Earth Day in 2012 coincided with the Lyrid maximum. Many observers were pleasantly surprised thanks in part to the lack of a bright moon.! According to the International Meteor Organization, the Lyrid meteor shower peaked on April 22nd around 0000 UTC with a
Each year the Earth passes through trail of Comet Thatcher (C/1861 G1) as it makes a 415-year highly elliptical journey around the Sun and have been observed for more than 2,600 years. The meteors from comet Thatcher occur when comet dust slams into Earth’s
Earth is approaching the debris field of ancient Comet Thatcher, source of the annual Lyrid meteor shower. Every year in late April Earth passes through the dusty tail of Comet Thatcher (C/1861 G1), and the encounter causes a meteor shower – the Lyrids. This year the
Last week SOHO’s SWAN instrument discovered a bright comet on its way to dive into Sun. It has been named COMET SWAN and it is one of the brightest Kreutz-group comets ever observed by SOHO beside Comet Lovejoy from December last year. Sungrazing Comet SWAN dove
Another bright comet is diving into the sun. It was discovered just last week by SOHO’s SWAN instrument, so it has been named “Comet SWAN.” The comet’s death plunge ( or “swan dive”) comes just as the sun has unleashed a strong flare and radiation storm around
In the middle of the night on February 13th, something disturbed the animal population of rural Portal, Georgia. Cows started mooing anxiously and local dogs howled at the sky. The cause of the commotion was a rock from space.”At 1:43 AM Eastern, I witnessed an
Manson residents are struggling to locate a site for the town’s well due to the geological impact of the meteorite. The remains of a 2.4 km-wide (1.5 mile), 10 billion-ton meteorite are causing problems for a Manson, small Iowa town in US, after it crashed onto the
Scientists have identified what appear to be terrestrial versions of tranquillityite in billion-year-old rocksin Western Australia. Tranquillityite is a mineral consisting of iron, zirconium, yttrium, titanium, silicon and oxygen. It is named after the moon’s Sea of
Earth is about to pass through a stream of debris from 2003 EH1, a comet fragment that produces the annual Quadrantid meteor shower. Forecasters expect the shower to peak around 07:20 UT (02:20 am EST) on Wednesday morning, January 4th. At maximum, as many as 100
The first meteor shower this year — Quadrantid meteor shower — will occur at around 2 a.m. EST (0700 GMT) on Jan. 4. While many meteor displays in 2011 were washed out by a bright moon, the Quadrantid meteor shower is expected to put on a spectacular light
