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Residents of the Ozarks Lake area report seeing a large fireball crossing the horizon around 19:20. Friday night.
Media across Missouri and neighboring states, including Alabama, reported similar sightings Friday night, although NASA has not released any information on the meteor show's event. fireball.
Observers reported what looked like a bright flash of light in the night sky, and while some thought at first that it was a lightning bolt, others say that they immediately knew that it was lightning. 39, was something more special. At the present time, no debris has reached the ground. The taurid meteor shower occurs every year at this time of the year and culminates in mid-November.
EarthSky.org, encourages celestial viewing fans to watch tonight where they will be able to see up to five meteors per hour. The American Meteor Society said that Taurid meteor shower rains are so nice because of the frequency with which meteors are visible.
According to EarthSky.org, South Taurid's long-lasting meteor shower is active from late September to late November. This week is particularly nice with regard to meteors, with probably a higher than average rate of meteors. The Taurides culminate around November 12th.
Meteor Activity Outlook November 3 to 9, 2018
According to the meteorological activity forecasts of the American Meteor Society from Saturday, November 3 to Friday, November 9, the moon will reach its new phase on Wednesday, November 7th. At that time, the moon will be near the sun and will be invisible. the night. This weekend (November 3-4), the waning crescent will rise early in the morning, but will not pose any problem to view the meteors as long as you keep it out of your field of vision.
The main problem for viewers in the Lake District could be a cloudy sky: the National Weather Service calls for a generally cloudy or rainy weather all night from Monday to Friday.
According to NASA.com, big fireball meteors are common in the fall.
From the NASA publication, "Meteors & Meteorites"
Shooting stars, or meteors, are fragments of interplanetary material falling into the earth 's atmosphere and heated to incandescence by friction. These objects are called meteoroids because they break into space and become meteors during the few seconds they cross into the sky and create luminous trails.
Scientists estimate that about 48.5 tonnes (44 tonnes or 44,000 kg) of meteorites fall on Earth each day. Several meteors per hour can usually be seen each night. Sometimes the number increases dramatically – these events are called meteor showers.
Some occur every year or at regular intervals when the Earth crosses the trail of dusty debris left by a comet. Meteor showers usually have the name of a star or constellation near where the meteors appear in the sky. The most famous are perhaps the Perseids, which culminate every year around August 12th. Each Perseid meteor is a tiny piece of the Swift-Tuttle comet, which swings into the sun every 135 years. The other meteor showers and their associated comets are Leonids (Tempel-Tuttle), Aquarids and Orionids (Halley) and Taurids (Encke). Most comet dust in meteor showers burns in the atmosphere before reaching the ground; some of the dust is captured by high altitude aircraft and analyzed by NASA laboratories.
Meteorites
Pieces of rock and metal from asteroids and other planetary bodies that survive their journey into the atmosphere and fall to the ground are called meteorites. Most meteorites found on Earth are the size of a pebble, but some are larger than a building. The beginnings of the Earth have experienced many significant impacts of meteorites that have caused considerable destruction.
One of the most intact impact craters is the Barringer Arizona meteorite crater, about 1 kilometer in diameter, formed by the impact of an iron piece -nickel metal about 50 meters (164 feet) in diameter. It is only 50,000 years old and is so well preserved that it has been used to study impact processes. Since this feature was recognized as an impact crater in the 1920s, about 170 impact craters have been identified on Earth.
Well-documented accounts of injury or death caused by meteorites are rare. In the first known case of an extraterrestrial object that injured a human being in the United States, Ann Hodges, of Sylacauga, Alabama, was seriously injured by an 8-pound (3.6 kilogram) stony meteorite that crashed under his roof in November 1954.
Meteorites may look like terrestrial rocks, but their exterior is usually burned. This melting crust forms when the meteorite is melted by friction as it passes through the atmosphere. There are three main types of meteorites: "irons", "stones" and stony irons. Although the majority of meteorites that fall on Earth are stony, many of the meteorites found long after their fall are irons – these heavy objects are easier to distinguish from land rocks than stony meteorites. Meteorites also fall on other bodies of the solar system. Mars Exploration Rover Opportunity has discovered the first meteorite of any type on any other planet. In 2005, she discovered an iron-nickel meteorite the size of a basketball, then in 2009, a much larger and heavier meteorite, heavier and heavier. Region. In total, Opportunity discovered six meteorites during his trips to Mars.
Where to find meteorites
More than 50,000 meteorites have been found on Earth. 99.8% of them come from asteroids. Asteroids and meteorites that fall to Earth are not pieces of a planet that has broken down, but are the various original materials from which planets were formed. The remaining 0.2% of meteorites are split roughly equally between the Mars and Moon meteorites. More than 60 known Martian meteorites have been dynamited off Mars by meteoroid impacts. All are igneous rocks crystallized in magma. The rocks are very similar to the rocks of the Earth with distinctive compositions that indicate a Martian origin. The approximately 80 lunar meteorites are similar in mineralogy and composition to the lunar rocks of the Apollo mission, but sufficiently distinct to show that they came from other parts of the moon. Studies on lunar and Martian meteorites complete studies on Apollo Moon rocks and robotic exploration of Mars.
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sources:
Watch for the tauride fireballs! EarthSky.org, Bruce McClure tonight, November 2, 2018, amsmeteors.org, Robert Lunsford, November 2, 2018
Prospects for meteor activity from November 3 to 9, 2018, meteors and meteorites, solarsystem.nasa.gov, Lonnie Shekhtman, Elizabeth Landau and Celest Hoang, December 5, 2017
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