Report of discovery of large object in far outer edges of solar system incites skeptical reactions

Phys.org

 

 

December 11, 2015 by Bob Yirka report

 

 

ALMA prototype-antennas at the ALMA test facility. Credit: ESO

(Phys.org)—Two separate teams of researchers (one from Mexico, the other Sweden), have incited skepticism among the astronomy community by posting papers on the preprint server arXiv each describing a different large object they observed in the outer edges of the solar system. Both teams made their observations after reviewing data from ALMA—a cluster of radio dishes in the Chilean mountains.

One of the objects was found to be near W Aquilae in the night sky—the other adjacent to Alpha Centauri . Both groups report being skeptical at first regarding a faint glow, but monitored what they had seen nonetheless—to their surprise they found that the objects appeared to move relative to the stars behind them, which suggested they might be relatively close and that they might be orbiting the sun. Neither group was able to gain much evidence regarding the properties of the objects they had spied, because both of them were only able to make two observations, but both teams suggest there was enough data to allow for ruling out the object being an ordinary star.

The Swedish team nick-named the object they observed Gna, after a Nordic God known for its swiftness, and have told the press they had no intention of suggesting they had found the mythical Planet X which supposedly lies somewhere beyond Pluto. Instead they suggest it might be a large asteroid. The team from Mexico went a little further suggesting that the object they observed might possibly turn out to be a brown dwarf.

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The annual Geminid meteor shower peaks tonight, Dec. 13-14, as Earth passes through a stream of gravelly debris from "rock comet" 3200 Phaethon

by Dr. Tony Phillips.

GEMINID METEOR SHOWER--TONIGHT!

The annual Geminid meteor shower peaks tonight, Dec. 13-14, as Earth passes through a stream of gravelly debris from "rock comet" 3200 Phaethon. Dark-sky observers in both hemispheres could see as many as 120 meteors per hour during the dark hours between midnight and sunrise on Dec. 14th. Last night, Dec. 12-13, NASA's all-sky meteor network detected 15 Geminid fireballs over the USA. That number will surely grow on peak night--tonight! Got clouds? Listen for Geminid echoes in the audio feed from our live meteor radar.



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Geminids meteor shower prediction: Moonless and marvelous

 

 

By Alan MacRobert

Updated 3:12 PM ET, Sat December 12, 2015

Story highlights

• Geminids meteor shower is peaking
• Geminid meteors can flash into view anywhere in the night sky

(Sky and Telescope)The nights of December 13-14 offer dark skies for a popular, underappreciated meteor display.

The Geminid meteor shower competes with August's Perseids for showiness — yet it's not nearly as well-known. The Geminids are easier on your sleep schedule, too. Their radiant (near Castor in Gemini) climbs as high by 11 p.m. standard time (45 degrees above the local horizon) as the Perseid radiant does by 2 a.m. daylight time on the peak Perseid nights. The higher the radiant, the more meteors you'll see.

 

 

The Geminid meteors can flash into view anywhere in the late-night sky when the shower peaks in mid-December. But if you follow their paths back far enough, they all appear to diverge from a point in the constellation Gemini.

 

The International Meteor Organization (IMO) predicts that the Geminids should reach an impressive zenithal hourly rate of 120 this year. (ZHR is how many meteors you'd see see per hour in a very dark sky if the radiant were at the zenith. This year the peak should be centered on roughly 18h Universal Time on December 14. Unfortunately, that's 1 p.m. EST and 10 a.m. PST. So in North America the shower's performance is likely to be similar on the nights of December 13-14 and 14-15.

This week's sky at a glance

 

As the IMO notes, "Near-peak Geminid rates persist for almost a day, so much of the world has a chance to enjoy something of the shower's best." In addition, "mass-sorting within the stream means fainter telescopic meteors should be most abundant almost a day ahead of the visual maximum," and the meteors after maximum are typically brighter than average.

The moon will be a waxing crescent a few days old, no trouble at all.

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Earth Approaching Objects : December 13th, 2015

     

NASA Confirms 60 feet Asteroid is on Course for a Close Encounter with Earth

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Published on Dec 13, 2015

It's hurtling through space at 35,000 miles per hour and this 60 feet space rock will have a very close encounter with earth Asteroid 2015 XY261, which was first observed on December 12, 2015, will pass within 0.8 lunar distances (the distance between Earth and the Moon) of Earth. The space rock is going to pass very close to our planet with a Condition code of 7 - MPC "U" parameter: orbit uncertainty estimate 0-9, with 0 being good, and 9 being highly uncertain. There are currently 8 known NEO asteroids discovered that will pass with less than 10 LD's up to the end of this month. Two mountain-sized asteroids will safely pass on Dec, 24th and 29th. http://lunarmeteoritehunters.blogspot... http://ssd.jpl.nasa.gov/sbdb.cgi?sstr... http://neo.jpl.nasa.gov/ca/ http://www.jpl.nasa.gov/asteroidwatch/ While confirming that the asteroid is not a threat to Earth, scientists say that if the asteroid were on course to impact earth it would cause a multimegaton atmospheric explosion over Earth’s surface, rather than impacting it. It potentially would be quite damaging (and even lethal) out to distances of 20 to 40 kilometers in all directions if it happened over a populated region with weak structures. There is a roughly 50 percent chance of a 30-meter-plus asteroid striking Earth each century, according to NLSI team member Clark Chapman, space scientist at the Southwest Research Institute in Boulder, Colo. Please report your meteor sightings to this website for posting- Remember IF you are looking for a report and no one reports then everyone lacks information; thank you. http://lunarmeteoritehunters.blogspot... Music credit: Impact Prelude by Kevin MacLeod is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution licence (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/...) Source: http://incompetech.com/music/royalty-... Artist: http://incompetech.com/

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All Sky Fireball Network

Every night, a network of NASA all-sky cameras scans the skies above the United States for meteoritic fireballs. Automated software maintained by NASA's Meteoroid Environment Office calculates their orbits, velocity, penetration depth in Earth's atmosphere and many other characteristics. Daily results are presented here on Spaceweather.com.

On Dec. 13, 2015, the network reported 29 fireballs.
(15 Geminids, 10 sporadics, 2 December Monocerotids, 1 Quadrantid, 1 alpha Canis Majorid)

In this diagram of the inner solar system, all of the fireball orbits intersect at a single point--Earth. The orbits are color-coded by velocity, from slow (red) to fast (blue). [Larger image] [movies]

Near Earth Asteroids

Potentially Hazardous Asteroids (PHAs) are space rocks larger than approximately 100m that can come closer to Earth than 0.05 AU. None of the known PHAs is on a collision course with our planet, although astronomers are finding new ones all the time.

On December 13, 2015 there were potentially hazardous asteroids.

Recent & Upcoming Earth-asteroid encounters:

Asteroid	Date(UT)	Miss Distance	Size
2015 XU169	Dec 10	9.5 LD	16 m
1998 WT24	Dec 11	10.9 LD	1.1 km
2015 XA169	Dec 12	7.4 LD	15 m
2015 XR169	Dec 13	1.3 LD	8 m
2015 XX128	Dec 14	2.4 LD	25 m
2015 XX169	Dec 14	8.4 LD	14 m
2015 XN55	Dec 15	2.5 LD	15 m
2015 XY261	Dec 15	0.8 LD	16 m
2015 XL261	Dec 17	9.7 LD	42 m
2015 XE1	Dec 19	13.2 LD	29 m
2015 XN261	Dec 23	2.6 LD	31 m
2011 YD29	Dec 24	9.7 LD	24 m
2003 SD220	Dec 24	28.4 LD	1.8 km
2008 CM	Dec 29	22.8 LD	1.5 km
2004 MQ1	Jan 2	55.4 LD	1.1 km
1999 JV6	Jan 6	12.6 LD	410 m
1685 Toro	Jan 22	60.9 LD	1.7 km
2001 XR1	Jan 23	74.4 LD	1.5 km
2015 VC2	Jan 28	5.8 LD	15 m

Notes: LD means "Lunar Distance." 1 LD = 384,401 km, the distance between Earth and the Moon. 1 LD also equals 0.00256 AU. MAG is the visual magnitude of the asteroid on the date of closest approach.

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By studying data from NASA's Spitzer Space Telescope, Astronomers conclude a mysterious dimming star was probably caused by a family of passing comets.

Your source for the latest research news

Comet fragments best explanation of mysterious dimming star

Date:

November 25, 2015

Source:

Iowa State University

Summary:

Astronomers have responded to the buzz about a mysterious dimming star by studying data from NASA's Spitzer Space Telescope. They conclude the dimming was probably caused by a family of comets passing in front of the star.

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This illustration shows a star behind a shattered comet. Observations of the star KIC 8462852 by NASA's Kepler and Spitzer space telescopes suggest that its unusual light signals are likely from dusty comet fragments, which blocked the light of the star as they passed in front of it in 2011 and 2013. The comets are thought to be traveling around the star in a very long, eccentric orbit.

Credit: Illustration by NASA/JPL-Caltech

Was it a catastrophic collision in the star's asteroid belt? A giant impact that disrupted a nearby planet? A dusty cloud of rock and debris? A family of comets breaking apart? Or was it alien megastructures built to harvest the star's energy?

Just what caused the mysterious dimming of star KIC 8462852?

Massimo Marengo, an Iowa State University associate professor of physics and astronomy, wondered when he saw all the buzz about the mysterious star found by citizen scientists on the Planet Hunters website.

Those citizen scientists were highlighting measurements of star brightness recorded by NASA's Kepler spacecraft. Tiny dips in a star's brightness can indicate a planet is passing in front of the star. That's how Kepler astronomers -- and citizen scientists using the internet to help analyze the light curves of stars -- are looking for planets.

But this star had deep dips in brightness -- up to 22 percent. The star's brightness also changed irregularly, sometimes for days and even months at a time. A search of the 150,000-plus stars in Kepler's database found nothing like this.

So Marengo and two other astronomers decided to take a close look at the star using data taken with the Infrared Array Camera of NASA's Spitzer Space Telescope. They report their findings in a paper recently published online by The Astrophysical Journal Letters.

Their conclusion?

"The scenario in which the dimming in the KIC 8462852 light curve were caused by the destruction of a family of comets remains the preferred explanation …," wrote the three -- Marengo; Alan Hulsebus, an Iowa State doctoral student; and Sarah Willis, a former Iowa State graduate student now with the Massachusetts Institute of Technology's Lincoln Laboratory.

Questions about the star were launched last month when a research team led by Tabetha Boyajian of Yale University reported on the star in the Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society. The astronomers reported how citizen scientists tagged the star's deep and irregular dips in brightness as "bizarre" and "interesting."

Boyajian and the other researchers looked at the data and investigated several possible causes. They wrote the "most promising theory" was a barrage of crumbling comets passing in front of the star.
In a subsequent paper submitted to The Astrophysical Journal, Jason Wright and colleagues at Penn State University speculated about other causes, including alien megastructures built to harvest energy while orbiting the star.

When the Iowa State astronomers studied the star with Spitzer infrared data from January 2015 -- two years after the Kepler measurements -- Marengo said they didn't see much. If there had been some kind of catastrophe near the star, he said there would be a lot of dust and debris. And that would show up as extra infrared emissions.

Marengo said the study looked at two different infrared wavelengths: the shorter was consistent with a typical star and the longer showed some infrared emissions, but not enough to reach a detection threshold. The astronomers concluded there were no excess infrared emissions and therefore no sign of an asteroid belt collision, a giant impact on a planet or a dusty cloud of rock and debris.

So Marengo and his colleagues say the destruction of a family of comets near the star is the most likely explanation for the mysterious dimming. The comet fragments coming in rapidly at a steep, elliptical orbit could create a big debris cloud that could dim the star. Then the cloud would move off, restoring the star's brightness and leaving no trace of excess infrared light.

And the alien megastructure theory?

"We didn't look for that," Marengo said. "We can't really say it is, or is not. But what the star is doing is very strange. It's interesting when you have phenomena like that -- typically it means there's some new physical explanation or a new concept to be discovered."

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Story Source:
The above post is reprinted from materials provided by Iowa State University. Note: Materials may be edited for content and length.

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Journal Reference:
Massimo Marengo, Alan Hulsebus, Sarah Willis. KIC 8462852: THE INFRARED FLUX. The Astrophysical Journal, 2015; 814 (1): L15 DOI: 10.1088/2041-8205/814/1/L15

Mars is destined to get a spectacular new planetary ring system to rival that of Saturn, in about 30 million years or so, according to scientists.

ABC.net.au

 

Mars to get planetary ring set to rival Saturn, with moon Phobos set to break up from tidal stress

ABC Science

By Stuart Gary

Updated Mon at 2:50pm

Photo: A computer generated image of the rim of the red planet Mars. (NASA/JPL-Caltech)

 

Mars is destined to get a spectacular new planetary ring system to rival that of Saturn, but don't hold your breath because it will not be for another 30 million years or so, according to scientists.

The findings, published in the journal Nature Geoscience, are based on a new study to determine the fate destined to befall the diminutive Martian moon Phobos.

Over time Phobos is creeping inwards towards Mars at a couple of centimetres per year.

Dr Benjamin Black

"We found that Phobos is too weak to withstand tidal stresses from Mars and we expect it to break apart in a few tens of millions of years and form a ring around Mars," the study's lead author Dr Benjamin Black of the University of California said.

Only the giant planets of the outer solar system have rings at the moment.
Phobos — the larger of the two moons circling Mars — orbits just 6,000 kilometres above the surface of the red planet, closer than any other moon in the solar system.

"Over time Phobos is creeping inwards towards Mars at a couple of centimetres per year," Dr Black said.

"We wanted to figure out whether Phobos crashes into Mars or breaks apart to form a ring, so we needed to know how strong it was — is it going to be able to stand the increasing tidal stresses that are going to be pulling this little moon apart, or will it eventually succumb to these forces?"
Dr Black and co-author Tushar Mittal found that Phobos will be pulled apart by the red planet's gravitational tidal forces in about 20 to 40 million years' time.

"We concluded that Phobos would break apart between 2.4 and about 1.1 Mars radii, somewhere between 8,500 kilometres down to around 4,000 kilometres or so," Dr Black said.



Read More Here

For the first time, astronomers have directly observed a planet in the making.

 

Discovery News

 

 This Massive Exoplanet Is Being Born Right Now

 

Nov 18, 2015 01:00 PM ET // by Irene Klotz

 

Artist's impression of a massive planet being born around a star 430 light-years from Earth.

Karen L. Teramura, UH IfA

The baby planet circles a very young, sun-like star located in a giant cloud of molecular gas 430 light-years from Earth in the constellation Taurus.

PHOTOS: The Most Horrific Alien Planets In Our Galaxy

Astronomers had previously noted a hefty gap in the disk of gas and dust surrounding the star, known as LkCa 15. They suspected the gravitational pull of an evolving planet had cleared out an orbital zone, similar to how some moons circling Saturn create gaps in its rings.

Now, a new series of observations adds key details of the planet-in-the-making, showing for the first time how it is feeding on hydrogen gas.

“This discovery has far-reaching implications for our understanding of the planet-forming process and of the properties of young planets,” Princeton University astrophysicist Zhaohuan Zhu wrote in a commentary in this week’s Nature.

Read More Here

Related Links

 

Is This a Baby Picture of a Giant Planet?

Strange Stellar Spirals Could Hide Baby Exoplanets

Two Exocomet Families Found Around Baby Star System

 

For the first time, astronomers have directly observed a planet in the making.

Play Video

'Goldilocks' Earth May Not Be So Special After All

Earth is in what's called the habitable zone. It's far enough from the sun that it doesn't get fried, and close enough that it gets the best of its warmth. We like to think we're special for this, but it turns out we might be pretty run of the mill.

Earth Approaching Objects : November 18th, 2015

 

All Sky Fireball Network

 

by Dr. Tony Phillips.


Every night, a network of NASA all-sky cameras scans the skies above the United States for meteoritic fireballs. Automated software maintained by NASA's Meteoroid Environment Office calculates their orbits, velocity, penetration depth in Earth's atmosphere and many other characteristics. Daily results are presented here on Spaceweather.com.

On Nov. 17, 2015, the network reported 38 fireballs.
(23 sporadics, 9 Northern Taurids, 3 Leonids, 2 November I Draconids, 1 omicron Eridanid)

In this diagram of the inner solar system, all of the fireball orbits intersect at a single point--Earth. The orbits are color-coded by velocity, from slow (red) to fast (blue). [Larger image] [movies]

Near Earth Asteroids

Potentially Hazardous Asteroids (PHAs) are space rocks larger than approximately 100m that can come closer to Earth than 0.05 AU. None of the known PHAs is on a collision course with our planet, although astronomers are finding new ones all the time.

On November 18, 2015 there were 1634 potentially hazardous asteroids.

Recent & Upcoming Earth-asteroid encounters:

Asteroid	Date(UT)	Miss Distance	Size
2015 VR64	Nov 12	3 LD	14 m
2015 VV105	Nov 13	9 LD	10 m
2015 VU65	Nov 14	5.2 LD	23 m
2015 VY105	Nov 15	0.09 LD	7 m
2015 VN105	Nov 16	5.5 LD	13 m
2015 VD105	Nov 16	7.2 LD	52 m
2015 VC106	Nov 18	7 LD	24 m
2005 UL5	Nov 20	5.9 LD	390 m
2015 VE66	Nov 21	7.5 LD	64 m
2015 VO142	Nov 24	1 LD	7 m
2015 VH2	Nov 24	12.9 LD	14 m
2003 EB50	Nov 29	48.8 LD	2.2 km
2007 BG29	Dec 1	54.1 LD	1.1 km
2015 VZ145	Dec 8	9.2 LD	81 m
1998 WT24	Dec 11	10.9 LD	1.1 km
2011 YD29	Dec 24	9.7 LD	24 m
2003 SD220	Dec 24	28.4 LD	1.8 km
2008 CM	Dec 29	22.8 LD	1.5 km
2004 MQ1	Jan 2	55.4 LD	1.1 km
1999 JV6	Jan 6	12.6 LD	410 m

Notes: LD means "Lunar Distance." 1 LD = 384,401 km, the distance between Earth and the Moon. 1 LD also equals 0.00256 AU. MAG is the visual magnitude of the asteroid on the date of closest approach.

Part of Pluto's Heart Was 'Born Yesterday'

SPACE.com

 

by Nola Taylor Redd, Space.com Contributor   |   November 11, 2015 07:56am ET

By counting craters across Pluto, scientists determined that some regions of the dwarf planet are as young as 10 million years old while others are nearly as old as the 4.5-billion-year-old solar system. Credit: NASA/Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory/Southwest Research Institute

NATIONAL HARBOR, Md. – Pluto has a surprisingly youthful heart — the smooth, round region on the dwarf planet'ssurface is no more than 10 million years old, a blink of an eye in the 4.5-billion-year lifetime of the solar system.

The large,western lobe of the "heart" on Pluto's surface is also known as Sputnik Planum, and it is strikingly free of craters. Thissuggeststhat geologic processes recentlysmoothedthe region over. Researchers with NASA's New Horizons mission said this is surprising, because such processes require an internal heat source, which is often lost in small bodies like Pluto.

"It's a huge finding that small planets can be active on a massive scale, billions of years after their creation," New Horizons principal investigator Alan Stern, of the Southwest Research Institute (SWRI) in Colorado, said on Monday (Nov. 9) at the Division of Planetary Sciences of the American Astronomical Society (AAS) meeting in National Harbor, Maryland. [See more amazing Pluto photos from New Horizons]

The New Horizons team announced several major findings at the meeting. Besides age estimates for other regions of Pluto, the scientists announced new information about the dwarf planet's hazy, surprisingly small atmosphere; the discovery of what may be ice volcanoes on Pluto's surface; and evidence that Pluto's four smallest moons are spinning around the dwarf planet in "pandemonium."

Read More Here

Pluto continues to deliver surprises. Spinning moons, possible ice volcanoes detected on dwarf planet

Science News

News

Planetary Science,

Mission to Pluto

By

Christopher Crockett

5:54pm, November 9, 2015

OUT-OF-THIS-WORLD LANDSCAPE The latest data from the New Horizons mission has helped create topographical maps of Pluto (blue shows lower elevations, brown, higher elevations) that have revealed surprises such as these two possible ice volcanoes, the first of their kind in the outer solar system.

SwRI, JHUAPL, NASA

OXON HILL, Md. — At this point, the only thing unsurprising about Pluto is that it continues to offer up surprises.

A wide variety of landscapes, ongoing surface transformations and a family of wildly spinning moons are among the riddles reported by the New Horizons mission team November 9 at a meeting of the American Astronomical Society’s Division for Planetary Sciences.

“Pluto is like a graduate course in planetary science,” mission leader Alan Stern said at a news briefing. “It’s going to take the larger planetary science community many years to digest all this.”

The New Horizons spacecraft, which buzzed the dwarf planet on July 14, has so far sent back only about 20 percent of the data it acquired from the Pluto system. And every new nugget continues a story that’s pretty familiar by now: Pluto is a weird place.

Terrains both new and old sit side-by-side on Pluto’s surface. Some heavily cratered regions are roughly 4 billion years old, about as old as Pluto itself. Others, like the now famous heart, appear to have been laid down within the last 10 million years, judging by the total lack of craters.

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A mysterious space object labeled WT1190F is falling to Earth early in the morning on Friday, November 13.

     

ALERT: WTF Space Object Fall to Earth on Friday the 13th

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Published on Nov 12, 2015

A mysterious space object labeled WT1190F is falling to Earth early in the morning on Friday, November 13. WT1190F, an unidentified space object, is hurtling toward Earth. Some say it's just a discarded piece of junk, but others wonder if it's something more. The mysterious object is predicted to be space junk, possibly a remnant from an Apollo mission. It’s seven feet long and, due to its orbit, has been determined to be artificial in nature. The object will be impacting the Earth about 65 km off the southern coast of Sri Lanka. It’s not expected to be dangerous, but the area around its predicted impact has been labeled a no-fly zone for November 12 and 13. Boats are also prohibited in the area, Daily News reported. Heavy.com http://tinyurl.com/pmxkebt http://heavy.com/news/2015/10/what-is... You can watch a free livestream as the object hurtles to Earth on Slooh.com http://live.slooh.com/stadium/live/wt...

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acidic fog created by volcanic eruptions on the red planet is the probable culprit for the erosion of rocks on Mars, believe scientists..

Eaten away by ‘vog’: Acid fog eroding rocks on Mars

Published time: 8 Nov, 2015 06:39

 

 

 

The planet Mars showing showing Terra Meridiani is seen in an undated NASA image. © Greg Shirah / Reuters

Scientists believe they have figured out why rocks on Mars are eroding. They say an acidic fog created by volcanic eruptions on the red planet is the probable culprit.

 

Planetary scientist Shoshanna Cole came up with the theory after studying a 100-acre area on Husband Hill in the Columbia Hills of the Gusev Crater on Mars using data gathered by a number of instruments on the 2003 Mars Exploration Rover Spirit.

She found that acidic vapors released by eruptions may have been responsible for eating away rocks on the Watchtower Class outcrops on the Cumberland Ridge and Husband Hill summit.

 

Follow

Corey S. Powell @coreyspowell

Acid fog corroded the surface of Mars: a new discovery from NASA's long-dead Spirit rover. http://bit.ly/1H6jT0V 

1:40 PM - 4 Nov 2015

“The special thing about Watchtower Class is that it’s very widespread and we see it in different locations. As far as we can tell, it is part of the ground there,” which means that these rocks record environments that existed on Mars billions of years ago, Cole said in a press release submitted by the Geological Society of America.



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Top Sky Event: Moon, Venus, Jupiter and Mars Just Before Sunrise

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Published on Nov 5, 2015

In the coming mornings – November 6 and 7, 2015 the moon will be sweeping past the planets in the east before dawn. The moon will join the king planet Jupiter on the morning of November 6, and, on that day, the moon and Jupiter will be shining over another close-knit morning couple – Venus and Mars.

The moon, Venus and Jupiter are the brightest objects in the sky, after the sun. They rank as the second-brightest, third-brightest and fourth-brightest celestial bodies, respectively. In the coming days, these brilliant worlds at morning dawn will be a glorious sight.
http://earthsky.org/tonight

Music credit: Touchpoint by Audionautix is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution licence (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/...)
Artist: http://audionautix.com/

It Rains Fireballs - Earth is Passing Through a Stream of Debris from Comet Encke

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Published on Nov 5, 2015

Exploding fireballs reported all over the globe. It rains fireballs.
http://lunarmeteoritehunters.blogspot...

Earth is passing through a stream of gravelly debris from Comet Encke, source of the annual Taurid meteor shower. Meteoroids the size of pebbles, and larger, are disintegrating as they hit our planet's atmosphere at 30 up to 90 km/s.

Earth runs unto the debris zone of Comet Encke every year around this time. Usually, the encounter produces a minor meteor shower, but 2015 is different. The Canadian Meteor Orbit Radar (CMOR) is seeing stronger Taurid activity than any of the last few years.

Bright fireballs are coming from a "swarm" of gravelly meteoroids that weaves in and out of Comet Encke's dusty debris zone. In some years, Earth hits the swarm; in other years it misses.
2015 appears to be a hit.
http://spaceweather.com/

File Meteor Report here: http://lunarmeteoritehunters.blogspot...

Clips credit: NASA

Music credit: YouTube Audio Library
Cry - Vibe Tracks

Earth approaching objects - November 3rd, 2015

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Image Source  NASA
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All Sky Fireball Network

By Dr. Tony Phillips.


Every night, a network of NASA all-sky cameras scans the skies above the United States for meteoritic fireballs. Automated software maintained by NASA's Meteoroid Environment Office calculates their orbits, velocity, penetration depth in Earth's atmosphere and many other characteristics. Daily results are presented here on Spaceweather.com.

On Nov. 2, 2015, the network reported 37 fireballs.
(22 sporadics, 14 Northern Taurids, 1 Orionid)

In this diagram of the inner solar system, all of the fireball orbits intersect at a single point--Earth. The orbits are color-coded by velocity, from slow (red) to fast (blue). [Larger image] [movies]

Near Earth Asteroids
Potentially Hazardous Asteroids (PHAs) are space rocks larger than approximately 100m that can come closer to Earth than 0.05 AU. None of the known PHAs is on a collision course with our planet, although astronomers are finding new ones all the time.
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Earth approaching objects (objects that are known in the next 30 days)
Object Name	Apporach Date	Left	AU Distance	LD Distance	Estimated Diameter*	Relative Velocity
(2010 UJ7)	02nd November 2015	0 day(s)	0.1582	61.6	22 m - 49 m	13.31 km/s	47916 km/h
(2015 TG238)	03rd November 2015	1 day(s)	0.1865	72.6	76 m - 170 m	12.02 km/s	43272 km/h
(2015 TD179)	03rd November 2015	1 day(s)	0.0271	10.6	35 m - 78 m	10.12 km/s	36432 km/h
(2009 LD)	05th November 2015	3 day(s)	0.1397	54.4	15 m - 34 m	9.49 km/s	34164 km/h
(2002 XY38)	05th November 2015	3 day(s)	0.0828	32.2	70 m - 160 m	8.85 km/s	31860 km/h
(2015 TM143)	06th November 2015	4 day(s)	0.0690	26.8	51 m - 110 m	6.37 km/s	22932 km/h
(2015 TL143)	06th November 2015	4 day(s)	0.0657	25.6	70 m - 160 m	8.57 km/s	30852 km/h
(2008 VA15)	06th November 2015	4 day(s)	0.0750	29.2	51 m - 110 m	5.47 km/s	19692 km/h
(2008 WQ2)	08th November 2015	6 day(s)	0.0679	26.4	37 m - 82 m	8.45 km/s	30419.999999999996 km/h
(2012 HG8)	08th November 2015	6 day(s)	0.1924	74.9	310 m - 680 m	19.44 km/s	69984 km/h
138852 (2000 WN10)	10th November 2015	8 day(s)	0.1259	49.0	240 m - 540 m	13.78 km/s	49608 km/h
(2010 XC15)	10th November 2015	8 day(s)	0.1508	58.7	140 m - 310 m	12.75 km/s	45900 km/h
(2005 UN)	12th November 2015	10 day(s)	0.1550	60.3	18 m - 39 m	8.59 km/s	30924 km/h
(2000 WP19)	15th November 2015	13 day(s)	0.0586	22.8	80 m - 180 m	10.43 km/s	37548 km/h
(2012 LA11)	16th November 2015	14 day(s)	0.0678	26.4	16 m - 36 m	4.88 km/s	17568 km/h
(2009 WN6)	18th November 2015	16 day(s)	0.1087	42.3	31 m - 68 m	10.02 km/s	36072 km/h
(2015 TO178)	18th November 2015	16 day(s)	0.0913	35.5	33 m - 75 m	6.19 km/s	22284 km/h
413577 (2005 UL5)	19th November 2015	17 day(s)	0.0153	5.9	240 m - 540 m	18.99 km/s	68364 km/h
(2002 VV17)	19th November 2015	17 day(s)	0.1582	61.6	270 m - 590 m	10.26 km/s	36936 km/h
(2005 UJ6)	20th November 2015	18 day(s)	0.1580	61.5	130 m - 300 m	17.60 km/s	63360.00000000001 km/h
(2005 EW169)	21st November 2015	19 day(s)	0.0940	36.6	400 m - 900 m	8.90 km/s	32040 km/h
(2015 RQ82)	23rd November 2015	21 day(s)	0.0739	28.7	97 m - 220 m	8.24 km/s	29664 km/h
(2011 YS62)	23rd November 2015	21 day(s)	0.0915	35.6	310 m - 680 m	14.10 km/s	50760 km/h
(2009 WB105)	24th November 2015	22 day(s)	0.0385	15.0	58 m - 130 m	18.88 km/s	67968 km/h
(2010 YC1)	26th November 2015	24 day(s)	0.1948	75.8	150 m - 330 m	14.08 km/s	50688 km/h
(2004 BG41)	26th November 2015	24 day(s)	0.0770	30.0	35 m - 78 m	10.25 km/s	36900 km/h
(2012 XA133)	26th November 2015	24 day(s)	0.1134	44.1	180 m - 390 m	26.99 km/s	97164 km/h
(2011 HJ7)	26th November 2015	24 day(s)	0.0893	34.8	100 m - 230 m	13.57 km/s	48852 km/h
(2015 LE21)	27th November 2015	25 day(s)	0.1126	43.8	31 m - 68 m	3.71 km/s	13356 km/h
163696 (2003 EB50)	28th November 2015	26 day(s)	0.1254	48.8	1.4 km - 3.1 km	23.68 km/s	85248 km/h
(2007 EA26)	28th November 2015	26 day(s)	0.1115	43.4	210 m - 470 m	8.19 km/s	29484 km/h
(1999 VN6)	29th November 2015	27 day(s)	0.1865	72.6	350 m - 780 m	12.33 km/s	44388 km/h
345722 (2007 BG29)	30th November 2015	28 day(s)	0.1390	54.1	670 m - 1.5 km	11.26 km/s	40536 km/h
(2014 WM7)	30th November 2015	28 day(s)	0.0796	31.0	51 m - 110 m	10.08 km/s	36288 km/h
(2005 XT77)	01st December 2015	29 day(s)	0.1679	65.3	180 m - 390 m	9.70 km/s	34920 km/h
1 AU = ~150 million kilometers,1 LD = Lunar Distance = ~384,000 kilometers Source: NASA-NEO

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Notes: LD means "Lunar Distance." 1 LD = 384,401 km, the distance between Earth and the Moon. 1 LD also equals 0.00256 AU. MAG is the visual magnitude of the asteroid on the date of closest approach.