Meteors Incoming!

The last few days I've been monitoring meteor detection sites and tonight the incoming action has been off the charts!  Between the two sites, I'm mentioning here you can track the activity at Meteorscan from Europe, Lockyer Technology Centre, a volunteer group with facilities at the Norman Lockyer Observatory (NLO) in England.

The next site is Live meteor echoes at LIVEMETEORS, located in DC Metropolitan area and is currently pointing the Yagi antenna at a TV tower in Canada.  Site offers both visual and sound.

What's cool about this is the two sites opened on your PC (long live the PC) you have a visual open on one tab and monitoring echo sound a ping audio in the other tab coming over the speakers!  With tonight's show, I felt a bunker would be a good investment!  At one point there were over 120 per hour between the two sites, I had to keep track of the pings and the clock from the echo site but at Meteorscan they list the detections per hour.  So with both sites running, you have a look over Europe and Northern America, that's a good chunk of sky.  These two sites will even detect space junk that's reentering the atmosphere. 

No meteor showers were predicted tonight!  The next meteor event Lyrid, isn't scheduled until April 22nd.  Heads up and be safe everyone, these two meteor sites are featured in the Science Tab, here at Globe Backyard, just click on the photos there.

Update 2/16/17

Once again we're picking up detection of one meteor per minute from Europe and North America.  Usually viewing these sites its like watching paint dry!

Incoming!

Make an explosive entry into Earth’s atmosphere in this stereoscopic 360° video of the Chelyabinsk meteor’s arrival in February 2013, an immersive scene from the new planetarium show, “Incoming!”

For decades, the team has detected explosive airbursts caused by meteors entering Earth’s atmosphere.  The most powerful one took place on February 15, 2013, over the Russian city Chelyabinsk, and we have reconstructed that event using observational data.  A stony meteor almost 20 meters in diameter (slightly smaller than Morrison Planetarium) exploded in the upper atmosphere, leaving behind a trail of dust and debris that stretched more than a hundred kilometers. The explosion also created a burst of light brighter than the Sun and a shockwave that shattered windows and damaged buildings in places we highlight in the video.  Nearly 1,500 people sought medical attention in the days after the blast, mostly for injuries from shattered glass.  At the end of the video, they compare the size of the affected region to the area of metropolitan New York City, the San Francisco Bay Area, and greater Tokyo.

California Academy of Sciences