9 replies
20h51m
Solar eclipse, auroras, and now a meteor: space weather has been a lot of fun lately.
5 replies
21h5m
I saw this last night in Matosinhos - north Portugal outside of Porto.
This is a town that happened to have its biggest celebration of the year last night. It's called Festas do Senhor de Matosinhos.
The meteor made an appearance 15 minutes before midnight. The big fireworks were to go off at midnight. We all thought it was the weirdest firework we'd ever seen and only later realized it was a meteor.
It was truly huge. And lit the ground blue.
The really interesting part of this is that the festival is to celebrate a miracle in the town wherein a vision of Jesus appeared a long time ago.
I am not religious. But wow. Quite a coincidence.
Posting under a fresh account for location privacy, of course.
Maybe this sounds unbelievable but here is the program of the festival where you can see that the fireworks happen:
https://www.leca-palmeira.com/senhor-de-matosinhos-4/
And here's the wiki about the reason for the festival:
4 replies
20h42m
oh no, now every believer will start seeing god's plan everywhere...
2 replies
16h17m
You should have seen chat in NASA’s YouTube stream during the recent total solar eclipse.
1 replies
8h39m
Time ago there was a running joke about YouTube comments sillyness. That section has improved a lot. Live chats, on the other hand...
During a recent volcano eruption someone was convinced that the rain would help stop the lava. I can't forget that. Oh, and the prophetic, blessings, I knew it, climate change, etc.
0 replies
2h37m
Yeah but no matter where it is, people are going to people and where there’s a lot of them, you’re also going to see two things: their superstitions and the knowledge problem in action.
0 replies
7h13m
It's no coincidence believers see God in clouds or toasted bread.
Scientifically, this phenomenon is called confirmation bias. The bigger your belief, the more biased your conclusion. "Faith" is simply how religious people call their confirmation bias.
5 replies
20h44m
Of Cometary Origin. Seen over Portugal and Spain:
https://news.sky.com/story/blue-fireball-flashes-in-night-sk...
Some beautiful images:
https://x.com/esaoperations/status/1792106330267799685
https://x.com/travolax/status/1792004429173916132
https://www.reddit.com/r/nextfuckinglevel/comments/1cvtfuw/b...
4 replies
19h37m
travelling at roughly 28 miles per second.
That's (~45 km/s) pretty close to the Sun's escape velocity from Earth (~42 km/s). I wonder if there's a chance it's interstellar.
1 replies
15h6m
42km/s is assuming you use all of Earth's orbital velocity (~30km/s) to your favor, a small deviation means 45km/s won't cut it. In terms of possible angles, it's a very low chance of an interstellar object.
0 replies
5h16m
I don't think that's accurate. 42 km/s is purely a function of the Sun's mass and the distance of Earth's orbit.
If we used the Earth's orbital speed (~30 km/s) and launched from Earth in that continued direction we would only need ~12 km/s additional velocity.
1 replies
18h38m
Let's hope it's the only fragment. Interstellar objects come fast, unexpected, and out of NASA current tracking...
0 replies
18h28m
It was definitely moving fast. After a quick browse, only 2 other fireballs were moving at least that fast in the CNEOS catalog (https://cneos.jpl.nasa.gov/fireballs/).
It would be interesting to know its velocity components. Hopefully NASA will have and report that data.
5 replies
20h58m
My first thought seeing the video: wow, I'd love to see something like that in person.
Immediate second though: so grateful for our atmosphere
1 replies
18h3m
I saw one like this 15 years ago. It was terrifying as I was alone in a forested area and I had no idea what it was at first. But then the sonic boom that lasted for minutes was even more disconcerting.
0 replies
15h23m
Wow! Where?
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13h36m
My first thought was similar like how incredible it would be to experience it in person.
Second thought was, if we see this in a movie it might come across as your average cgi scene (without any epic music or slow shots) and doesn't standout much.
But now that I know it is real, all these normal videos (compared to movie CGI) somehow makes them better, special and makes me want to be there which doesn't happen with a movie scene.
0 replies
17h42m
Did you hear about that restaurant they opened on the Earth? The food is mid, but GREAT atmosphere.
0 replies
20h31m
It was quite sensational:
It was cloudy over me, so no bolide - I only saw slowly rising to 100% saturation brightness outside, during pitch-black night. (sonic boom a couple of minutes later).
I gave it a 20% chance it was a nuke from Putin :D
3 replies
17h44m
0 replies
15h53m
I’m no expert, but that looks like asphalt.
0 replies
17h39m
I was curious whether handling them directly is a good idea. There's some guidance here: https://ares.jsc.nasa.gov/meteorite-falls/how-to-handle-mete...
Try not to handle any freshly fallen meteorites with your bare hands! Oils and microbes from your skin will slowly degrade the surface of a meteorite, dulling the fusion crust, contaminating the meteorite, and promoting rust. The contamination aspect is especially important for carbonaceous meteorites and other uncommon types.
0 replies
17h32m
That's good news: if there's already one fragment that's been found, there are probably many!
3 replies
21h14m
I had the luck to see one these in person—an absolutely brilliant fireball in sparking white.
Maybe if I reorganize my flow to spend more hours outside in the evenings I can fool statistics into showing me a second one.
2 replies
20h15m
Ah, the good old mathematical law
num_lifetime_meteor_sightings = tan(pi * n/48)
1 replies
20h7m
It's fucking up my equation to continue investigating this, but, shouldn't this be a simple Poisson distribution (constant rate)? What model are you doing that has a trigonometric tan
0 replies
19h47m
I think it's a joke; imagine you spent 24 hours a day looking at the sky.
2 replies
8h4m
I was lucky enough to see this one live.
It was astounding. It became day for a few seconds and then it broke off into a half dozen pieces or so. It left an incandescent trail behind.
It looked incredibly close. I had the feeling we were going to hear it coming down nearby in a few seconds, but it ended up in the Atlantic Ocean (actually not that far from us since we were by the ocean, but far enough).
So glad we were having drinks outside and I wasn't grabbing anything in the house!
1 replies
7h20m
Looking at the reaction of the girl in the video, I wondered... when you see something out of the ordinary like that, do you get the ape/lizard brain instinct of "oh shit the sky is on fire, better hide under a rock"?
I have seen enough meteors in video to recognise one in real life, but I wonder if for a split second the fight-flight instinct kicks in before reason prevails.
0 replies
5h12m
Indeed there was a split second of primal flight response, and then awe. Not like you have a long time to think about it!
2 replies
18h22m
Did any of the large space agency predict this? I.e. Was the object actually detected before impact?
1 replies
18h13m
It was likely way too small to have been detected prior to impacting the atmosphere.
0 replies
16h47m
Too small to see, but too small for damage?
What’s the largest smallest object we won’t be able to see that can be devastating?
2 replies
10h0m
I know this is completely irrational and very very unlikely to happen, but one of the greatest fears I have when flying is that the plane will be hit by something like this.
0 replies
9h3m
That's like trying to hit a bullet with a smaller bullet, whilst wearing a blindfold, riding a horse.
0 replies
9h38m
If I had to die in a plane crash, this seems like the least terrifying way to go out. Way better than hearing an ominous rumbling, scrambling for the oxygen masks…
1 replies
19h22m
They finally sent someone to stop the invention of AGI.
0 replies
19h19m
You mean like Kyle Reese?
1 replies
17h43m
Even if a miracle happens and we get to net zero, warming and extreme events like this will continue for decades due to climate lag and feedbacks.
0 replies
11h47m
It’s a fragment of a comet that came from very far away from Earth. How do you think it’s related to climate change?
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3h6m
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8h42m
Any space expert able to explain the very vivid blue colour please? I distinctly remember most meteors are either white or greenish tinted. Was it just the composition, or was it down to higher temperatures reached due to the higher speed?
0 replies
20h53m
Kame-hame-...
0 replies
21h10m
Just i.e. almost a day ago.
0 replies
20h1m
This is the IMO Fireball report: the event happened about 24h ago https://fireballs.imo.net/members/imo_view/event/2024/2481
0 replies
10h23m
Then the triffids came.
0 replies
18h29m
Any estimates on the mass yet? 100,800 mph and it didn't disintegrate immediately.. Wowzers.
0 replies
15h10m
The relative contribution of the main emission lines of iron, magnesium and sodium control the color of meteors, which emission (colour) predominates is related to the meteor's composition and velocity; fast meteors (>30 km per second) ionize magnesium and are green, moderate velocity meteors (30-15km per second) ionize iron and are blue, and slow moving meteors (<15km per second) ionize sodium and are yellow-orange.
0 replies
18h44m
All of these interesting space phenomena on film in the past 10 years and the most recent video of “alien activity” I saw came out in like 2005. I don’t think they’re here.
Is the rule of threes now fulfilled, or is there still more to come? I’m personally hoping for a daylight-visible supernova before the end of 2024.
I’ll mention that the population in my region appears to have stayed primed to watch astronomical phenomena since the eclipse. The beach I usually go to for viewing was busier the night of the auroras than some beach days in the summer.
> Is the rule of threes now fulfilled, or is there still more to come?
Usually it means a change in the ruling dynasty of China. Or so they say...
Does this mean we're looking at a restoration of the dynastic system?
It was already restored when Xi made himself premier for life. We’re in the Xi dynasty, but it looks like he chose an inauspicious time and the dynasty might not last long.
That's not what a dynasty means at all. The bare minimum would be for Xi's son to inherit the position.
I don't think there's ever been a Chinese dynasty named after its ruling family. Nothing could be more gauche.
Emperors can be named after the dynasty, but that only happens after they're dead, and doesn't replace their personal name.
Maybe Iran this time?
I'm glad I'm not the only one who thinks about daylight-visible supernovas. Come on, Antares or Betelgeuse!
Not a daylight-visible supernova, but a naked-eye night-visible nova is expected to happen later this year: https://www.space.com/new-star-night-sky-nova-explosion-rare
Next year +/-10k years ;)
You might want to read Liu Cixin's "The Supernova Era"... It might change your mind about wanting to see one in broad daylight!