have failed to mention that a fireball is just a really bright meteor. Some articles describe them as "mysterious." Great.

We lucked out with Apollo 13.
It's gonna be pretty cool when the ISS comes down, as long as nobodies in it.

For example earlier this month:

They are spectacular. What may seem amazing is that about a hundred tons of meteorites hit the Earth every fucking single day. So It is not amazing that this is not a rare occurrence.

You just KNOW college guys are filling out reports from lighting farts.

Many think it's like a "shooting star" or a meteor that briefly streaks across the sky, but it isn't. The one I saw seemed quite low, slow, and huge. It moved past us as we drove and the tail changed colors and length from a dim white to yellow and finally bright green, before it disappeared beyond the tree line. It seemed to light up the sky around us.

If you ever see one, you'll know the difference between an awe inspiring fireball and a common meteor sighting. I can see how many may think it's a spaceship. I just happen to live near where these four appeared. I really wish I'd seen them.

Thanx for posting!

I noticed the bathroom window flickering orange while I was brushing my teeth. When I looked out I saw the fireball and it was pretty slow. I also noticed a thick trail of smoke behind it. And yes, it was pretty big - like a flaming basketball. I ran out of the bathroom and babbled something to my family along the lines of "look, look, there's something ..." They followed me out but by then it was gone.

In February 2013, a large asteroid ripped over the Chelyabinsk district of Russia, trailing cartoonish lines of smoke as it made its shallow entry, radiating so much light and heat that onlookers were left with reddened faces. Skin peel. When the asteroid exploded, 15 miles up, there was a terrible, prolonged bang – a noise that has rung on, in its way, ever since.


We now know that the explosion over Chelyabinsk occurred with a force equal to 500 kilotons of TNT, or a couple of dozen Nagasaki bombs


snip
a Nasa scientist called Bill Cooke said the likely frequency of such meteor strikes was being re-evaluated. That month, a trio of studies published in the journals Nature and Science suggested impacts of Chelyabinsk's magnitude were between three and 10 times more likely to happen than previously supposed.

snip
Chelyabinsk in 2013. Sudan in 2008. Impacts over Indonesia, Egypt, Australia, Argentina, California and Finland; four in the north Pacific and three in the south, two in the south Atlantic and one in the north, four in the Indian Ocean, one in the Med, one in the Arabian Sea, one in the Tasman and one off Antarctica. Call them what you like – "city‑killers" or "pesky ones" – there have been 26 meteorite strikes since the turn of the century that were large enough to cause a kiloton-class pop.

Lu believes we should be worried by that.

http://www.theguardian.com/science/2014/sep/20/asteroids-rock-hard-place-meteor-strike-russia-nicaragua

More precise targeting is my understanding . . . what a relief.

I buy it. Similar to the preliminary findings that massive Tsunami caused my an impact event may be much more frequent than previously thought.

We have built a a complex industrial society on about 200 years of quality geophysical data when it comes to these types of events.

A Chelyabinsk event at a lower altitude over Manhattan Island 500 years ago . . . a few villages wiped out. Today, a really really really big village wiped out.

A 2000 yr event really means a 1/2000 chance of an event happening any given year.

Was out observing and it was in my NNW sky.

Seemed to be of metallic composition.

and The Hong Kong Cavaliers?

"Nothing is ever what it seems, but everything is exactly what it is."
- B. Banzai

... rather than over Ukraine, Syria, Pakistan, Korea, ...

and I'll never forget it. I saw it in Idaho Falls, Idaho.

This clip of the meteor better represents my memory of the meteor than the pictures of it on NASA and elsewhere on the web.

I cutout an article in the paper the next day and still have the clipping.

I was in a park when I saw it. Everyone in the park watched and didn't say a word.

I'll never forget it.

A woman here reported that she thought she'd seen aliens bailing out (because several small fragments broke off).

My Astronomy Magazine later advised that the rock had skimmed Earth's atmosphere and re-entered space. That's what I call a close shave.

... I'll remember those things can cause a nasty sonic boom and move away from any windows.

I'd hate to be on a city street if that happened, surrounded by buildings covered in glass.

After seeing the tsunami videos I'll pay similar attention if I'm at the beach and the surf gets all weird.

What strikes me as odd is that people still support trigger-happy police forces, and still drive around in cars even after watching horrific videos of police shootings and car accidents.

We are remarkably resistant to responding to dangers we somehow accept as "normal."

There will probably be people here in the U.S.A. who will still be denying mankind has caused global warming even as they themselves become climate change refugees and are forced to leave their homes.

Or maybe it was some anti, Mid-Western's lobbing fire bombs into the cities.......kind of like the Palestinians do.