Latest Meteoroids Stories
[ Watch the Video: ScienceCasts: 2012 Perseid Meteor Shower ] April Flowers for redOrbit.com - Your Universe Online Every year in August, the Perseid Meteor shower is visible to the naked eye and is a favorite for professional and amateur astronomers alike. The Perseid shower has it all. It offers a consistently high rate of meteors, it produces more bright, visible meteors than any other shower, it happens in August when many people are on vacation, and it happens at a time when...
Lee Rannals for redOrbit.com An asteroid about the size of a football stadium may slightly have a chance of impacting Earth in 2040, but new estimates show it's hardly a threat. The space rock, measuring about 460-feet in size, has a likelihood of missing Earth greater than 99 percent, according to the recent findings by scientists at a May 29 workshop at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center. "While there is general consensus there is only a very small chance that we could be dealing...
[ Watch the Video ] Meteorite fragments were recently scattered around Sutter’s Mill in California. This is the same region where the first gold nugget was found that sparked the Gold Rush in 1848. Scientists hope the meteorites may hold answers to unsolved mysteries about our solar system and the origins of molecules necessary for life. When the Gold Rush began, people headed to California seeking their fortune. Now, with this meteorite hunt, people once again have flocked to this...
A bright ball of light traveling east to west was seen over the skies of central/northern California Sunday morning, April 22. The former space rock-turned-flaming-meteor entered Earth's atmosphere around 8 a.m. PDT. Reports of the fireball have come in from as far north as Sacramento, Calif. and as far east as North Las Vegas, Nev. Bill Cooke of the Meteoroid Environments Office at NASA's Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Ala., estimates the object was about the size of a...
Lawrence LeBlond for RedOrbit.com Residents in parts of Nevada and California were treated to a rare daytime celestial event that awoke some on Sunday morning with a loud explosion, according to a Fox News report. The event -- a meteor streaking across the morning sky -- was followed by hundreds of calls to 911 centers in the area reporting a deafening explosion, while some reported seeing the fireball blazing across the sky. The “big boom,” as it became quickly known across...
Feb. 22, 2012: In the middle of the night on February 13th, something disturbed the animal population of rural Portal, Georgia. Cows started mooing anxiously and local dogs howled at the sky. The cause of the commotion was a rock from space. "At 1:43 AM Eastern, I witnessed an amazing fireball," reports Portal resident Henry Strickland. "It was very large and lit up half the sky as it fragmented. The event set dogs barking and upset cattle, which began to make excited sounds. I regret I...
Thousands of people across Texas and Oklahoma reported seeing a flash of light streaking across the night sky Wednesday. The Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) said the light people saw at about 8 p.m. central time was in fact a meteor. However, the thousands who reported the flash as an unidentified flying object do not have to feel inadequate when it comes to spotting meteors. This meteor was unusually large, and it created a sonic boom as it passed by residents. “We know it...
An asteroid about the size of a bus flew past Earth on Friday at a distance within about 36,750 miles. Asteroid 2012 BX34 was first detected on Wednesday and skimmed by Earth at about a fifth of the distance of the Moon. Astronomers assured everyone on Earth that there was no cause for concern, and that if it would have entered the atmosphere, it would not have survived. Despite not being a big threat, the asteroid did make a record as one of the top 20 closest asteroids to approach...
[ Watch the Video ] Surprising but true: Every day, on average, more than 40 tons of meteoroids strike our planet. Most are tiny specks of comet dust that disintegrate harmlessly high up in Earth's atmosphere, producing a slow drizzle of meteors in the night sky. Bigger chunks of asteroid and comet debris yield dozens of nightly fireballs around the globe. Some are large enough to pepper the ground with actual meteorites. With so much "stuff" zeroing in on our planet, NASA could use...
Earth is about to pass through a stream of debris from Halley's comet, source of the annual Orionid meteor shower. Forecasters expect more than 15 meteors per hour to fly across the sky on Saturday morning, Oct. 22nd, when the shower peaks. "Although this isn't the biggest meteor shower of the year, it's definitely worth waking up for," says Bill Cooke of the NASA Meteoroid Environment Office. "The setting is dynamite." Orionids are framed by some of the brightest and most beautiful...
Latest Meteoroids Reference Libraries
Perseids Meteor Shower -- Like most meteor showers, the Perseids are caused by comet debris. As comets enter the inner solar system, they are warmed by the sun and peppered by the solar wind, which produces the familar tails that stretch across the night sky when a bright comet is close to Earth. Comet tails are made of tiny pieces of ice, dust, and rock which are spewed into interplanetary space as they bubble off the comet's nucleus. When Earth encounters these particles on its...
Near-Earth Object -- Near-Earth Objects (NEO) are asteroids, comets and large meteoroids whose orbit intersects Earth's orbit and which may therefore pose a collision danger. Due to their size and proximity, NEO's are also more easily accessible for spacecraft from Earth and are important for future scientific investigation and commercial development. In fact, some near-Earth asteroids can be reached with much less ΔV (change in velocity) than the Moon. In the United States, NASA...
