meteor

Tuesday morning people as far away as Utah saw flaming object

It was a sight Visalia's Sheila Chartrand will never forget.
A fireball was streaking across the sky headed southeast Tuesday about 10:30 a.m. It appeared much larger than the sun, she said — larger even than a softball or CD held at arm's length.

"I just caught a glimpse of it as I stepped out onto my porch. It was the creepiest thing I've ever seen," she said. "It was so huge and so bright, all I could think of was, 'Oh, my god.' "

But her skeptical friends are having a hard time believing her story

"They all think I'm crazy," she said.

Chartrand wasn't the only one who saw the fireball, however. Reports flooded the San Bernardino County Fire Department dispatch center, and fire crews in Barstow also reported a flaming object in the sky.

The Tulare County Fire Department received no calls, but sightings of "an object as bright as the sun" came from as far away as Nevada and St. George, Utah.

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I was surfing around the web and found this nice link on how to find a meteorite. WikiHow has a nice short artcle on the basics of meteorite hunting. Read it it's pretty good.

"Know what a meteorite looks like and what are its properties, so that you can easily distinguish one from every other rock. There are 3 major types of meteorites: stony, iron, and stony-irons, but there are usually a few properties that apply to most meteorites, although they might be..." TO READ MORE CLICK THE LINK BELOW

http://www.wikihow.com/Find-a-Meteorite

'Aliens' Attacking Bosnian Man with Meteorites (SPACE.com) - Five meteorites have fallen on Radivoje Lajic's house in six months. [Yahoo Meteorite News]

Under attack: The owner of a house struck five times by meteorites fears aliens are targeting him

What The???

"Experts at Belgrade University have confirmed that all the rocks Radivoje Lajic has handed over were meteorites.

They are now investigating local magnetic fields to try and work out what makes the property so attractive to the heavenly bodies."

Welcome everyone to the "New & Improved" MeteoriteWatch.com

After almost a year of study, research, hunting, and adventure, I've learned a few things about meteorites and the meteorite community as a whole. I decided to change the direction of MW to serve as a hub, or central portal for meteorite enthusiasts all over the world. This I think will better serve the meteorite community and bring more people into collecting and hunting, increase scientific knowledge about meteorites, and bring meteorites more into the mainstream. I made it for a fun and exciting place to congregate, discuss and share knowledge. Simple as that!

READ MORE INFO ON WHAT'S NEW HERE ON MW: http://www.meteoritewatch.com/mw/node/1

Ok, it's been a while since I posted anything on the MW site, so I figured I'd put something up that I think everyone might have an appreciation for. Something fun, light and educational. Some of you who are familiar with the Earth Impact Database already know about the craters listed but I found this neat little link on Answers.com that has a plethora of information on impact craters that's not in the database. And it's not just craters on earth either. There's links to info about craters on just about every other planet in our solar system and what impact list would be complete without photos of our nearest celestial body the moon. Scroll down to view links...

-----------------What They Mean To Us------------------

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Most people don't know you can own a meteorite much less find one practically in your own back yard.

If you live in the southwest U.S. you are in prime meteorite hunting territory. This area of the country lends itself to the preservation of meteoritical material. Because of the southwest’s arid climate, and low annual rainfall, meteorites are more preserved here than in any other part of the U.S. Meteorites contain iron and iron is prone to corrosion, therefore a dryer climate will preserve meteorites for a longer period of time.

That's why more meteorites are found in the Sahara desert than any other place on earth! Northwest African meteorites (better known as NWA meteorites) are plentiful because the climate is perfect. The Sahara desert covers the entire northern region of Africa! This desert is almost as big as the United States! That's huge. You can only imagine the number of meteorites that have fallen there over the last 10,000 years much less the last 1 Million years.

I've made a few changes recently to the site. Hope you like them... ;)

Some of the features:

New - Upgraded Forum: All the features of a normal forum with just one user account. This allows you to post in the forum, and everywhere else on the site with 1 user ID and login

New - Dealers Forum: Dealers are welcome to post items for sale, trade, or wanted ads for meteorites and meteorite related equipment and goods.

New - Upgraded Photo Gallery: Members only galleries for all your meteorite images!

New - Members Only Photo Blog: Now you get your own blog. This is a feature I have wanted and people have requested on the site for some time now. Imagine that. Your own Meteorite Blog! Now that's cool!

New - Member Avatars: The new design and features allow you to add photo of yourself to all posts, comments, and blog entries, just like in the forums! Member avatars are used site wide and you can change you avatar at will or choose not to have one at all.

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An meteor flying through our atmosphere above the Teton mountain range in Wyoming. Not really... I just made this after playing around in photoshop and it gave me an idea for the site. I decided to add yet another section to MW. A meteorite Art Gallery!

Click Here To Post Your Own Photos: http://www.meteoritewatch.com/mw/gallery

Enjoy!

Eric
MW

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We were traveling East on I40 through the Mojave Desert. Around 4am we started noticing flashes of light to the northeast and southeast. I thought perhaps it was lightning at first or maybe my Bluetooth ear-bud reflecting of the interior of the car.
Then I saw it! Off in the North-East a bright bluegreen-white flash streaked across the sky in front of us. My girlfriend was trying to get some sleep but I couldn’t hold in my excitement any longer. I had seen at least 4-5 meteors so far and they were still coming!

I was trying to figure out why there were so many of them happening so fast when I remembered that the Aurigids Meteor Shower was supposed to be happening sometime in the next few days acording to an email I received from MeteoriteCentral.com’s Meteorite-List newsletter a few days before. It announced the shower and the time it was supposed to happen. As I recalled the shower was supposed to be best viewed in the southwest somewhere around 4am in the morning on September 1st! Hmmm…