Noisy Meteor!!!!!! ????

[ballaratdragons]

I was just outside setting up for another night of clear sky imaging when from inside the control room I saw a slight flash and heard what sounded like a Jet go by (a high pitch whistling 'wooosh' noise), but faster than any Jet I've even know of. Then a thump like the sound barrier being broken!!! Every dog for miles is barking!

It was a different sounds to fireworks if thats what anyone suggests, and fireworks don't make a sound from Horizon to Horizon. And it took about 2 seconds to go from Horizon to Horizon!!!

Anyone see or hear this???? It was about 10:35pm.

[fringe_dweller]

woah electrophonic noise possibly? - you lucky lucky lucky...lucky person! I have only heard one loud speccy one before - one theory is that its a RF signal from meteor, as its instant unlike sound, and dry things like grass, dry leaves, clothes ect act as receivers/amplifiers i think

was it hissy like static/ and or fizzling sparkler?

you lucky lucky lucky .. :)

[Rob_K]

Ken, I wouldn't jump to the meteor conclusion too quickly without more info. Because the 'flash' and sound were close, whatever it was had to be right on top of you. We get similar experiences here regularly, with Air Force jets doing their terrain-hugging manoeuvres straight up the valley on their way over the mountains to the Sale base. Usually though, it's more a loud whine than a whoosh, but man, it's over in seconds leaving you wondering what the hell just happened!!! Because they're so low, "horizon-to-horizon noise" effectively spans just a mile or two. And at Mach speeds, that's not much time!

While some people claim to be able to hear meteors, I'm a bit sceptical because the 'noise' always seems to be concurrent with the meteor flash. I live under the Melbourne-Sydney flight path, and the sound for planes in the high slots can lag 20sec or more behind the visible jets. Meteorites I could understand if you were very close to the hit zone. Have you searched for eyewitness accounts of these? I would have thought that 2-sec travel overhead would be way too slow for a meteorite strike....?? Ie if it's close enough for the sound and flash to be concurrent, it'd be past you in a fraction of a second.

Hope you find out! :thumbsup:

Cheers -

Rob

[ballaratdragons]

It sounded like high pitched wooosh noise but with a fizzling Sparkler sound. (if that makes any sense)


The flash was about a second before the noise. (I think there was a flash, can't be 100% sure but I remember something, then the noise)

And the noise was about half a second loud and about 1 - 1.5 seconds faded.

Also, there are no jets, military or otherwise anywhere near here, and from growing up around Military Aircraft and a stint in the Air Force myself, I know it wasn't an aircraft.

[ballaratdragons]

Just checked all the News sites. Nothing!

Must have been a massive sky rocket launched horizontally :screwy:

[sheeny]

G'Day Ken.

Interesting observation you've made I hope you find out what it was.

Back in 1989 (sooo last century!) I was observing by myself from Falls Hill over looking town. I had my head down in some star charts when the area lit up. I thought a car had driven up behind me, then realised I didn't hear a car! I looked up and the whole town was lit up by a blue light not quite as bright as day (so it was probably fairly dim in all honesty as my eyes were dark adapted). The light was coming from a big fireball streaking over town towards me from the east. It broke in two and then into smaller bits which then burned up orange. But like you it was the sizzling noise that really made my hair stand up on end! That impressed me - it must've been so close! No sonic boom though.

For a long time I couldn't find anyone who had noticed this event, until last year. They remembered it as vividly as I did!;)

Al.

[5ash]

This discussion brought to mind Professor Keay's theory of electophonics and the passage of bolides through the atmosphere.Those of you who have association with our Newcastle university in the Hunter may already know of his ideas. I have briefly extracted some development of this theory from an essay i found on the web titled "What planet is this?" Essays by Sean B palmer .30 Oct 2005. This extract is as follows:
Electrophonic Sounds from Bolides
On 19th March 1719 a very bright meteor, usually known as a fireball or bolide, was seen across England and Scotland .Edmond Halley, who would replace John Flamsteed as Astronomer Royal the next year, collected a series of accounts of this bolide and published them in the Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society. The sightings enabled him to derive the bolide's course by triangulation, and as Halley concluded, "they abundantly evince the height thereof to have exceeded sixty English miles." Halley also wrote about the effects of fancy that people under the bolide's path reported, including "hearing it hiss as it went along", feeling "the Warmth of its Beams", and such like .Meanwhile People continued to report sounds associated with meteors, and after another remarkable bolide in 1783 the physician Sir Charles Blagden published a study into the subsequent hissing reports. The debate carried on into the twentieth century. In 1933 noted meteor researcher C.C. Wylie dismissed noises accompanying meteors as a purely psychological phenomenon. In 1937 Stanley Smith Stevens coined the term "electrophonic noise" for sound heard by electrical stimulation, which Peter Dravert adapted in 1940 as "electrophonic bolides" for meteors which cause electrophonic noise. The first major turn towards the acceptance of electrophonic bolides came with C.S.L. Keay's (Of our own Newcastle University) 1980 theory of Geophysical Electrophonics whereby radio waves emitted by meteors could be transduced into audible noise by objects on the ground. It was another remarkable bolide that had prompted his studies, one which passed over Sydney, Australia, on 7th April 1978. First published in the journal Science, Keay's theory was such that meteors can emit radio waves in the VLF range, which is an equivalent frequency to audible sound. It also proposed a mechanism by which these radio waves could be produced, called the "magnetic spaghetti" effect, though it wasn't until 1990 that they were first detected by a Japanese team at Nagoya University.

philip

[ballaratdragons]

ahhhhhh. Thanks Philip. :thumbsup:

I know it wasn't "a purely psychological phenomenon" as I didn't think much of the slight flash I think I saw. But the noise was real!!!!

[stephend]

I hope Professor Keay is still in business at UoN; I would like to know more about the magnetic spaghetti idea.
I heard the suggestion that big meteors might be heard coming, even though obviously they travel at more than the speed of sound, several years ago. It sounds very plausible, though on the other hand there would seem to be a corollary: if so, then smaller meteors would probably produce (weaker) radio signals, too. So there would be an abundance of peculiar, short, sharp radio signals. If so, you would think things other than blades of grass, etc., would detect these signals.

[IanL]

Yip you can hear meteors.
Have a look at this.
http://www.space.com/spacewatch/leonids_spacewatch_021115.html (http://www.space.com/spacewatch/leonids_spacewatch_021115.html)

Better still if you have a radio with CW SSB mode on it. You should hear a ping as the meteor passes by. Do this during a meteor shower and you should hear far more than you can see.
A meteor ping should sound like this.
http://www.spaceweather.com/meteors/audio/geminidecho.wav
http://www.spaceweather.com/glossary/forwardscatter.html

Ian

[fringe_dweller]

great read there Philip :thumbsup:

Aurora's have long been known to create electrophonic noise, specially in polar regions, the sheer amount of people that have heard them is a lot more than for meteors! and aurora happen at similar distances from the ground as meteors

The time I heard/saw the really good one was during peak of 1998 leonid fireball shower, about 1 am (or 12 in non daylight time), and was a classic earthgrazing, minus good knows what, -15? lol, behemoth that crossed the entire sky overhead, disappeared over western horizon! over the gulf. there was three of us present, and we are all very different people, and we all heard it very very clearly and loudly. Funny thing was it was sparkling like a sparkler visually, and sounding like one at the same time, bizarre.

i have heard one or two very faint sizzles from smaller fireballs, spread over many years.

i know of a near famous electrophonic fireball seen from sa to vic, that actaully landed in vic, famously during the '80s.

[sheeny]

Thanks for that Philip!:thumbsup:

It makes a lot of sense w.r.t. the fireball / bolide I saw... I convinced myself it must've been close cause I could hear the sound, but all my other observation (or lack of a sonic boom) suggests it was quite high.

Very interesting discussion guys!

BTW why "bolide"? Are they a bolide until they collide with something and become a dolide???:P

Al.

[fringe_dweller]

Al, it's a loose term I think, for most people, a bolide is a fireball that ends in a dramatic terminal flash, and ideally a sonic boom following with suitable delay. Or it can be one of the those ones that you dont see a trail prior, but just a big bright explosive flash, thats my understanding of the term anyways. :)

[AUSMCMLXXXV]

i was talking to a mate of mine on this subject only last week,

he remembers hearing that meteorite before he saw it, that it was in daylight. and that it landed somewher in country victoria. around the 1986 mark?

ive only ever seen one in daylight. 1999 or 2000 i think..
love to see another.

cheers

[jjjnettie]

Thank you Ken for bringing this up.
I was camping out bush a few years ago when a fireball lit up the sky. It must have come down quite close to where we were. I definitely heard a sparkler/sizzling bacon sound accompany it.
The Electrophonic Theory gives me the logical answer to what I heard.

[fringe_dweller]

I didnt know it was in the daylight? thats possible, the one i remember I thought was seen by a lot of people out specifically looking at Halleys comet at same time, so '86 seems right, maybe it was twilight? It was big news at the time, and made all the papers/news.
i did have some info on it once, cant find it now, probably on google/wiki though LOL its got a typical name like 'name of nearby town' fall? meteorite? Think museum has it? could be imagining that part tho

Seen 4 awesome daylight ones in two related pairs once, sun's disk was just coming over hills, so technically not full daylight, but sure seemed like full daytime, they looked amazing with sunlight lighting up great smoking trains, pretty rare sight just the same, I read that mornings the best time for daylight fireballs?

[Lert]

Thanks for reminding me about this Ken.. Several years ago when a major meteor shower was forcast I got up at 3am to have a look. As luck would have it, the sky was completly clouded over. Anyway I sat outside for a while in the quiet and was amazed to hear what sounded like a meteor go over in a north south direction. I would describe the sound as a low frequency 'drone' with doppler shift. About 2 or 3 seconds duration only.
This started me on a mission with Google lasting about 6 months and a dark and lonely path it was. Ended up learning more about electrophonic bolides, ball lightning, Tesla energy transmission, weather caused earthquakes etc etc. than I really needed to know. I even ended up communication with a bloke in Russia on the subject..:P

[Lester]

Wow, Ken what an experience.

How bright would you estimate it to have been?

[space oddity]

At a star party nearly 3 years ago(SPSP) a fireball was to be seen. As it broke up into 3 pieces, I heard the crackling noises. Unfortunately, I was not yet into meteorites so did not appreciate my good fortune at hearing it(I am deaf as a doornail)- I had assumed that the bolide must have been very close and the pieces may be relatively close. Poor note keeping meant that I do not know which of the WIDE field photos I was taking at the time contains this particular bolide:(. Most of the photos taken that night had meteors on them (fisheye shots). Apparently, only a small percentage of people can hear the electrophonic hiss, generally assumed to be transmittion of RF frequencies from the bolide to nearby metal structures for retransmition and hence why the sound was heard at the same time as the bolide broke up. Hopefully there will be a next time and i can really appreciate it:).

[ballaratdragons]

Sorry Lester, I didn't see it, I heard it.

I only think I saw a faint flash. I was inside my control room. :thumbsup:

[Night Owl]

I saw and heard one back in 1981 at 11:55PM Christmas eve (took notes). I heard a noise like a big jet flying over under full power so looked up and WOW! There was no big bright burning head, but it was massive, as it appeared as big or bigger than a full moon in size. It was shedding dense clouds of swirling red sparks, no green or blue fire etc, just swirling red sparks flowing like a bow wave and turbulent in the wake, much like a campfire burning in a strong wind. It also traveresed half the sky in about 5 to 7 seconds from west 45 degrees from the horizon to east. It never exploded, it just gradually diminished its shedding of sparks and the noise also faded with it until it disappeared. It didn't even leave an ionization trail. All I could put it down to was a massive 'dirty snowball', with some dust and junk leaving the sparks as the head melted, and that it had grazed the atmosphere and then went back on its merry way, with a bit less velocity! The friend I was with and myself were convinced had it hit the ground there would have been one hell of a bang and a huge crater somewhere.

I never witnessed this one, but it is an interesting tale. The grandfather of a friend of mine once told me his father, back in the 1870s, near Creswick in Victoria, was walking back from a hard days farming at dusk, and on the horizon to the west they both saw a 'new' star appear, and gradually get brighter, then bigger, and then it got so big and bright it scared them, then it hit the ground close enough to them to see it gouge a trench four foot wide and over thirty feet long in the soft earth, and then ricochet up and dissapear into the sky in the darkening eastern sky. They picked themselves up, had a look at the hole, and went home.:eyepop:

[caleb]

:cool3:sure it wasn't the 70's..... wacky tobaci

[ballaratdragons]

:rofl: Classic!

[h0ughy]

Ken Dr Colin Keay is very much alive but no longer at Uni of Newcastle as he is retired. here are a few links to articles explaining his theory

http://www.ips.gov.au/Educational/1/1/1
http://www.ips.gov.au/Educational/1/1/2
http://www.meteorobs.org/maillist/msg20622.html
http://science.nasa.gov/headlines/y2001/ast26nov_1.htm
http://www.gefsproject.org/electrophones/

if you like I can get you in contact with him via email.

[MrB]

Sorry, kinda long but hopefully entertaining enough:
I too have 'heard' a bolide.

I think it was either 1993 or 1994 or maybe even 1995.... somewhere around there anyway!
I was outside, mindlessly stargazing and getting a breath of cool air on a summer night, as I do almost every night before I hit the sack. Seconds later I climbed into bed and was just about to close my eyes when I heard a popping/crackling sound, wondered what it was so sat up and looked out my open window.
The whole scene was bathed in a bright greenish glow that kinda pulsated and flashed irregularly.
About 5 to 10 seconds later it was all over, I was confused for a while but convinced myself it must have been an electrical fault,(Above ground power poles here) even tho the amount of light didn't sit comfortably in my mind.
I looked at my watch and it was only a few seconds after 2am. Thought that was a pretty cool coincidence.(yeah sure I remember that but not the year!)
But the light just didn't seem right, then I realised the bright glow went right out to the horizon... I lived on the beach then and Penguin island - which is maybe 3k away - was brightly lit, more so than with a full moon. What could produce so much light?

I was just laying there thinking about it when there was an extremely deep, almost subsonic, powerfull(but not loud) boom that rattled my bedroom window. By now I was getting kinda spooked but with some more thought I decided it must have been a meteor.
I started kicking myself for not staying out and stargazing for just a min longer!

Sure enough it was the cover story on the morning paper and the evening news which was full of eye-witness stories from truckies and security guards etc. There were even people who told they were woken by stuff falling on their roofs, while flashing chunks of rock to the camera.

Still pissed that I missed seeing it.

It happened to me again at a star party, was manually guiding a film camera, when suddenly I was casting one hell of a shadow!
Lasted a good 4 seconds, accompanied by many screams and hoots and cheers... ofcourse all this happened behind me! Grrrrrr.
Don't remember hearing anything of that one.

Again, maybe 2003/04, on a stinkin' hot night with all my windows open, was just lying there staring out the window when suddenly everything was lit extremely brightly for a second. I waited for the thunder... and thought, 'was that light a kinda greenish tinge?'
The thunder never came, so I wandered outside and the sky was clear from horizon to horizon! D'OH!


I did see one tho, during the day, maybe around sunset at the latest.
Was probably about 1990-ish in a car with my brother and his mate. We all saw a huge fireball in the north sky, maybe 30deg up from the horizon, streaking from west to east and crossing easily half the sky before splitting into two. The trail it left looked like a forked snake tongue, pretty speccy.