Large meteor explodes over russia!

A large meteor exploded over Russia this morning. The concussion from it's sonic boom blew out windows and walls and injured hundreds of people with shattered glass and debris.

This event demonstrates one of the dangers of some meteor events. The shockwave.
If a meteor is large enough it can create a sonic boom or pressure wave that can cause damage.

While the actual entry event of the meteor is shocking to see. The height that these events occur bring their own danger. People seeing or having heard about a meteor run out so see what they can see.
Meanwhile a shockwave from the event (if it's close enough to the ground) is moving outward from the detonation. At these heights. sound takes 1-2 minuets to reach the ground thus giving people time to run out and stand under windows and buildings/ The late arriving pressure wave from the meteor detonation hits and shatters glass and walls.
Here is a video of the meteor.


 Imagine yourself at work and someone runs in to says "a large meteor just went over!! IT left a huge cloud in the sky!"  Everyone runs out to look...



Boom! you're hit with flying glass!

Here's a video from inside an office when the shockwave hit



For more on this event visit
  http://lunarmeteoritehunters.blogspot.jp/2013/02/mbiq-detects-russia-fireball-meteor.html

Midnight Fireball!

A large fireball lit up the skies over Central Texas Last night around Midnight. (5:00 Universal Time)

Rainy Weather Meteor Radio Pings

Here in Central Texas it's been raining for the last few days and while I love the rain and we needed it badly. It really puts a damper on meteor observing! However it doesn't keep me from hearing meteors! In fact you can monitor meteors in this fashion even during the daytime!

I have my forward scatter setup which monitors a radio beam used by the U.S Govt to monitor space debris. This beam shoots up from Lake Kickapoo in north Texas near Archer City. If you live far enough away from it you cant pick the signal up directly but you can hear it as anything moves through the beam and reflects the signal back down to your antenna. In the Case of meteors this sounds like a "ping" or a "whoop" or even a long eerie whine or whistle in the case of larger meteors.

Here are a few small "pings" I picked up while it was cloudy.

Daytime Forward Scatter Detection

On Aug 31 at 19:16:32 GMT I had a large hit on my forward scatter receiver here in Hawley, Tx.

I've put together a video of the allsky camera video and the forward scatter audio synced to the same time frame. Daytime detections are hard to capture due to the glare of the sun and clouds in the image. I havent been able to see anything in the video yet but everyone is welcome to

 try! I'm hoping someone can see something in this video that I'm missing.

2012 Perseids

This year's Perseid meteor shower put on quite a show here in North Central Texas!

Composite Image: Allsky Camera Perseid Meteor shower Peak Night 8-12-2012

Video Compilation of all Meteor Detections : Perseid Meteor Shower Peak Night 8-12-2012

Large Fireball Over West Oklahoma and North Texas

This evening in the midst of Developing thunderstorms One of the flashes across the sky wasn't lightning! I large Bolide or Fireball came roaring to earth. Reports are coming in from Oklahoma Of sonic booms caused as the fireball streaked towards Earth.

Lyrid Meteorshower forwardscatter radar timelapse

I've taken the last three days of forwardscatter spectrographs and combined them into a timelapse video of the lyrid meteor shower. What you're seeing is a spectrograph display of the audio output from my forward scatter meteor radar. As meteors travel through the radar's beam they reflect a portion of the signal back causing a "ping" sound on the receiver. This audio if fed into software that generates a spectrogram image. These images are saved to disk 24/7. This is the result. It's about 17 mins long. 

As you watch you'll see lines that scroll up and down through the frame. These are aircraft passing through the radar beam. Meteors appear as small blips of color. Larger meteors appear as a bigger smear in the image. Large aircraft reflections also tend to have a larger fuzzy band above and below the main echo. Satellites passing through the beam appear as sharply diving diagonal lines.

Enjoy the show!