Object Lights Night Sky Across Canadian Prairies 125
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."
Quick Poll (Score:4, Funny)
Was it:
Re:Quick Poll (Score:4, Informative)
If it reaches the ground, it's called a meteorite.
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If it reaches the ground, it's called a meteorite.
Exactly. As the song says "Shooting star or meteor, whichever name you like, the minute it comes down to earth it's called a meteorite."
What Is A Shooting Star? [acme.com]
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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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What do you call it if to hits the ground and comes out the other side back into space?
Dark Matter
http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn6933 [newscientist.com]
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Neutrino.
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That would be the "precursor" part he mentioned :)
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By that logic, every time a space shuttle lands it becomes a meteorite.
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By that logic, every time a space shuttle lands it becomes a meteorite.
Not unless it started as an asteroid... but nice try.
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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
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WotW actually changed all that, what with the mass panic, dozens of suicides, and general craziness that followed it.
There were no suicides. There was one reported contemplated suicide (a husband finding his wife listening to show with a handful of sleeping pills, saying, "I'd rather go out this way than that!"), but no one actually committed suicide in response to the 1938 October 30th Orson Welles broadcast.
In later adaptations for other countries (notably Peru), it had prompted outrage amongst listeners after the fact, prompting them to burn down a radio station in a riot, killing the people inside.
Re:Quick Poll (Score:5, Funny)
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4. A $2M tool belt
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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)
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Don't be retarded. Only a true human could be a dumb as GWB. I'm sure space bugs could do a much better job of running our country.
I, for one, welcome our new space bug overlords.
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Meteor my ass. More cover-up about the fucking space bugs now running our world. Christ, as if GWB wassn't proof enough.
FYI, Men In Black [imdb.com] was not a documentary.
"For Duty and Humanity!"
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.
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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!
And the video of that mishap: (Score:1)
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gets me why they couldn't just hitch one of the other astronauts up to one of those MMUs and go after it...? Or, maybe they don't have any anywhere on board the shuttle or the ISS. Might be a good plan to drop a couple off on the next mission...
UFO (Score:1)
I wonder if this is what I saw fly over Oklahoma.
I thought it was jet but it lacked the familiar colored blinking lights, was much brighter white, and moved faster.
It moved from the south-southwest to the north-northeast.
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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].
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.
;-)
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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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While the meteor was visible over a wide enough area that triangulation of its location at any single instant would be possible, unfortunately it was moving kind of fast, so the timing of the separate observations becomes critical. Unfortunately, the observers neither synchronized their watches beforehand, nor in most cases recorded the exact time of their observations.
AIR, there was an ammonia tank cast off by the ISS recently that was expected to mostly burn up on reentry, but some pieces were probably
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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.
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I guess they wanted to be really sure it wasn't an ICBM.
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sounds familiar:
"the world is gonna end because of global warming.."
"when?"
"the day after tomorrow"
Another scientist walks in..
"That was two days ago"
"My God, this makes it...TODAY!!"
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Missed this completely (Score:5, Funny)
It was... (Score:5, Funny)
...a weather balloon.
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dude, you not only missed the boat, you watched it drift away /then/ you jumped in the fast-flowing river after it...
No, no! It was. . . (Score:2)
Paper lanterns.
Venus.
Mass hallucination.
A military jet.
Lens flare.
Two guys with planks.
In a swamp.
-FL
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Netcraft just confirmed that Cory Doctorow [xkcd.com] died in a blogging accident [xkcd.com].
Truely an American icon.
PM? (Score:2, Informative)
I believe 05:30 MT is 5:30 AM MT, not PM.
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FTFA
"A bright light lit up the sky around 5:30 MT Thursday evening..."
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Hrmm... You appear to be correct - although I did read the article, I missed the 'evening' qualifier. ...Slowly backs out of room, hat in hand...
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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.
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It was just another QANTAS jet having problems!
Hmm (Score:1)
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I prefer my tin-foil fedora. Or on warm days, my fez.
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Hey! Get back under the stairs!
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)
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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.
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But as you're in Canada I'd say it's just a Soviet Nuclear sat, spreading radioactive joy over the Great White North.
Ground support (Score:2)
If you had lived in London, England, then I would have said it was another damn Christmass invasion.
Don't complain. --Since the Doctor is partly funded by the CBC, I rather hope Canada will have its turn at being invaded this Christmas. Not getting my hopes up, though. The CN Tower being cast into shadow by a monolithic space vessel might look cool, but wouldn't carry the same emotional impact as any one of a half dozen London landmarks. On the plus side, though, the happy-go-lucky-superhuman Mounties (
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Just drive out to the countryside when a big meteor shower comes in. I drove out into the desert a few years back for one of the big Leonid events and I saw hundreds, although none was a big as this one of course. You could even hear a couple.
Ob Quote (Score:1, Redundant)
I for one welcome our new bolide overlords.
High or low altitude? (Score:1)
However, in some of the footage the thing can be see to go through a layer of clouds.
Is it possible for clouds to be that high up?
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Also, even if that was an effect that played here, seeing the thing pass *through* a layer of cloud makes that point if relevant: if it passes through clouds, the clouds and the meteor must be at a similar altitude.
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Other videos might show differently of course.
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Hmm, looking at several videos again, you're right. My mistake...
* Note to self: brain before blab
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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.
Someone at /. better check the code... (Score:1)
from the front page a minute ago:
Science: Object Lights Night Sky Across Canadian Prairies 75 of 70 comments
BLAME CANADA! (Score:3, Funny)
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It was thought to be an ordinary falling star, but the next day there was a huge crater in the middle of the Common.
That would explain it... (Score:1)
I'm presently in Saskatoon, SK and I was out driving around with the gf. I noticed a flash in the sky that was as bright as day for a few seconds. We both wondered what it was and figured it couldn't be lightning - it was snowing at the time. I guess we found that missing spider from the ISS...
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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