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Asteroids, meteors, and meteorites
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| HarbingerDawn | Date: Thursday, 03.04.2014, 23:34 | Message # 166 |
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| Quote anonymousgamer (  ) There's another object visible in the video. A few frames before the main one enters view, look at the bottom left of the video. You'll see another object.
That's the other skydiver. Its location and apparent size are consistent with his.
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| midtskogen | Date: Friday, 04.04.2014, 04:47 | Message # 167 |
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| Quote HarbingerDawn ( ) That's the other skydiver. Its location and apparent size are consistent with his.
Yes. I recall that our first reaction was, "wait, is there another rock there"? But as Harb says, its location and apparent size are consistent with the other skydiver. I'm 100% sure it is.
Quote neutronium76 ( ) Has anybody thought of the possibility the 2nd skydiver (the object's trajectory is different from the 2nd skydiver) another skydiver that is flying above (and out of the camera's FOV - hence invisible to the camera) intentionally throwing an object close to the 1st one?
Anders and Jon Vegar were the two last out of the airplane, and it can clearly be seen that Jon Vegar is too far away in the frames just before the rock appears. Here's the video from Jon Vegar's camera showing Anders, slowed down and stabilised. By the time he get's close, the rock is long gone. Unfortunatly, no meteorite can be detected in this video. Even Anders is barely visible at the moment it passes.
We're all periodically haunted by the idea that a meteorite is so unlikely that it has to be something else. Did he pack something into his chute? I really can't get the angle to match for that, and I don't see the expected accelleration. It also appears to be moving way too fast for that, though one could imagine becoming fooled by the perspective - what if it's really close, passing just centimetres away from the camera? But I'm not able to match that with what's visible in the backward facing camera. There is nothing else above him. Did something drop from another airplane invisible at 11000 metre cruising altitude? Well, what and how? It really looks like a rock, it's dark for sure, and it even looks like a meteorite, though I'm less convinced than Hans in the interview that it really has a bright face with visible chondrules. I mean, though that's consistent with what we see, shadows could also alone explain it.
If the object is at between 2.5 and 6.5 metres away, the speed is consistent with a meteorite travelling at terminal velocity. I also think that the objection with the greatest merit would be that it's possible to be fooled by the perspective - what if it's passing much closer to the lens. But what then could it be? Its phenomenal spin also suggests that it's not a huge object many metres away (then in should also appear in Jon Vegar's video).
The analysis is tricky, because we don't know precisely what speed and direction Anders is moving at (though it's clear from the curved trajectory of the object in the back facing camera that they move in different directions). The parachute was deployed seconds before and Anders still has a significant speed. Last summer I even equipped Anders with sensors bundled with a Raspberry Pi and a battery pack as a logger and he tried to replicate the jump. The sensor included a fast GPS, gyros, accellerometers, pressure sensor and everything, reporting at 25 Hz. It gave a lot of data, consistent with what we already assumed, but the data seem a bit inaccurate in the time resolution used. So that experiment didn't really give much new information.
So we've tried to approach this in a lot of ways. In less than a day NRK's video edits have got a million views. I really hope people analyse the videos and discover something new and challenge our assumptions.
For positioning we've used a number of techniques. We have a clearly visible anti-solar point, the sun, the horizon, clouds and their shadows. I don't think there's much doubt abot the position within an accuracy of 100 metres. And whatever it was, it reached ground and will still be there, unless it was a piece of black ice. The shape is clear enough to make it possible to recognise the same object on the ground unless it's shattered into dust.
I might go back soon to look some more once the snow clears in the next few weeks. Then there is a window of another few weeks when the conditions for searching are better, before low low vegetation cover up the ground. But for the most part the ground is covered with soft moss.
I think among all of us who've been involved in this share an attutude that even if we're mistaken this is still such a great story worth every second we've spent working with it. Anders is perhaps the greatest sceptic among us. But consider what he's doing. Wingsuit diving. Unknowns are not acceptable among these people. They do wild stuff, but are not cowboys. They have to be very calculating people. And such are their personalities as well.
I'm eager to see if crowdsourcing will solve this mystery.
NIL DIFFICILE VOLENTI
Edited by midtskogen - Friday, 04.04.2014, 07:36 |
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| HarbingerDawn | Date: Friday, 04.04.2014, 13:12 | Message # 168 |
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| I agree with your assessments; despite being spectacularly improbable, there doesn't seem to be any explanation that fits other than it being a meteorite.
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| midtskogen | Date: Friday, 04.04.2014, 14:24 | Message # 169 |
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| Some shots from "ground zero" giving an idea of the terrain (could be better, could be worse). Yes, that's Anders searching the river in the second shot. Photos by Morten Bilet.
NIL DIFFICILE VOLENTI
Edited by midtskogen - Friday, 04.04.2014, 14:32 |
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| HarbingerDawn | Date: Tuesday, 08.04.2014, 00:14 | Message # 170 |
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| midtskogen, you were mentioned in the latest Bad Astronomy blog 
http://www.slate.com/blogs....ck.html
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| midtskogen | Date: Sunday, 20.04.2014, 09:24 | Message # 171 |
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| Yes, we exchanged a couple e-mails since he mentioned my article anyway. I assured him that the videos are real and that the publication really is a crowdsourcing effort. I also mentioned that I believed that the discussion would mainly boil down to whether something was accidentally packed in the parachute or it was a meteorite, and he seemed to shift from originally dismissing the pebble in the parachute idea to favour it.
I, and nobody else who'd looked at this, had no idea how a pebble could teleport from the parachute to a place high above well after it was fully deployed, and even meteorites seem more plausible than teleportation. But if someone was able to explain everything, it was feeling that it would explain the teleportation.
Here's an update.
The details are unclear, but as I wrote, it doesn't really matter now. Crowdsourcing is interesting.
ADDENDUM: Plait the Bad Astronomer will post a follow-up shortly.
And here it is. He mistakes the second diver for debris, though, as many others have (not HarbingerDawn).
What's left for us to do is to make a plaque for ground zero: "On 17th June 2012 a small pebble fell here viewed by 6 millions on YouTube".Added (12.04.2014, 20:17)
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Update on Universe Today.
I just realised: We were closer to the answer than we knew when we did the calculations. Ironically, "calculus" is Latin for "pebble"... Added (20.04.2014, 12:24)
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Large fireball, probably near the border between Russia and Finland:
http://norskmeteornettverk.no/wordpress/?p=1515
NIL DIFFICILE VOLENTI
Edited by midtskogen - Tuesday, 08.04.2014, 20:31 |
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| Destructor1701 | Date: Sunday, 20.04.2014, 21:01 | Message # 172 |
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| Cool footage.
Russia must be feeling a little queasy.
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| midtskogen | Date: Monday, 21.04.2014, 13:37 | Message # 173 |
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| I'm not sure if this one went down in Russia, Finland or Norway. My gut feeling so far based on eyewitness reports is in Russia, not far east or southeast of the point where Norway, Finland and Russia meet. But I haven't got positions and bearings for the videos, which will offer much better accuracy. There are several reports of thundering or crackling sounds, and the event seems to have been recorded by several Norwegian seismic stations, all a very good sign for meteorites.
It wont be an easy area to seach for meteorites. It's is for the most part soft ground dominated by birch forest. But if fragments landed on a lake or open areas perhaps there is a window of a few weeks ahead with a slight chance of finding holes in the snow.Added (21.04.2014, 16:37)
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A Finnish preliminary analysis puts it in Russia, a few km from the Norwegian border: http://www.avaruus.fi/uutiset....la.html
It's seems very likely that meteorites were dropped.
NIL DIFFICILE VOLENTI
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| Chris94 | Date: Monday, 21.04.2014, 16:05 | Message # 174 |
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| I heard that the fireball flew across Northern Norway and crashlanded somehwere in Murmansk in Russia.
Too bad i didn't saw this one, it is very cloudy here in Bodø i live.
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| midtskogen | Date: Monday, 21.04.2014, 19:01 | Message # 175 |
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| How Apollo 12 Helped Solve the Skydiver Meteorite Mystery. It's actually pretty cool how this story turned out after we went public.
NIL DIFFICILE VOLENTI
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| HarbingerDawn | Date: Tuesday, 06.05.2014, 00:26 | Message # 176 |
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| Wonderful daylight bolide near Toronto
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| Betelgeuze | Date: Saturday, 17.05.2014, 18:44 | Message # 177 |
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| in 2035 or 2029 not all asteroids only Apophis asteroid hitting earth
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| DoctorOfSpace | Date: Saturday, 17.05.2014, 18:54 | Message # 178 |
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| Quote Betelgeuze ( ) only Apophis asteroid hitting earth
It isn't going to hit the Earth.
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| midtskogen | Date: Tuesday, 01.07.2014, 12:27 | Message # 179 |
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| Meteorites from the big bolide over the Kola peninsula 2014-04-18 have been found!
It was observed from Russia, Norway and Finland. Shortly after the incident I teamed up with the Finnish fireball group and by analysing the available information we found a likely debris field. An expedition was organised which recovered two fragments within the predicted debris field and with sizes expected in that part of the debris field!
Ursa press release
Ural Federal University news
Ditto (Russian)
Norwegian Meteor Network (Norwegian)
Tähdet ja avaruus (Finnish)
Universe Today
The meteorites have been classified as H5 chondrites.
EDIT: updated links.
NIL DIFFICILE VOLENTI
Edited by midtskogen - Tuesday, 01.07.2014, 22:00 |
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| spacer | Date: Tuesday, 12.08.2014, 01:24 | Message # 180 |
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| tonight i saw here 2-3 meteorites with full moon and lot of light from Nearby towns and houses
tomorrow will be more! 3:22 am now here so if you say that you will not see because the moon (i heard that from lot of people)
just get outside and look up! if i can to see with all the light and the moon! you will be also able too! 
"we began as wanderers, and we are wanderers still"
-carl sagan
-space engine photographer
Edited by spacer - Tuesday, 12.08.2014, 01:25 |
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