Giant flash in the sky
Last night just before midnight central time, my friend and I were walking outside when all of a sudden the sky changed from black to purple to sea-green to whitish blue, all in the space of a few seconds. It was really bright, i mean brighter than day. Then it faded back to normal. We listened to the news on the radio and people were saying it was a meteor shower, and people saw it as far north as Milwaukee and as far south as tenessee. Anyone else see this or hear anything of it?
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http://www.spaceweather.com/
Subscribe to the mailing list - it's low volume and gives nifty alerts for aurora watches and other nifty solar/plantary events. |
Great site -- thanks, mcleodnine!
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It would be an _awesome_ site if they could get the Auroras to happen on a clear night. :)
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A metric ton is 1000 kg, which would give a density of (assuming a sphere):
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10000kg/[4/3 * Pi * (1m)^3] ~ 2386 kg/m^3. |
I saw "Giant flash in the sky" and I was thinking of breasts...
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It looks like moses beat me to it. ;) My good friend Carole has a rock and gem store so of course I checked with her and she provided me with a meteorite sample. It's a blobby little hunk of metal that weighs in at about 107g and is quite attracted to a magnet recovered from an old hard drive so I'm going to assume it's mostly iron. Armed with a postal scale and some water I figured this piece to be around 4700kg/m^3. It's pretty obvious that I really need to find something better to do with my weekends. ;) |
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do that about 1/4 time). That meteorite she provided you with is probably nickel-iron (most commonly found, least common impactor). I like your volume measurement technique, most people don't remember Archimedes. =-} |
I use to love to see the aurora in Alaska back in the eighties (I imagine it hasn't changed). Most beautiful thing I have ever seen.
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