Friday, April 16, 2010

Bright Object in the Sky

You may have seen this story on the news over the past few days. It is the story of a bright object flying through the sky that was seen in several midwestern states.

Many wondered what it was. We came to found it was an asteroid which exploded in mid-air during a meteor shower. The explosion was so big, that it was the equivalent to 20 tons of TNT dynamite.


Picture Courtesy of: University
of Wisconsin-AOS/SSEC

It was that explosion that lit up the night sky across Iowa, Minnesota, Wisconsion, Missouri, and Illinois.

I often times receive phone calls from viewers who say they see interesting things in the night sky sometimes at night. If you are away from the cities and have complete darkness around, you can see these types of features from time to time.

They are not spaceships or aliens from another planet. More or less, it is usually something similar to what we saw in this story. Namely, a meteor shower racing fast at several thousand miles up in space.

For more on this story, you can go to http://www.spaceweather.com/.

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