green. I remember that much. If this thing landed in Canada then it must have been huge for me to see it from California.
Re:I saw it from the SF Bay Area (Score:5, Informative)
Parent
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Then I probably saw a different meteor altogether. It was still stunning!
Fireballs better than piddly shooting stars. (Score:5, Interesting)
I've seen a lot of "shooting stars" in my time, but they don't compare at all to seeing a meteor fireball like this.
I managed to see two in a one month period back in 2001, when leaving the office at 330-430 at night. (London, Ontario, August 20th for the first one)
One was silent, but the other one roared like a jet shortly after it passed. I assumed that the second one was smaller but appeared the same size because it was much closer, hence the sound.
Moments like that make me wish we had the ability to capture our memories digitally for playback.
BLAME CANADA! (Score:3, Funny)
This is hardly unique these days. . . (Score:4, Interesting)
We've been having a lot of this sort of thing lately. --Not all of them get this much notice, or accurate coverage. --There was a report of a 'plane' going down over some American town a week or so back, creating a huge aerial show and loud bang, putting the residents and authorities into a tizzy. --The only thing was that no planes were reported missing and they didn't find any wreckage.
I half suspect when we get one of the big ones that the PTB will have chutzpah to call it a terrorist nuke if they can get away with it.
A skimming of noted events for October. . .
Astronomy enthusiast Howard Edin reports that he was looking in the opposite direction at the time, but saw the whole observing field light up and at first thought someone had turned on their car headlights. [nasa.gov]
Reports came from residents from Carmel Valley to Salinas of a fireball shooting through the Tuesday night sky and hitting the Earth. A sheriff's deputy patrolling Carmel Valley saw it and thought enough of it to call for reinforcements. [montereyherald.com]
IT appeared against the early evening sky like a flare - moments later roofs rattled and verandas shook as it crashed to earth. [smh.com.au]
[...]The Evening Telegraph has been inundated with calls and e-mails from readers who saw a strange fireball cutting a swath across the heavens[...] [peterboroughtoday.co.uk]
For the second time this year, The University of Western Ontario Meteor Group has captured incredibly rare video footage of a meteor falling to Earth. [sciencedaily.com]
A bright light sped across the sky, followed by a loud explosion. Osborne County Sheriff Curtis Miner tells KSAL News that it was not an unidentified flying object, or anything sinister. It was a large meteor. [ksallink.com]
-FL
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Could be, dude. The angle seems about right. I guess it would depend on the observed trajectory over Canada.
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I know it's bad form to reply to my own post, but I thought I should correct myself. I checked Google Maps, did a few back-of-the-napkin calculations, and figured out that given that trajectory and assuming the meteor was traveling at about 10 km/sec, the Earth wouldn't have rotated enough during the meteor's flight to put Edmonton under its path.
Although, maybe it broke up between Oklahoma and Canada, with one fragment careening off west. Certainly a plausible theory.
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AKA Iridium Flare. I see them all the time out here in the desert where there's a nice lack of light.
Re:UFO (Score:4, Informative)
Here is a video of a great Iridium flare [youtube.com], and here is a video of a not-quite-so-great Iridium flare [youtube.com].
Parent
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Hey! Get back under the stairs!
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I saw the Sun "go through a layer of clouds" this evening, and its altitude was considerably higher.
Look again at the video, thinking of it as a high-speed sunset. The meteor looked like it was heading more or less straight down, but it was likely heading mostly toward or away from the observer.