Topic: Meteors and Canada

[Tus-XC]

http://www.foxnews.com/printer_friendly_story/0,3566,456505,00.html

SASKATOON, Saskatchewan —

Scientists say they hope to find remnants of a meteor that brilliantly lit up the sky before falling to earth in western Canada.

University of Calgary planetary scientist Alan Hildebrand called it one of the largest meteors visible in the country in the last decade.

Widely broadcast video images showed what appeared to be a speeding fireball Thursday night over Saskatoon that became larger and brighter before disappearing as it neared the ground.

Hildebrand said Friday that he received about 300 email reports from witnesses.

"It would be something like a billion-watt light bulb," said Hildebrand, who also co-ordinates meteor sightings with the Canadian Space Agency.

Tammy Evans was wakened by her 10-year-old daughter who ran into the bedroom.

"She said there was a flash of light, the house shook twice and it sounded like dinosaurs were walking," Evans said.

Hildebrand suspects it broke up into pieces and he plans to investigate around Macklin, Saskatchewan near the Alberta border.

Rick Huziak, an amateur astronomer in Saskatoon, helped operate a camera on top of the University of Saskatchewan physics building that captured video of the meteor.

"It was quite spectacular. The ground lights up all over the place," he said.

Martin Beech, an associate professor of astronomy at the University of Regina, said meteorites are valuable to learning about the history of the solar system.

"Picking up a meteorite is almost equivalent to doing a space exploration mission between Mars and Jupiter," he said.

[Fedman NCC-3758]

I saw the video taken from a police cruiser.    My guess would be this meteor was roughly the size of a basketball.

Had the angle of it's trajectory led to a direct impact with the Earth, the result would have been enormous.

Alberta dodged a huge bullet.

Literally.


http://www.breitbart.tv/?p=226813

[The Postman]

http://www.spaceweather.com/archive.php?month=11&day=21&year=2008&view=view
SASKATCHEWAN FIREBALL: A brilliant green fireball startled onlookers across western Canada on Nov. 20th (5:30 pm MST) when it split the evening sky and fragmented during a series of thunderous explosions. "The sky was lit up almost like daytime for 3 or 4 seconds," reports Gordon Blomgren of Alberta. Murray McDonnell of northwestern Saskatchewan says "my wife and I saw a brilliant flash of blue white light, like lightning. About one minute later a long rumbling sound shook the house."

Andy Bartlett video-recorded the event from a 10th-floor apartment in Edmonton, Alberta:




Click to play the video
http://www.spaceweather.com/swpod2008/21nov08/bartlett2.avi?


"The brilliant fireball appeared to be closer than the airplane in the upper right corner of this video," says Bartlett. "I made the movie using a Canon A510."

The fireball was almost certainly a small asteroid disintegrating in Earth's atmosphere. A space rock measuring a few to ten meters wide moving at typical local-asteroid velocities would account for the fireball's speed and brightness. Reentry of manmade space junk has now been ruled out. Fragments of the impactor may have reached the ground; if so, they remain undiscovered and/or unreported.

VIDEO UPDATE: A spectacular video of the fireball was recorded by the dashboard camera of a police car on patrol in Edmonton,
http://canwest.a.mms.mavenapps.net/mms/rt/1/site/canwest-globalnational-pub01-live/current/launch.html?maven_playerId=onlyonline&maven_referralObject=3211530 
 

[Tus-XC]

http://www.foxnews.com/printer_friendly_story/0,3566,458984,00.html

Scientists said Friday they had found remains of a meteor that illuminated the sky before falling to earth in western Canada earlier this month.

University of Calgary scientist Alan Hildebrand and graduate student Ellen Milley found several meteor fragments near the Battle River along the rural Alberta-Saskatchewan border, near the city of Lloydminster late Thursday.

They said there could be thousands of meteorite pieces strewn over a 7-square-mile area of mostly flat, barren land, with few inhabitants.

Residents in Manitoba, Saskatchewan and Alberta have been buzzing about the huge fireball that lit up the night sky over the three provinces on Nov. 20. Witnesses reported hearing sonic boom rumblings and said the fiery flash was as bright as the sun.

Hildebrand, who also coordinates meteor sightings with the Canadian Space Agency, estimated the meteor could have been seen from as far as 434 miles away, into the northern United States.

Widely broadcast video images of the meteor showed what appeared to be a speeding fireball that became larger and brighter before disappearing as it neared the ground.

The meteor contained about one-tenth of a kiloton of energy when it entered the earth's atmosphere, roughly the equivalent of 100 tons of the chemical explosive TNT.

"It would be something like a billion-watt light bulb," said Hildebrand.

The meteor has captured the imagination of sky watchers around the world.

Robert Haag, a space rock collector from Arizona, offered up to $9,700 for the first one-kilogram chunk of the meteor that is found.