Latest news with #AMS
UPI
14 hours ago
- Science
- UPI
July offers rare meteor shower combo, stunning views of the Milky Way
In this 30 second exposure, a meteor streaks across the sky during the annual Perseid meteor shower (2021) as seen in Spruce Knob, W.V. During summer, the nighttime side of Earth faces the galactic core, making the Milky Way more vivid than at any other time of year. File NASA Photo by Bill Ingalls | License Photo July will kick off with colorful flashes of light during Independence Day celebrations across the United States, but the cosmos has a light show of its own in store for stargazers later in the month, along with a few other celestial sights. From a weather-inspired full moon to a pair of meteor showers, here are the top astronomy events to mark on your calendar: Thunder Moon: July 10 The first full moon of astronomical summer will rise on Thursday, July 10. Known as the Thunder Moon, this lunar event will be visible across much of the world. The name "Thunder Moon" comes from the frequent thunderstorms that rumble across North America in July. It's also called the Buck Moon, as deer antlers are growing rapidly ahead of the autumn rut. Look for the full moon rising in the southeastern sky around nightfall. It will shine brightly all night before setting in the southwest near daybreak. Milky Way: Late July July has some of the shortest nights of the entire year north of the equator, but while this can make for poor stargazing conditions, skywatchers look forward to the summer nights to see amazing views of the Milky Way. During summer, the nighttime side of Earth faces the galactic core, making the Milky Way more vivid than at any other time of year. Plan to stargaze around the new moon on July 24 and head to a dark location far from city lights, as light pollution can easily wash out the galaxy's faint glow. July 29-30: 2 meteor showers in 1 night An astronomical doubleheader will light up the sky on the night of Tuesday, July 29, into the early morning of Wednesday, July 30, as two meteor showers peak at the same time: the Southern Delta Aquariids and Alpha Capricornids, according to the American Meteor Society (AMS). The two will combine for 20-30 meteors per hour, including the chance for some incredibly bright meteors known as fireballs. While July 29-30 is expected to be the best night, the AMS says both showers will be active for around a week, making any night during the end of July and start of August a good time to step outside and look for shooting stars.
Yahoo
a day ago
- Science
- Yahoo
Meteor Fragments Hit the Southeast U.S. Here's What to Know
Aiken, South Carolina - June 26, 2025 Credit - Bryan Jennings Updyke The inner solar system is a lot calmer than it was 4 billion years ago, during what's known as the heavy bombardment period. Over the course of that violent stretch, which lasted about 500 million years, Mercury, Venus, Earth, Mars, and the moon were regularly pounded by asteroids, meteors, and other cosmic ordnance, many of the objects as big as the six-mile-wide rock that wiped out the dinosaurs. Things have gotten a lot quieter since then, but that's not to say everything has gone entirely still. Earth still lives inside a shooting gallery, with thousands of objects—totaling about 48.5 tons per year, according to NASA—entering the atmosphere. Yesterday, one of those space boulders exploded in the skies over Alabama, Tennessee, Georgia, North Carolina, and South Carolina at 11:51 a.m EDT, according to the National Weather Service (NWS). The brilliant flash, which was accompanied by a sonic boom that many mistook for an earthquake, resulted in hundreds of calls and posts to the American Meteor Society (AMS), NASA's recommended organization for reporting meteoric fireballs. In Henry County, Ga., one house was struck by debris that broke through the roof and landed inside the residence. There were no reported injuries. 'The Henry County Emergency Management Agency [EMA] passed along to us that a citizen reported that a 'rock' fell through their ceiling around the time of the reports of the 'earthquake,'' the NWS said in a Facebook post. 'Henry County EMA also reported that the object broke through the roof, then the ceiling, before cracking the laminate on the floor and stopping.' The possibility of something tumbling from the skies this week was not entirely unexpected. Yesterday's event occurred during the ongoing Bootid meteor shower, which happens once every 6.37 years, when Earth passes through the remnants of the tail of Comet 7P/Pons-Winnecke. The Bootid is just one of dozens of known showers the AMS lists on its website. Many of those events produce only a fine mist of meteor fragments, visible only at night in dark conditions away from city lights, and commonly called shooting stars. Yesterday's rock was of a decidedly greater caliber, one big enough to be classified as a bolide, a meteor with enough mass to cause a bright flash and a sonic boom as it slams into the atmosphere, but too small for most of it to reach the ground without being incinerated first. To qualify as a bolide, an incoming meteor must reach the brightness of Venus, which, like the moon, is often visible in the daytime sky. A few dozen bolides occur each year, according to NASA. The most explosive recent bolide event occurred over Chelyabinsk, Russia, on Feb. 15, 2013, when an object estimated to have measured about 65 ft., detonated in the atmosphere, injuring nearly 1,500 people and damaging 7,200 buildings. Modern history's biggest bolide also struck Russia, in the celebrated Tunguska event of 1908, when a 350-ft. meteor flattened 830 sq. mi. of forest land. Lesser meteoric fireworks are much, much more common than bolides. According to the AMS, several thousand small fireballs erupt in the atmosphere every day, but 'the vast majority of these,' the organization says, 'occur over the oceans and uninhabited regions, and a good many are masked by daylight.' Notwithstanding the Henry County house that got hit by the recent bolide, the odds of any one spot—or any one person—being struck by space debris are vanishingly small. Barely 5% of objects that enter the atmosphere survive the fires of entry and reach the surface. Roughly 70% of that surface is ocean and much of the rest is desert or other sparsely inhabited terrain. Finally, most of the meteorites that do strike the planet are, by the time of impact, micrometeorites—too small to do any damage at all. In all of known human history, in fact, there is only one person who is believed to have been killed by a meteorite—an Indian bus driver who was struck while walking on the campus of an engineering college in the state of Tamil Nadu on Feb. 6, 2016. That effectively puts your odds of meeting the same fate as one in the total number of human beings who have walked the Earth since the dawn of homo sapiens roughly 300,000 years ago. That's not to say there haven't been close calls. On May 1, 1860, a horse was killed by a meteorite strike in Concord, Ohio. In 1954, an Alabama woman—whose picture was published and story was told in the Dec. 13, 1954 issue of LIFE magazine—sustained severe bruising to her hand and side when a 10 lb. meteorite crashed through her roof while she lay napping on her sofa. Put yesterday's event in the category of lightning strikes or shark bites—theoretically possible, highly improbable, one more thing you can take off your worry list. Write to Jeffrey Kluger at
Time Magazine
a day ago
- Science
- Time Magazine
Meteor Fragments Hit the Southeast U.S. Here's What to Know
The inner solar system is a lot calmer than it was 4 billion years ago, during what's known as the heavy bombardment period. Over the course of that violent stretch, which lasted about 500 million years, Mercury, Venus, Earth, Mars, and the moon were regularly pounded by asteroids, meteors, and other cosmic ordnance, many of the objects as big as the six-mile-wide rock that wiped out the dinosaurs. Things have gotten a lot quieter since then, but that's not to say everything has gone entirely still. Earth still lives inside a shooting gallery, with thousands of objects—totaling about 48.5 tons per year, according to NASA—entering the atmosphere. Yesterday, one of those space boulders exploded in the skies over Alabama, Tennessee, Georgia, North Carolina, and South Carolina at 11:51 a.m EDT, according to the National Weather Service (NWS). The brilliant flash, which was accompanied by a sonic boom that many mistook for an earthquake, resulted in hundreds of calls and posts to the American Meteor Society (AMS), NASA's recommended organization for reporting meteoric fireballs. In Henry County, Ga., one house was struck by debris that broke through the roof and landed inside the residence. There were no reported injuries. 'The Henry County Emergency Management Agency [EMA] passed along to us that a citizen reported that a 'rock' fell through their ceiling around the time of the reports of the 'earthquake,'' the NWS said in a Facebook post. 'Henry County EMA also reported that the object broke through the roof, then the ceiling, before cracking the laminate on the floor and stopping.' The possibility of something tumbling from the skies this week was not entirely unexpected. Yesterday's event occurred during the ongoing Bootid meteor shower, which happens once every 6.37 years, when Earth passes through the remnants of the tail of Comet 7P/Pons-Winnecke. The Bootid is just one of dozens of known showers the AMS lists on its website. Many of those events produce only a fine mist of meteor fragments, visible only at night in dark conditions away from city lights, and commonly called shooting stars. Yesterday's rock was of a decidedly greater caliber, one big enough to be classified as a bolide, a meteor with enough mass to cause a bright flash and a sonic boom as it slams into the atmosphere, but too small for most of it to reach the ground without being incinerated first. To qualify as a bolide, an incoming meteor must reach the brightness of Venus, which, like the moon, is often visible in the daytime sky. A few dozen bolides occur each year, according to NASA. The most explosive recent bolide event occurred over Chelyabinsk, Russia, on Feb. 15, 2013, when an object estimated to have measured about 65 ft., detonated in the atmosphere, injuring nearly 1,500 people and damaging 7,200 buildings. Modern history's biggest bolide also struck Russia, in the celebrated Tunguska event of 1908, when a 350-ft. meteor flattened 830 sq. mi. of forest land. Lesser meteoric fireworks are much, much more common than bolides. According to the AMS, several thousand small fireballs erupt in the atmosphere every day, but 'the vast majority of these,' the organization says, 'occur over the oceans and uninhabited regions, and a good many are masked by daylight.' Notwithstanding the Henry County house that got hit by the recent bolide, the odds of any one spot—or any one person—being struck by space debris are vanishingly small. Barely 5% of objects that enter the atmosphere survive the fires of entry and reach the surface. Roughly 70% of that surface is ocean and much of the rest is desert or other sparsely inhabited terrain. Finally, most of the meteorites that do strike the planet are, by the time of impact, micrometeorites—too small to do any damage at all. In all of known human history, in fact, there is only one person who is believed to have been killed by a meteorite—an Indian bus driver who was struck while walking on the campus of an engineering college in the state of Tamil Nadu on Feb. 6, 2016. That effectively puts your odds of meeting the same fate as one in the total number of human beings who have walked the Earth since the dawn of homo sapiens roughly 300,000 years ago. That's not to say there haven't been close calls. On May 1, 1860, a horse was killed by a meteorite strike in Concord, Ohio. In 1954, an Alabama woman—whose picture was published and story was told in the Dec. 13, 1954 issue of LIFE magazine—sustained severe bruising to her hand and side when a 10 lb. meteorite crashed through her roof while she lay napping on her sofa. Put yesterday's event in the category of lightning strikes or shark bites—theoretically possible, highly improbable, one more thing you can take off your worry list.
Yahoo
a day ago
- Science
- Yahoo
Video shows fireball meteor explode in broad daylight. How rare is this cosmic phenomenon?
People across Georgia on Thursday witnessed an unusual flash of light streaking through the bright blue sky, followed by a thunderous boom that rattled windows. But there were no thunderstorms in the area. The culprit? An exceptionally bright meteor called a fireball. Videos from dashcams and security cameras shared online caught the event, which occurred around 12:24 p.m. EDT on June 26. It was also observed by a lightning detector on the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) GOES-East satellite, as confirmed by posts on X by NOAA and the NWS Charleston. The event generated more than 200 reports to the American Meteor Society (AMS), the organization in charge of monitoring meteoric phenomena, including a possible meteorite strike on a home in Georgia. But what exactly is a fireball? Here's why it's so unusual to see one in the light of day. Every day, space rocks called meteoroids bombard the Earth. These rocks come from comets, asteroids, or even the moon or other planets and range in size from a speck of dust (most common) to a small asteroid (very rare). NASA estimates some 48.5 tons of meteoritic material enters the atmosphere daily. (What's the difference between an asteroid and a comet?) However, that's where the fates of these rocks can diverge. If a meteoroid enters the atmosphere and burns up, it's called a meteor. But if a meteor reaches the surface of Earth, it becomes a meteorite. Fireballs are a less common type of meteor—they earn that designation when they appear brighter than Venus in the night sky. While thousands of fireballs fall on the Earth each day, most happen over the ocean or uninhabited areas, or they occur during daylight hours and are drowned out by daylight. That's what makes the Georgia event much rarer. "Daytime fireballs are rarer to see because the sun outshines the meteor in most cases. Only the largest objects will be seen, and there are fewer of these," says Hankey. According to Hankey, AMS receives reports of daytime fireballs between five and 10 times per year. Given their larger size, fireballs often don't burn up completely as they travel through the atmosphere, and their debris will strike the Earth as meteorites. Those meteorites generally cannot be seen for the last nine to 12 miles of their descent—what AWS calls their 'dark flight' period—as they lose their light as they decelerate. ('Alien' minerals never found on Earth identified in meteorite.) As for the window-rattling boom accompanying a fireball, that's likely a sonic boom. Meteors enter the atmosphere at speeds ranging from 20,000 to 160,000 miles per hour. When an object surpasses the speed of sound—around 760 miles an hour at sea level—it builds up so much pressure that this releases a large sound wave as a 'sharp release of pressure.' If you think you've witnessed a fireball, you can submit a report to AMS to help them confirm the event. "We can usually validate a fireball sighting with five or more eyewitness reports. The data submitted can be mathematically joined, and we can produce a meteor track from the observations," Hankey says. With 20 or more reports, the team can determine a reasonably accurate track, while videos of a fireball provide even better information. "These can be used to refine the track and gauge the velocity and magnitude," says Hankey. This can help determine whether not the meteor belongs to a meteor shower, or narrow down the area where a meteorite might have fallen.
National Geographic
a day ago
- Science
- National Geographic
Video shows fireball meteor explode in broad daylight. How rare is this cosmic phenomenon?
People across Georgia on Thursday witnessed an unusual flash of light streaking through the bright blue sky, followed by a thunderous boom that rattled windows. But there were no thunderstorms in the area. The culprit? An exceptionally bright meteor called a fireball. Videos from dashcams and security cameras shared online caught the event, which occurred around 12:24 p.m. EDT on June 26. It was also observed by a lightning detector on the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) GOES-East satellite, as confirmed by posts on X by NOAA and the NWS Charleston . The event generated more than 200 reports to the American Meteor Society (AMS), the organization in charge of monitoring meteoric phenomena, including a possible meteorite strike on a home in Georgia. But what exactly is a fireball? Here's why it's so unusual to see one in the light of day. What is a fireball—and how rare are they really? Every day, space rocks called meteoroids bombard the Earth. These rocks come from comets, asteroids, or even the moon or other planets and range in size from a speck of dust (most common) to a small asteroid (very rare). NASA estimates some 48.5 tons of meteoritic material enters the atmosphere daily. (What's the difference between an asteroid and a comet?) However, that's where the fates of these rocks can diverge. If a meteoroid enters the atmosphere and burns up, it's called a meteor. But if a meteor reaches the surface of Earth, it becomes a meteorite. Fireballs are a less common type of meteor—they earn that designation when they appear brighter than Venus in the night sky. While thousands of fireballs fall on the Earth each day, most happen over the ocean or uninhabited areas, or they occur during daylight hours and are drowned out by daylight. That's what makes the Georgia event much rarer. "Daytime fireballs are rarer to see because the sun outshines the meteor in most cases. Only the largest objects will be seen, and there are fewer of these," says Hankey. According to Hankey, AMS receives reports of daytime fireballs between five and 10 times per year. How fireballs become meteorites and cause sonic booms Given their larger size, fireballs often don't burn up completely as they travel through the atmosphere, and their debris will strike the Earth as meteorites. Those meteorites generally cannot be seen for the last nine to 12 miles of their descent—what AWS calls their 'dark flight ' period—as they lose their light as they decelerate. ('Alien' minerals never found on Earth identified in meteorite.) As for the window-rattling boom accompanying a fireball, that's likely a sonic boom . Meteors enter the atmosphere at speeds ranging from 20,000 to 160,000 miles per hour. When an object surpasses the speed of sound—around 760 miles an hour at sea level—it builds up so much pressure that this releases a large sound wave as a ' sharp release of pressure .' What to do if you see a fireball If you think you've witnessed a fireball, you can submit a report to AMS to help them confirm the event. "We can usually validate a fireball sighting with five or more eyewitness reports. The data submitted can be mathematically joined, and we can produce a meteor track from the observations," Hankey says. With 20 or more reports, the team can determine a reasonably accurate track, while videos of a fireball provide even better information. "These can be used to refine the track and gauge the velocity and magnitude," says Hankey. This can help determine whether not the meteor belongs to a meteor shower, or narrow down the area where a meteorite might have fallen. Magazine for all ages starting at $25/year
