35944 But I think you've seen a few like these, haven't you, Mid?  With my own eyes, no.  I've seen my own shadow from a bright meteor, and I've seen fragmenting meteors, but I've not seen a truly  huge fireballs (this one had a peak magnitude of -18 or -19 (normalised for 100 km distance)), which ...

A-L-E-X wrote:

Qr Bbpost Was anyone actually in the area to see this? 

It was cloudy in the area, so all observations were a few 100 km away.

Here's one video we recorded from Norway 400 km away:


The meteor fades at a stunningly low 12 km altitude, where it had decellerated to about 2 km/s.

Not really expected, but the boulder, trench and the find location line up.  It took almost two weeks from the find of the initial impact location till the actual meteorite was found 70m away. It shows how tough iron meteorites are.  Just imagine 14 kg of iron hitting a boulder at 5-600 km/h.  It al...

A 14 kg iron meteorite found in Sweden  after the giant fireball on 7 November 2020.  This probably is the main fragment, which I've been working quite a bit on with others in Sweden and Finland calculating where it fell.  And it was found right where what we thought the most likely area was, withi...

Some very minor aurora visible from 69N in Norway last night.  I would say no more than one could expect during an average night.

Roy, then you have explained to yourself why no proper shadows yet.  First the simple shadows which were implemented early, later the details which require a very different approach. Halos are not permanent features like rings, on many planets surely quite rare, so a simplistic implementation might ...

35880 Halos could be added as a 2d png texture with small shining effect which is auto-enabled if the camera is 1. In atmosphere and 2. In a low temperature zone. That's all it takes. It's one day of work. That would be similar to implementing atmospheric rendering as changing the background colour...

Space Engine is already a success.  Any added feature or fix over the past ten year ago is a bonus. Unless you're one who hired a programmer to implement a certainly feature, you're not in a position complain about the progress. I requested ice halos, I don't know - almost 10 years ago? (my profile ...

Watched the video 5 times. The play of light and glare soothes and bewitches. And while the whole earth is covered in snow. Just like a picture from a fairy tale. Upload more of these videos - time-lapses are always very interesting to watch. Glad you liked it.  Here's another one that I made a few...

A-L-E-X wrote:

Qr Bbpost yikes that's heavy!  based on that description it sounds like an errant asteroid?

Asteroid core, one could say, since it's at least iron rich.  Probably an iron meteorite, but I guess that a pallasite can't be ruled out yet, since only fragments have been found.

Maybe Phobos sized, but not necessarily the same mass.  The spaceships would probably be mostly hollow.  But these objects would likely be observed well before they reached the Moon, of course.  Not just by radar, but also visually.  Unless they were buried on the far side of the Moon and just got a...

A-L-E-X wrote:

Qr Bbpost may have been a Leonid?

No.  Leonids don't produce 9 tonne iron chunks.  The Leonids are comet dust.  Also, wrong radiant and wrong speed.

A lot of people are watching the Moon at any time, but these objects were too small to be visible with the unaided eye.  Would other people somewhere in the world watch the Moon through a powerful enough telescope at that very time?  Very likely, but not as many as one could think.  Consider that th...

Somebody pointed me to this video today: uJOIIEQF_xs Actually a pretty well made video.  What gives it away, besides the extremely unlikely suggestion that spaceships several km in size fly over the Moon, is their speed.  They're moving way too fast to be in orbit around the Moon.  Apollo completed ...


A nice display of aurora from one of our meteor cameras last night.  True speed.