Wow, and then you add in the ones in the US that occurred recently.  I guess we have to wait a few weeks to see if this was some sort of statistical spike.

More on the fireball in Japan.

News reports on fireballs are certainly on the rise in recent years.  The reason is of course that there are many more high quality surveillance cameras.  These videos are effective click-baits.

I wonder what our chances are at developing an effective asteroid defense strategy within, say, the next 50 years?  That's a trivial amount of time in terms of the frequency of these objects that actually threaten us (ELE) but it would be useful to know.

More good stuff.  This was a northern Taurid, an unusually bright meteor belowing to this swarm.  The entry mass was probably several 10's of kilos.  The Taurids and comet Encke probably belong to an older comet which disintegrated.  The cameras in Skibotn are new and I calibrated them last night.  So this was a really good start.  This fireball is a real beauty.  It fully disintegrated 60 km above ground.  It came in at a shallow angle.  More data here.

a day time meteor!  I wonder how bright that was?  It has a crazy 3D effect for a second I thought it was coming right at the camera!  What causes it to become really bright for a few seconds and then get dimmer again?

A-L-E-X wrote:

Source of the post a day time meteor!  I wonder how bright that was?

Roughly full moon brightness.  Only sort of daytime.  It's polar night and the sun was 6 - 7 degrees below the horizon, so it was twilight.  Only Mars and a few bright stars were visible (if you know where to look).  The shallow angle and the illumination of the trail by the setting sun at that altitude made it quite spectacular.

Japan collecting dust from asteroids:
https://www.ndtv.com/world-news/hayabus ... th-2334789

What's next? We will collect dust from anywhere? Why don't we do something for people here? On Earth

TommyJ wrote:

Source of the post What's next? We will collect dust from anywhere? Why don't we do something for people here? On Earth

I'm pretty sure the scientists who want to study these samples are on Earth.

I was looking for the northern lights tonight but couldn't see them but as luck would have it, I saw a bright meteor streaking below Sirius that was just about as bright as Sirius itself! Also as luck would have it, my camera was sitting on its tripod pointed right at the meteor.....but with a drained battery! =\

I think this was an early Geminid, and the shower is supposed to peak Saturday night (when it's supposed to be cloudy here) but I should have one more night to see the shower tomorrow night (and maybe Sunday night again?)...so I'm recharging the battery now.

Looks like the peak of the Geminids is actually Sunday night- Monday morning, so I'll have a few more chances!

A-L-E-X wrote:

Source of the post I was looking for the northern lights tonight but couldn't see them but as luck would have it, I saw a bright meteor streaking below Sirius that was just about as bright as Sirius itself

We had aurora and a meteor captured by one of our cameras last night,

Looks like the Geminids are going to be very good this year...cant wait for the peak.  Going to head over and see your camera now, cant wait to see the aurora display too!

The new Moon is very favourable for the Geminids this year.  They've already begun showing up in our cameras, but I haven't seen as much as a little patch of clear sky in almost two weeks now, and there is not a hint of that in the 10 day forecast.  Just clouds, fog, sleet and snow for another 10 days. Luckily, the cameras are spread over the country.

midtskogen wrote:

The new Moon is very favourable for the Geminids this year.  They've already begun showing up in our cameras, but I haven't seen as much as a little patch of clear sky in almost two weeks now, and there is not a hint of that in the 10 day forecast.  Just clouds, fog, sleet and snow for another 10 days. Luckily, the cameras are spread over the country.

it was clear here until 11 PM last night but I didn't see any, but did see them for a couple of nights before the peak.