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Comet Neowise is bright and now easy to see.  I took this photo by Ft. Steele on Tuesday morning at 1:30am.  To see the comet, I'd recommend to go between midnight when it gets fully dark, until 3:30am when the Northern sky brightens with dawn.  Otherwise the faint streak of the comet is difficult to see against the glowing sky.  Binoculars make it brighter and allow you to see the pale-blue ion tail and pale-yellow dust tail, but it's clearly visible by eye. The photo shows Comet Neowise, looking North from Ft. Steele on Tuesday around 1:30am.  Lakit Mountain to ...
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https://bc.ctvnews.ca/video?clipId=419904 ...
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Delighted to hear from France - from Florent LABELLE Hi (Members of bcmeteors.net), I have made a live databases meteor scatter. If is possible I will want it to appear in your link list. My databases : http://base-meteor.free-sky.fr/ And my website : http://www.free-sky.fr/ Thanks Florent Labelle ...
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A major meteor fireball was recorded from my backyard observatory known as EMO Courtenay which is part of the Sky Sentinel LLC network run by the Florida Institute of Technology.  Previously this was part of the Sandia National Labs fireball network that tracked bright flashes in our upper atmosphere for the Department of Defence in the U.S.A.  My station is: goskysentinel.com/node/node53 This fireball was recorded at 11:02 p.m. on the 2nd October 2018 or UTC 10/03/2018 – 06.02.16 which is Coordinated Universal Time.  We are looking for information by observers of this event, especially possible recordings  by security cameras before ...
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Dr. Alan Hildebrand (a meteorite expert at the University of Calgary) has released photos of some small Crawford Bay meteorite fragments on CBC.  His grad student, Fabio found them.  It was a stony chondrite.  There are lots more pieces to find.  Alan says: Finding rocks about the size of a loonie across a 20-kilometre stretch of forest is no easy task.  But this case was different because of the video footage.  "We know what orbit it fell from... and that's only been done a couple dozen times," Hildebrand said.  "So we now know what orbit this rock was on and ...
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Last Sunday a huge fireball lit up Cranbrook's whole western horizon.  From high up, first a swiftly moving ball of yellow light caught the eye.  It rapidly gained brightness, until it turned into a blue-white welding arc.  A small orange globule broke off and followed it along its wake.  Then it suddenly flared and a spray of brilliant white light flashed out and lit all the sky for miles around and casting shadows on the ground.  A large blue-white fireball zipped out of that dazzling light, with one smaller orange fireball chasing after it, slowing down and dropping over the horizon into the smoke haze until it dimmed out of sight.  Minutes later, a dull rumbling sound like ...
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SEE ALL LATEST DISCUSSIONS ON OUR FORUM : http://bcmeteors.net/?page_id=657&view=forum&id=8 The Cranbrook College of the Rockies meteor camera tracked last night’s fireball high over Nelson and Kootenay Lake. https://youtu.be/gUF8tEaKFMQ Allsky video It lasted for about ten seconds, from 05:11:26 until 05:11:37 UT.  For a brightness comparison, note the full Moon in the lower left part of the video is totally out shone by the fireball when it flares.  There is no sign of the fireball breaking up and exploding. This video movie m20170905_051126_000.mp4, is taken with a fisheye lens that sees all the sky.  North is directly up, East to the left, ...
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https://youtu.be/6giOmRO-Tkw Latest News #Fireball over British Columbia - 90 reports so far (also from Alberta, MT, ID, WA and Saskatchewan - https://t.co/YbaFmNuaZX #meteor pic.twitter.com/Dq6347PY0F — AMSMETEORS (@amsmeteors) September 5, 2017 Jeff Swayze At approximately 10:15 PM pacific time I witnessed a bright flash due east of kelowna BC. I assume it was dry lightning, so I posted on facebook if anyone in my area had witnessed the flash. A local friend reported a similar post from one of their friends in Nelson BC at the same moment. I then assumed it could only be a meteor impact with the ionosphere ...
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Sky and Telescope has prepared four detailed charts to help observers locate 3122 Florence this week. Two of these show the asteroid's general motion northward among the constellations. Two more show small areas of sky, plotting all stars brighter than magnitude 9.5, for North American observers on the evenings of August 29-31 and September 1-3. Note that the detailed charts are labeled for Universal Time (GMT), and you'll have to apply a time-zone correction for your location (for example, 0h UT on August 31st corresponds to 8 pm EDT on August 30th). During its visit, Florence will be traveling roughly ...
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SOLAR ECLIPSE TIME max lasting for about 2min over Vancouver, to 2min 17sec as you go to Eastern BC. Here are times for cities across BC and Alberta. There are four numbers: the local times for the start, maximum and end, and the maximum fraction of the solar diameter covered: Victoria (09:08, 10:20, 11:37, 91%), Vancouver (09:10, 10:21, 11:37, 88%), Penticton (09:13, 10:25, 11:42, 87%), Cranbrook (10:16, 11:30, 12:48, 85%), Calgary (10:20, 11:33, 12:50, 81%), Edmonton (10:24, 11:35, 12:49, 75%). Source: https://www.timeanddate.com/eclipse/in/canada TELESCOPE: if you setup a telescope (with a solar filter and video camera) the Sun should be seen safely on a video display.  We may see ...
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A house-sized asteroid will shave past our planet on October 12, far inside the Moon's orbit but without posing any threat, astronomers said Thursday.  The space rock will zoom by harmlessly at a distance of about 44,000 kilometres (27,300 miles) -- an eighth of the distance from the Earth to the Moon, according to the European Space Agency. This is just far enough to miss our geostationary satellites orbiting at about 36,000 kilometres. "We know for sure that there is no possibility for this object to hit the Earth," Detlef Koschny of ESA's "Near Earth Objects" research team told AFP. There ...
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Ed Majden <epmajden@shaw.ca> reports last night from EMO Courtenay - over Courtenay, BC: ...
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When a meteor enters the Earth's upper atmosphere it excites the air molecules, producing a streak of light and leaving a trail of ionization (an elongated paraboloid) behind it tens of kilometers long. This ionized trail may persist for less than 1 second up to several minutes, occasionally. Occurring at heights of about 85 to 105 km (50-65 miles), this trail is capable of reflecting radio waves from transmitters located on the ground, similar to light reflecting from a mirrored surface. Meteor radio wave reflections are also called meteor echoes, or pings. https://youtu.be/17l98mgAcKM READ MORE ...
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See top menu item called "Forum". Every time there is a new incident, create a new FORUM under the category "Incidents". This is where discussion around the incident takes place ...
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Reporting Sightings QUICK REPORT : https://www.amsmeteors.org/members/imo/report_intro Please capture sighting on video as quickly as you can possibly react.

• Sightings that last less than 30 seconds: the vast majority of fireballs are only visible for few seconds.   Report to the American Meteor Society : http://www.amsmeteors.org/fireballs/
• Slow blinking objects or lights crossing the sky going : After checking for Venus and the ISS, report to :  https://mufoncms.com/cgi-bin/report_handler.pl

General Guidance A fireball is another term for a very bright meteor, generally brighter than magnitude -4, which is about the same magnitude of the planet Venus as seen in the morning or evening sky. A bolide ...
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Latest news about the Solar Eclipse follow the Read More link below. : READ MORE ...
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(Email from Cattle Point Dark Sky Urban Star Park volunteer William Smith) Dear Gerhard Drolshagen : On the Orbit of WT1190F (aka Snoopy) Does object  get captured weeks before and go into earth’s orbit, slowly losing speed and descending? OR does it come shooting directly into the earth’s atmosphere – almost perpendicular to a tangent  ie pointing at the earth’s centre?  This is important because if it orbits the earth one or two times as it slows down, then we might see it in the dark of the late evening where we are on West Coast of North America.. Look here ...
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This is the College All-sky meteor cam showing the eleven brightest Dec 15 meteors stacked on one frame, from 7pm until 2am when it clouded over. North at top of photo and East to the left. Two bright fireballs on the horizon! That trail of dots there is Jupiter rising. Some clumps of dots are just aircraft strobes. And here's the 11 meteor stack for Dec 14 from 9pm until 1:15am, when it clouded over. About the same each evening. And just for fun, here's all the photos stacked from the camera watching Ursa Minor over a 43 minute period, ...
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015-11-13 : 10:21 PST. Splashdown was last night at 22:19  PST in SRI LANKA off coast of Matara. Was late evening on USA Westcoast Thursday. Please enjoy my Blog. This is a conversation between young post-grad scientist Subath Amaradasa of the "Near Earth Objects" Team at the University of Ruhuna, who is on ground with French scientists from European Space Agency and William Smith who is the Hoyle-Shield coordinator at Cattle Point DARK SKY Urban Star Park, Victoria, Canada. PS There will be a post script to the Snoopy event. Snoopy is almost certainly the Apollo 10 lunar lander - aka ...
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On the Hunt for rare rock after meteorite falls in December University of Calgary geoscience professor asking for the public’s help. A month after a spectacular fireball December 20, 2014, over the Rocky Mountains, University of Calgary researcher Alan Hildebrand is on a quest for rare meteorites. In the early morning hours of December 20 a small piece of an asteroid entered Earth’s atmosphere high above Canal Flats, British Columbia, headed northeastwards towards Calgary, Alberta. Although western B.C. and eastern Alberta were overcast, the fireball was seen and imaged over the region between the clouds in both provinces. One spectacular ...
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> Object 2015 VO105 is of interest to NASA.  Any and all information on > this target would be most appreciated. COD 568 CON D. J. Tholen OBS Y. Ramanjooloo, D. Hung MEA D. J. Tholen TEL 2.24-m University of Hawaii reflector NET PPMXL ACK 2015 VO105 K15VA5O  C2015 11 17.23158323 38 55.363+13 34 14.08         19.3 R      568 K15VA5O  C2015 11 17.23227823 38 55.804+13 34 12.10         19.3 R      568 2015 VO105 Epoch 2016 Jan 13.0 TT = JDT 2457400.5                  Tholen M 124.69083              (2000.0)            P               Q n   0.92262164     Peri.   84.14714     +0.82467835     +0.56135157 a   1.0450096      Node   241.68431     -0.54505393     +0.75606295 e   0.1214306      Incl.    4.50906     ...
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The best and most reliable meteor shower of the year are the Geminids at 120 meteors per hour on early Monday December 14. The second best are the Quadrantids at 120/hr on January 4 but these last only for a few hours. The Perseids are better known, since they occur on August 13 when it's nice and warm out. But they're actually number three on the list at 100 meteors per hour. Since the new Moon occurs on Dec 11, the sky will be dark so we should see even the fainter meteors. The peak should occur around 10am in ...
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The college meteor camera is already seeing more bright meteors zipping overhead. The Perseid meteor shower started July 17, ends Aug 24 but peaks on Thursday night, August 11 and Friday morning Aug 12. If it's cloudy Thursday, note that Wednesday night and Friday night will also be very active. Meteor Flare Over Moon This year the Earth will cross the centre of the comet debris; so we should get the full show. We should also get three additional early peaks: Jupiter’s gravity has shifted some debris; and we’ll see debris from the 1862 and 1479 comet ejection trails to ...
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A Meteor fireball fell over Central Washington State, and broke up over the Colville Reservation north of Yakima. The bright fireball was seen by many people from Vancouver Island , Vancouver, Seattle, and as far East as Spokane, Washington.  The American Meteor Society received 116 reports of “a fireball” over Washington, B.C., Idaho and Oregon. Vancouver time that was  Thursday March 16, 2017 at 9:39pm.  People described a green tail turning briefly yellow, followed by a quick double flash at it broke up. Kathy M. wrote on the  AMS site: "It was so amazing and beautiful. I've seen small, white falling stars before ...
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Ken Tapping, April 19, 2017 On 19 April an asteroid will pass close by. At its closest it will be less than five times the distance of the Moon. The asteroid, named 2014 JO25, is about 600 metres across. It will scoot across our northern sky in a few hours, moving at 33.5 km/s. It will be closest to us at 08:24 EDT, 05:24 PDT. However, to see it you’ll need a telescope. If it were made of basalt, like the Moon, it would have a mass of some 300 million tonnes. This is the biggest object in about 13 ...
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April 4 and the 22nd had some excellent Aurora Borealis, and Saturday the 22nd was also the Lyrid meteor shower.  The skies were clear for a brief time, so I saw a few Lyrid meteors. Jerry Mason's photo above shows green auroral glow and blue streaks.  Taken from College Way above Vernon at 10:30pm.  I suspect the curved streak at right is a lens reflection from the streetlight at lower left. Something new, have you heard about auroral proton arcs actually being a new high velocity 300km high, high temperature gas stream called "STEVE" acronym: Strong Thermal Emission Velocity Enhancement? STEVE ...
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We are delighted to finally move the website into the latest and best Wordpress environment, loaded up with all our wonderful historic data and images. As we now have the ability to regularly change the look and feel, we will do our best to find a style everyone likes best, and then we will freeze it for a year to give you a chance to get to know the content, menu and all the tools we have utilized. Rick Nowell William E. (Bill) Smith Jeff Brower ...
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April 4 and the 22nd had some excellent Aurora Borealis, and Saturday the 22nd was also the Lyrid meteor shower.  The skies were clear for a brief time, so I saw a few Lyrid meteors.   Jerry Mason's photo above shows green auroral glow and blue streaks.  Taken from College Way above Vernon at 10:30pm.  I suspect the curved streak at right is a lens reflection from the streetlight at lower left. Something new, have you heard about auroral proton arcs actually being a new high velocity 300km high, high temperature gas stream called "STEVE" acronym: Strong Thermal Emission Velocity Enhancement? ...
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Ken Tapping, April 19, 2017 On 19 April an asteroid will pass close by. At its closest it will be less than five times the distance of the Moon. The asteroid, named 2014 JO25, is about 600 metres across. It will scoot across our northern sky in a few hours, moving at 33.5 km/s. It will be closest to us at 08:24 EDT, 05:24 PDT. However, to see it you’ll need a telescope. If it were made of basalt, like the Moon, it would have a mass of some 300 million tonnes. This is the biggest object in about 13 ...
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A Meteor fireball fell over Central Washington State, and broke up over the Colville Reservation north of Yakima. The bright fireball was seen by many people from Vancouver Island , Vancouver, Seattle, and as far East as Spokane, Washington.  The American Meteor Society received 116 reports of “a fireball” over Washington, B.C., Idaho and Oregon. Vancouver time that was  Thursday March 16, 2017 at 9:39pm.  People described a green tail turning briefly yellow, followed by a quick double flash at it broke up.    Kathy M. wrote on the  AMS site: "It was so amazing and beautiful. I've seen small, white falling ...
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Father of Meteor Allsky Networks, Richard Spalding died Feb 8. [Excerpts from an article by Tom Dorman.] Dick passed away Wed, Feb 8 2017, after battling multiple heart issues this past year.  Dick was the Founder of the SkySentinel Allsky Network (Sandia National Laboratories) and was instrumental in setting up and running the meteor fireball camera Systems in the U.S. and around the world.  Allsky camera systems can now be bought off the shelf but back in the 1990's Dick was giving the camera systems to willing amateurs in support of the North America fireball network.  (Locally he sent Allsky ...
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Test ...
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Meteor Showers in Oct, Nov, Dec 2016. **The Geminids are the best at 120 meteors per hour, are on 14 Dec.  *The Orionids (21 Oct) and the Leonids (17 Nov) both at 15 meteors per hour are middling.  The Northern Taurids on 12 Nov at 5 meteors per hour aren’t as frequent but they produce many bright fireballs, and flashes on the Moon.  However, the bright Moon will spoil much of the meteor showers this year.  Meteor velocities can range from about 11 km/s (very slow) to 72 km/s (very fast). 40 km/s is roughly medium speed.  (That's still pretty ...
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The college meteor camera is already seeing more bright meteors zipping overhead. The Perseid meteor shower started July 17, ends Aug 24 but peaks on Thursday night, August 11 and Friday morning Aug 12. If it's cloudy Thursday, note that Wednesday night and Friday night will also be very active. This year the Earth will cross the centre of the comet debris; so we should get the full show. We should also get three additional early peaks: Jupiter’s gravity has shifted some debris; and we’ll see debris from the 1862 and 1479 comet ejection trails to hit this year. Peak ...
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The strongest solar storm so far of 2016 hit us Saturday night at 10:48pm and again between 2 to 3am (according to our college meteor camera). The clear starry East Kootenay sky lit up with glowing curtains and spikes that reached a third of the way up from the Northern horizon. Our meteor cam has some nifty video on it. And I zipped out of town and took some photos. I missed the best at 11pm, but got some shots at 11:45. But I packed up at 1:50 am, too soon. According to the meteor cam, if I had waited ...
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The best and most reliable meteor shower of the year are the Geminids at 120 meteors per hour on early Monday December 14. The second best are the Quadrantids at 120/hr on January 4 but these last only for a few hours. The Perseids are better known, since they occur on August 13 when it's nice and warm out. But they're actually number three on the list at 100 meteors per hour. Since the new Moon occurs on Dec 11, the sky will be dark so we should see even the fainter meteors. The peak should occur around 10am in ...
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> Object 2015 VO105 is of interest to NASA.  Any and all information on > this target would be most appreciated.   COD 568 CON D. J. Tholen OBS Y. Ramanjooloo, D. Hung MEA D. J. Tholen TEL 2.24-m University of Hawaii reflector NET PPMXL ACK 2015 VO105        K15VA5O  C2015 11 17.23158323 38 55.363+13 34 14.08         19.3 R      568      K15VA5O  C2015 11 17.23227823 38 55.804+13 34 12.10         19.3 R      568   2015 VO105 Epoch 2016 Jan 13.0 TT = JDT 2457400.5                  Tholen M 124.69083              (2000.0)            P               Q n   0.92262164     Peri.   84.14714     +0.82467835     +0.56135157 a   1.0450096      Node   241.68431     ...
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2015-11-13 : 10:21 PST. Splashdown was last night at 22:19  PST in SRI LANKA off coast of Matara. Was late evening on USA Westcoast Thursday. Please enjoy my Blog. This is a conversation between young post-grad scientist Subath Amaradasa of the "Near Earth Objects" Team at the University of Ruhuna, who is on ground with French scientists from European Space Agency and William Smith who is the Hoyle-Shield coordinator at Cattle Point DARK SKY Urban Star Park, Victoria, Canada. PS There will be a post script to the Snoopy event. Snoopy is almost certainly the Apollo 10 lunar lander - aka ...
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(Email from Cattle Point Dark Sky Urban Star Park volunteer William Smith) Dear Gerhard Drolshagen : On the Orbit of WT1190F (aka Snoopy) Does object  get captured weeks before and go into earth’s orbit, slowly losing speed and descending? OR does it come shooting directly into the earth’s atmosphere – almost perpendicular to a tangent  ie pointing at the earth’s centre?  This is important because if it orbits the earth one or two times as it slows down, then we might see it in the dark of the late evening where we are on West Coast of North America..   ...
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The smoke and haze in Southeastern BC was a problem, but the Allsky Meteor Cam on the Cranbrook College of the Rockies roof still got a dozen bright Perseids or so on the 12-13th. Not 52 like Jeff Brower got on his AllSky meteor cam in Kelowna, by a long shot. This year was a bit better than 2013, although not as many bright fireballs. Below are the brightest ten meteors of the night, all shown on one frame, on the fisheye all-sky view. I ended up going to the top of nearby Mt. Baker to get above the smoke ...
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The Internation Meteor Organization is having their 2015 Conference in Mistelbach, Austria. from August 27 (Thursday evening) until August 30. At that meeting, Bill Ward from Glascow, UK will be presenting this following paper on Video Spectroscopy. He writes: One of the new observing programmes I'm working on is called "Towards a New Meteor Taxonomy" (under review). For the first time, as video spectroscopy has become so efficient (you'll see on the poster I got over a hundred last year alone!) that large samples are now a viable prospect. Shower meteors, by definition, should have similar properties but are there ...
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On June 18 Peter Spaans and I visited the site where the Canal Flats fireball hit, on the Middle White River. Here are some photos of the terrain there. For a closer look, right click on the photo and open it in a new tab [Map_FireballArea_sm2.jpg] Map showing closeup of the strewn field ellipse. The centre of ellipse marked at “C”. We parked at “P” at a creek at 4.6km. “Strewn Field” Distribution: Dr. Hildebrand assumes the meteor fragments are scattered in this elliptical area 3km wide by 5 km long, on a logged hillside on the Middle White River ...
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LOCATION: Dr. Alan Hildebrand sent out the location marked on a map as an ellipse. From a topographical map NTS82J the centre of that ellipse is: 50° 21'N, 115° 13' W (50.385, -115.217), and from GoogleMaps that is 50° 23', 115° 13' W, 550 ft down the hill. Lincoln Hanton and Alan Hildebrand assume the meteor fragments are scattered in an ellipse 3km wide by 5 km long, along this logged hillside. This is near Sinna Creek, between Russell Peak and Marconi Peak. Just a few kilometres from the Height of the Rockies Provincial Park boundary. For a quick look, ...
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The BC Meteor network stations routinely upload our meteor videos to a central North American gathering site, where they are displayed for the public for about a month before being archived. Previously that was the New Mexico State University Allsky Camera site in Las Cruces, NM. (Klipsch School of Electrical and Computer Engineering) at http://skysentinel.nmsu.edu/allsky/clusters There they store the videos sorted by regions (which they call clusters and nodes) and match events common to multiple stations. However last year their grant ran out from the Sandia National Laboratory and the National Nuclear Security Administration of the Dept. Of Energy. They ...
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Bright Slow-moving Disintegrating Object: 23 Feb 2015 at 10:56pm MST/9:56 PST Shown above is an animated GIF of the rocket stage disintegrating as it passed over the Cranbrook, BC meteor-cam site. The Kelowna BC meteor-cam site caught a glimpse of it as well. The video frames displayed are 2 seconds apart over a 33 second period. It took a total of 83 seconds to pass overhead, coming in low like a comet over the Southeastern horizon, and leaving in four trailing chunks over the Northeastern horizon. It was a highly visible fireball, with a long glowing tail with dozens of ...
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Picture taken by Brett Abernethy from Johnson Lake near Banff, about 95 km North of Canal Flats (at 51.2138°N, -115.5013°W, 1,480m ). Looking due South, Brett took the photo on Dec 20, 2014 at 12:20am, while setup to photograph the Aurora Borealis. Brett says it fell slowly, flaring just like a welding arc, bright enough to light up the entire landscape, and 2.5 seconds later ended by exploding into three pieces, cooling to an orange colour at around 30km high. The same fireball as seen from Cranbrook, about 90km South of Canal Flats, viewed through the thin clouds, measuring as ...
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On the Hunt for rare rock after meteorite falls in December University of Calgary geoscience professor asking for the public’s help. A month after a spectacular fireball December 20, 2014, over the Rocky Mountains, University of Calgary researcher Alan Hildebrand is on a quest for rare meteorites. In the early morning hours of December 20 a small piece of an asteroid entered Earth’s atmosphere high above Canal Flats, British Columbia, headed northeastwards towards Calgary, Alberta. Although western B.C. and eastern Alberta were overcast, the fireball was seen and imaged over the region between the clouds in both provinces. One spectacular ...
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Geminid Meteor Shower Sun Dec 14 2014 One of the best meteor showers during the year are the Geminids, which occur annually on Dec 14. Earth enters the fringes of their orbit from Dec 4 until Dec 17. The peak of 120 meteors per hour, should be from Saturday noon Dec 13, until Sunday morning 10am Dec 14, 2014. The skies were dark, since the Moon didn't rise until after midnight. Although both nights it got cloudy around 1am where I am near Cranbrook, BC. The meteors were generally bright, medium fast speeds of 35km/s, and different colours. I saw ...
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One of the best meteor showers during the year are the Geminids, which occur annually on Dec 14. Earth enters the fringes of their orbit from Dec 4 until Dec 17. The peak of 120 meteors per hour, should be from Saturday noon Dec 13, until Sunday morning 10am Dec 14, 2014. The skies were dark, since the Moon didn't rise until after midnight. Although both nights it got cloudy around 1am where I am near Cranbrook, BC. The meteors were generally bright, medium fast speeds of 35km/s, and different colours. I saw white and red. This shower has some ...
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The LEONID METEOR SHOWER rapidly approaches us on Sunday night/ Monday morning, Nov 16/17, when the Earth passes through dust and ice particles from comet Tempel-Tuttle. Meteor counts are estimated at around 15 per hour this year (or one meteor every 4 minutes). The crescent Moon is below the Eastern horizon until around 1am, so the skies will be fairly dark. The Leonid meteors are travelling swiftly at 71 km/s which can create fast green ionization trails 70 to 120km high in the upper atmosphere. Leo, the meteor radiant, rises about midnight (can you see the backwards question mark framing ...
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What's up for October 2014. The sky at night this month from NASA JPL. http://youtu.be/uPQh0JwfEh4   ...
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The Eta Aquarid Meteor Shower should peak Monday night, the 5th of May at 07:00 Universal Time (or midnight Mountain Time, 11pm Pacific Time), but the best viewing times (due to the Moon and a low Eastern radiant) will a few hours before dawn Tuesday morning, around 4am to 5am. At the peak, up to 55 meteors could be seen each hour.  They're pretty fast, at 66km/second, often bright with very long paths, and leave persistent glowing trails.   The source of the meteors is debris from Halley's comet.  The Comet's orbital path contains dust particles and ice (thinned out ...
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The Eta Aquariid Meteor Shower should peak Tuesday morning, the 6th of May at 07:00 Universal Time (or midnight Pacific Daylight Savings Time, or 1am Mountain Saving Time), but the best viewing times (due to the Moon and a low Eastern radiant) will a few hours before dawn Tuesday morning, around 4am to 5am. At the peak, up to 55 meteors could be seen each hour. They're pretty fast, at 66km/second, often bright with very long paths, and leave persistent glowing trails. The source of the meteors is debris from Halley's Comet. The Comet's orbital path contains dust particles and ...
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Preliminary results from Belarus-Ukraine observers :  are consistent with the hypothesis that earth did pass through Comet ISON’s long tail  in January 7-23, and that this caused a significant increase in meteor counts as detected by observers in Ukraine and Belarus. To read early report (PS this is a work in progress : http://1drv.ms/1gWhvHW ) Period January 7-23 Year  Average Count 2012  /10 2013 / 20 2014 / 80   Call to Action : If any others can summarize their own results this would be very helpful. Minsk Team write :  Уважаемые коллеги Александр и Bill !

Остаётся просмотреть снимки на 2,5 олл-скай ...
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Northern lights photographed by Andy Gray on Nov 27 @ Northumberland, UK http://t.co/SkiAiCOKPq #aurora pic.twitter.com/FV0Bxl9HAf — Observing Space (@ObservingSpace) February 27, 2014 This was the night of the COMET ISON perihelion and sublimation event November 27th. The cosmic wind would carry particles in a cone shape away from far side of the sun. So it is just a coincidence?  But then maybe the sublimation happened over many days even a couple of weeks (not a single explosion) and perhaps particles were projected earthwards. See : https://twitter.com/search?q=%23aurora&src=hash for todays aurora news as the earth continues its pass through Comet ISON's trailing particles.  ...
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An Incredible Visualization of Asteroids from the Sloan Digital Sky Survey. 100,000 asteroids in computer generated simulation from Sloan Digital Sky Survey. 

Read more: http://www.universetoday.com/109664/an-incredible-visualization-of-asteroids-from-the-sloan-digital-sky-survey/#ixzz2uBBnO6fO ...
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Feb 2014 : New ANURADHAPURA meteorite analyzed for LIFE. Results consistent with Life. http://t.co/uu1du5zkjD @AstrobiologyNAI @NASA — Bill Smith (@IdeasExplorer) February 9, 2014 ...
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For the past few weeks you may have noticed meteors shooting across the sky. There is the Geminid meteor shower and three other smaller meteor showers in progress. Although with the bright moon, the dimmer meteors aren't as easily seen. The Geminids started Dec 4 and end Dec 17. On Sat Dec 14, at their peak they can give 120 meteors per hour. Fairly slow for meteors, they are travelling at a speed of 35 km/s. (That's still pretty fast. For comparison, the International space station orbits at 8km/s, and goes around the Earth in 90 minutes.) There are three ...
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In Memoriam   Submitted by Karl Battams on Mon, 12/02/2013 - 08:32 Comet C/2012 S1 (ISON)
Born 4.5 Billion BC, Fragmented Nov 28, 2013 (age 4.5-billion yrs old)    "Born in a dusty and turbulent environment, comet ISON spent its early years being jostled and struck by siblings both large and small. Surviving a particularly violent first few million years, ISON retreated to the Oort Cloud, where it maintained a largely reclusive existence for nearly four billion years. But around 3-million B.C., a chance encounter with a passing star coerced ISON into undertaking a pioneering career as a Sungrazer ...
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Saturday Nov 30, 2013 19:42 UTC : Bye Bye ISON? A "sublimated" Comet is now reduced to a cone of molecules (mostly H and O) being blasted as a cone away from the sun by the solar winds. I wonder if the Northern Lights will be affected over the next day or two (estimated time for molecules to arrive at earth)?  00:19 UTC : ISON particles (after fragmentation) significant enough to track. Light reflects mostly from Oxygen. Usually tail points away from SUN towards future trajectory. Not in ISON's case. Although not having a 3D image, it is hard to ...
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Expect good images from SOHO starting Wednesday - tomorrow.  ISON is expected to enter the LASCO C3 field-of-view at 2:00 UT on Wed, 11/27, and the C2 field-of-view at 13:00 UT on Thu, 11/28. ISON is expected to leave the C2 field-of-view at 23:00 UT on Thu, 11/28, and the C3 field-of-view at 23:00 UT on Fri, 11/29 ...
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Sunday Nov. 24, 2013 : (Question to JPL) Dear Alan (Chamberlin) at JPL :  Is this statement accurate?  If not how would you reword it? Big day for ISON yesterday. I noticed today the eccentricity dropped below "1.00". Does this mean NASA is now calculating it is no longer on a hyperbolic orbit heading out of the solar system, but is now on an elliptical path? Today e is now .9999977109551715 with newly calculated orbit time of 400,864 years - ie Big News - Has ISON has been captured by the SUN and is now in a very long elliptical orbit. I suspect this is a historic moment when ...
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At the Comet ISON Observing Campaign (CIOC) meeting in August 2013, some outstanding scientists led by Dr Mike Mumma of NASA Goddard Centre for Astrobiology, discuss their experiments for Nov/Dec 2013 :  Mumma mentioned that their studies have a population of 26 Comets. They have already identified 24 molecules. They are interested in comparing Kuiper Belt Comets (which move elliptically in the plane of the ecliptic) to Oort Cloud Comets (ISON). The experiments will have the following overall objectives.  The main points I took home : 

• The level of sophistication of our scientists' study is well beyond most peoples ...
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In celebration of this event (hyperbolic, sun-grazer) which occurs only once or twice a century, I have put together a FREE eBook called "COMET ISON". It presents some unique perspectives which should give students a broader understanding of COMETS and especially these rarer HYPERBOLIC sun-grazing comets like ISON. In Summary, the material is freely offered for students to use in any papers they are writing. The FREE eBook asks 9 basic questions :  

1. Is ISON a long period comet on a hyperbolic orbit?
2. Is ISON from the Milky Way Galaxy whereas typical short period comets like Halley, are ...
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Cattle Point Urban Star Park, Oak Bay, Victoria, BC, Canada Sunday Nov. 24, 2013 :  Big day for ISON yesterday. I noticed today the eccentricity dropped below 1. Does this mean NASA is now calculating it is no longer on a hyperbolic orbit heading out of the solar system, but is now on an elliptical path? See NASA JPL database. Today e is now .9999977109551715 with newly calculated orbit time of 400,864 years - ie Big News - ISON has been captured by the SUN and is now in a very long elliptical orbit. I suspect this is a historic moment when we have just ...
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Comet ISON close to perihelion on Thursday November 28th .  Victoria observers frustrated by cloudy skies before sunrise (ESE) in early morning.  ...
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Veteran meteor researcher Paul Wiegert of the University of Western Ontario has been using a computer to model the trajectory of dust ejected by Comet ISON, and his findings suggest that an unusual meteor shower could be in the offing.

"For several days around January 12, 2014, Earth will pass through a stream of fine-grained debris from Comet ISON," says Wiegert. "The resulting shower could have some interesting properties. According to Wiegert's computer models, the debris stream is populated with extremely tiny grains of dust, no more than a few microns wide, pushed toward Earth by the gentle radiation pressure of ...
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Hot News from Rick Nowell:  Cranbrook College of the Rockies meteor camera picked up a very long and slow meteor graze or something re-entering the atmosphere.   Slow, it takes 30 seconds to cross the sky.  That happened on Tuesday 6 Aug 2013 at 4:52 am Mountain Daylight Time (or 10:52 Universal Time). [cid:f94223bc-ecaf-4a31-a8c4-36379206b130]     This is a composite photo with the 30 seconds of video frames superimposed.  This has been enhanced in IRIS by subtracting a camera dark frame to remove background hot pixels, offsetting 10 from the bottom amplitudes and applying an adaptive filter to remove some hiss, ...
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So now we have three hypotheses for the COMET ISON as it approaches and passes the perihelion over the next 28 days (Nov 28th is the date) : 

• NASA Frozen Ice : predicts extreme temperature and pressure might (50-50) cause disintegration of the shell and evaporation of the core. Good news : the 2 tails do not intersect earth's orbit even after any explosion.
• Hoyle Wickramasinghe's Panspermia Model : predicts "seeds of life" carried in comet. Might be possible to test in stratosphere when earth is closest to ISON trajectory in late January. BUT if COMA does "explode" it ...
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{youtube}4HG594w1630{/youtube} ...
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June 2013 : Kepler Mission updated its estimates. Here are these latest numbers right from the horses-mouth (Professor Ravi Kopparapu). As at 20 June 2013, Dr. Kopparapu, expert with the Kepler Mission estimates :

• Stars in the Galaxy : 400 billion
• The number of habitable earth-like exoplanets in our Milky Way Galaxy : 144 billion (> 1011).
• The OORT Cloud around our Sun (it is also hypothesized by some astronomers that most suns have OORT clouds) is estimated :

• to contain : several trillion individual asteroids (objects) larger than 1 km (0.62 mi).
• to reach 1 ly towards ...
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Here's your chance to save the planet!  NASA has called on amateur astronomers and other citizen-scientists to help identify the smaller and potentially destructive asteroids lurking in the cosmos, which could wipe out a city upon impact with Earth.  Scientists estimate that about 90 per cent of asteroids that are one kilometre or larger which pose potential planet-wide danger have been surveyed. However, more than 99 per cent of asteroids that are 30 to 40 meters in size which might not destroy the planet, but could very easily wipe out a city - have yet to be found and tracked, ...
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22 May 2013 : ESA today inaugurated a new hub that will strengthen Europe’s contribution to the global hunt for asteroids and other hazardous natural objects that may strike Earth.  ...
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Each day approximately 4000-5000 individual meteoroid orbits are measured by CMOR - the amount of "clumpiness" in these radiants determines the location of individual showers. {iframe width="550" height="300" }http://fireballs.ndc.nasa.gov/cmor-radiants/{/iframe} Click here to see full CMOR site :  ...
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We have now migrated our website to Joomla 2.5. Please excuse us if there are any problems. Feel free to test the new site. We welcome you to report issues and suggestions to wesmith@outlook.com .  Click here to see more about our new design - Joomspirit template 75. Three of the good things with this template are :

1. the template flexibility
2. iPhone/iPad/Smartphone support (check it out)
3. and the support of a brilliant graphics designer in France who designed the template and owns the 1 man company. 

We plan to make this site very exciting. We also plan to ...
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{jsmallfib [BCMeteor] [63:5] DESC(Useful Files for Teachers and Students)} ...
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2013-03-31 at Cattle Point Urban Star Park in Victoria BC. First time at the newest Urban Dark Sky site in Canada. John McDonald captures the Comet Pan Starrs which is receding and not as bright as it has been. But still shows up nicely along with the Andromeda Galaxy in this wide field image. Details

• Canon 6D with 24 to 105mm lens operating at 105mm.
• Exposure - 4 - 3.2s at ISO 6400 and f/4.
• Processing in Photoshop.

Click on Image below to see high resolution image. ...
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Many wonders are visible when flying over the Earth at night. A compilation of such visual spectacles was captured recently from the International Space Station (ISS) and set to rousing music. {youtube} FG0fTKAqZ5g {/youtube} ...
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March 29, 2013 : Royal Astronomical Society of Canada approves the new CATTLE POINT NATIONAL URBAN STAR PARK which will be based in Oak Bay, Victoria, BC Canada. It's unique low lighting provides a wonderful location for star gazing. The popular picnic and birdwatching destination is approved by both Royal Astronomical Society of Canada and Oak Bay Municipality as one of the nation’s dark sky sites – there are 14 countryside “dark sky preserves” but only one other urban star park. Mark Bohlman, an astronomy enthusiast who got his first telescope as a child, first presented Oak Bay council with ...
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What is the objective of the BC Meteor Group? ...
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CONTACT US We're a loose group of amateurs who either run the Sentinel system. or a radio detection system or both. We communicate via emails when we see a bright fireball and did a quick poll that way. We'd write "Did you see it at ##:## UT on sic and such date?". Then wait for the other stations to say yes or no. We are not an organization, a club, or society. We are a loose confederation/network of cameras operators and radio operators. Bill and Glen started the educational outreach project on their own and that's when Jeff decided to ...
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Three comets expected this year, two dim and one bright Comet Pan-STARRS (C/2011 L4): visible March 5 until April 2013: this Comet will pass within one AU from the Earth as it proceeds onward to dip inside the orbit of Mercury. It is dim but visible with the unaided eye. From Earth, the comet will appear close to the Sun, and it will only be observable briefly on the north-western horizon just after sunset, close to the crescent Moon on March 13. It's only viewable for about 20 minutes, from about 8:15 until 8:40pm Mountain Daylight Time. The sky is ...
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College of the Rockies--COTR Located in the East Kootenays in the South-eastern corner of BC, along the Rocky Mountain Trench. We recently placed an AllSky camera on the roof of our Cranbrook main campus. In the Science department we offer University Transfer 1st and 2nd year courses, as well as Grade 11 and 12. Astronomy, Biology, Chemistry, Geology, Geography, Physics, Mathematics and Computer Science. Our Astronomy 100 course boasts a Celestron CPC1100 11 inch Schmidt-Cassegrain, a 10" Meade LX200, a 13" Dobsonian and a number of smaller 4.5" Newtonians. We do constellation (and meteor) photography with Nikon D100 digital cameras ...
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COTR Observation Station: Some Calibration and Technical Info: The College of the Rockies Astronomy department has a Sentinel IV AllSky Meteor camera running under WSentinel video capture software ver 1.1.11. The College is located at Cranbrook BC, in the SouthEastern corner of BC. Our Camera coordinates are N49° 31' 03.1", W115° 44' 37.1", at an elevation of 940.0m (within 10cm). The Sample Photo shows what our black and white rooftop camera sees, the lights of Cranbrook to the West, along the bottom of the photo. There are some red beacons flashing on the surrounding mountains, the one at 12 o'clock ...
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Mile 108 Viewing Conditions ...
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Located on Highway 97 in the British Columbia Cariboo-Chilcotin area, Mile 108 Elementary School is the site of the second AllSky camera located in School District #27 (Cariboo-Chilcotin). This camera will provide overlapping coverage with cameras in Prince George, Tatla Lake, Kelowna, Penticton, and Osoyoos, thereby increasing the likelihood of a multiple site common capture ...
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  Mile 108 Observatory is located at the Mile 108 Elementary School on Highway 97, southwest of the 108 Resort airstrip.   The Mile 108 AllSky camera system is installed on the roof of the school. The following image is the latest capture. North is up, West is to the right.   ...
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meteor detection on UT 2010 Sept.11 11h 30m 04s ...
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All time UT:   20100910 040224 SE quadrant going SE very short and swift -1.5 mag 20100910 110434 NE quad going SE short -2.4 mag --- 20100910 113240 NW quadrant going West long - good for analysis with Ken and Ajai 0.0 mag Beginning Az: 276 el: 54    Ending Az: 278 el: 42 Beginning RA: 353 Dec: 41 Ending Ra: 338 Dec: 35 ...
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ua2_fdata2 fno=" 64" b="255" bm="035" Lsum="100988.4" mag="-8.24" az=" 224.5928461" ev="  19.3637454" ra="   0.7249902" dec="  -7.5120931"

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20100909_12257  -  N  ---->N  very bright
_114852 -  N at horizon very right
_102352 -  NE  point source Note: The 114852 Fireball was also captured in Prince George. Data loaded to the Video Data Download - Common Capture folder ...
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Courtenay EMO detections:

v20100908_123740  -  East sector bright terminal flare
_111002  -  West sector

_104157   -  SW
_095125   -  NW near horizon
_093102   -  NNE short
_041130  -   S  short ...
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For forward scatter observers the SNOTEL Meteor burst system can be a viable substitute of RF when the Canadian analog TV stations are phased out. Currently this phaseout is scheduled for sometime in 2011. The US stations have already made the jump form analog to digital. SNOTEL, is an acronym for Snowpack Telemetry.  It began operation in the 1970's and is run by the Natural Resources Conservation Service (NRCS). For complete description of the system visit the general information page at the home site at: http://www.wcc.nrcs.usda.gov/factpub/sntlfct1.html A quick search of the net will also bring up many hits on this ...
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All times UT 20100905 061055 NE quad going SE -2 mag 20100905 080720 SW quad going S -3 mag 20100905 080746 NE&NW quad going NW -1.7 mag long trail 20100905 093915 NE quad going N -2.6 mag 20100905 094200 SW quad going SW -2.2 mag 20100905 120316 NE quad going NNE mag unknown (Sentinel III) All others UFOC2 The RA and Dec and Az/El for all the events but last are available ...
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DAO Dave Balam will be editing this page soon.  In the mean time he sent some images representing the current all-sky time lapse camera at the DAO. A Sentinel unit will be added once Sid is available to install it. Dave does have some images that show the capabilities of their current all-sky camera. The camera is on line an updated every minute at: http://www.nrc-cnrc.gc.ca/eng/facilities/hia/astrophysical-observatory/skycam.html   A mosaic_2009_10_24 - an 8 hour stretch (1 hour per individual stack) of the sky on 2009 Oct. 24/25. The objects marked with blue boxes are meteor trails.   Image: meteor_100217 - a meteor ...
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On the morning of the 24th of September I (Jeff) reported the following event to the BCMN list: It occurred on September 24, at 09:56 UT which puts it at 02:56 PDT. It was very low on my SSW horizon. It was very slow moving with several bursts. I then wrote Alan Hildebrand, and sent on the same information and asked him if he had any reports other than mine. He said not yet. I then sent him the movie of the bolide, a composite still picture of it and a light curve of the event. It seems most of ...
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I asked Joe Chavez at Sandia National Labs what was contained in the single text file Sentinel outputs from the external video grabber. It has this basic format: From the Bolide of March 23, 2008 Event time: Sat 2008/03/22 04:26:41.04

-30     0       0   156.8   338.0
-29     0       0   156.8   338.0
-28     0       0   156.8   338.0
---- SNIP ----
233  1602   36538   226.4   329.6
234  1595   34884   225.4   330.2
235  1574   33285   224.5   330.7
236  1581   31824   223.6   331.3
237  1539   30273   222.5   331.9
238  1577   28940   221.4   332.3
239  1557   27557   220.3   332.8
240  1582   26090   218.9   332.9
241  1592   23868   ...
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Written by Ed Majden First a bit of history. In the second half of the 1800's attempts were made to observe meteor spectra visually using prisms.  Because of the short duration of meteor phenomenon this was difficult but it was established that meteors produce discrete line spectra.  The bright lines neutral sodium and neutral magnesium where correctly identified visually by experienced observers.
The first photographic meteor spectrum was secured by chance during a routine stellar spectroscopy program by Pickering in 1897 at Harvard. S. N. Blazhko in Russia set up the first successful photographic program in 1904 - 1907.  This ...
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Here are more papers on all-sky lens calibration: A new positional astrometric method for all-sky cameras. This link will take you to the SAO/NASA ADS Astronomy Abstract Service where you can download the pdf. Below the abstract select Printing Options and then Print Whole Paper. Next press the send pdf button. A download of the pdf will follow. Segon, Darmir, (2009) How many stars are needed for a good camera calibration? WGN 37:3, pp. 80-83. Houghton, John (2008) Lens Calibration Using the Stars. Web page.  
        ...
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