Nothing of this in our media - instead of that an item on why you cannot trust the media for these stories - just the 'exaggeration' of tweeters!
Suspected meteor explosion reported in central Cuba
Suspected meteor explosion reported in central Cuba
16
February, 2013
HAVANA,
Feb. 15 (Xinhua) -- An object fell from the sky over central Cuba on
Thursday night and turned into a fireball "bigger than the sun"
before it exploded, a Cuban TV channel reported Friday, citing
eyewitnesses.
Some residents in the central province of Cienfuegos were quoted as saying that at around 8 p.m. local time Thursday (0100 GMT Friday) they saw a bright spot in the sky comparable to a bus in size.
The object then turned into a fireball "bigger than the sun," said the witnesses, adding that several minutes later they heard a loud explosion.
One resident told the TV station that his house shook slightly in the blast.
Cuban experts have been dispatched to the area to look for possible remains of the meteor-like object, said the report.
It remains unknown whether the reported phenomenon in Cuba is related to Friday's meteor strike in central Russia, which set off a shockwave that shattered windows and left some 1,000 people injured.
Meteor streaks across Bay Area skies
16
February, 2013
It
may not have been as spectacular as the space rock that streaked
across the skies above Russia late Thursday, but the Bay Area's close
encounter with a meteor Friday night was drawing its own attention on
social networks.
Comments
on Twitter indicated the object that flashed across the horizon
around 7:45 p.m. was blue in color and visible throughout the Bay
Area and large areas of the West Coast, with at least one reported
sighting in Washington state.
Amateur
video footage broadcast on KTVU-2 showed a bright streak lasting
approximately five seconds that appeared to head downward. Some
viewers described it as a firework in the night sky.
One
commenter on Twitter, who said they saw the meteor while
driving
in a car in Cupertino, said the object appeared to be headed west.
Scanner
traffic at the Contra Costa County Sheriff's Office indicated that
they were aware of the event, but a dispatcher said they had not
received any emergency calls related to it.
Gerald
McKeegan, an astronomer with the Chabot Space and Science Center in
Oakland, was at the center Friday evening for its weekend stargazing
sessions with free access to the center's large telescopes, but he
said they did not spot the meteor there.
He
said that the center received phone calls from people who reported
seeing the meteor. Based on their reports, McKeegan said it may have
been what astronomers call a "sporadic meteor," an event
that can happen several times a day but most of the time happens over
the ocean, away from human eyes, and brings as much as 15,000 tons of
space debris to Earth each year.
Meteors,
hunks of rock and metal from space that fall to Earth, burn up as
they go through the atmosphere, which is what apparently caused
Friday night's bright flash of light, McKeegan said.
It
was likely smaller than another meteor that landed in the Bay Area in
October, which caused a loud sonic boom as it fell, breaking apart
and spreading rocks, called meteorites, in the North Bay, McKeegan
said.
There
were no reports of damage from Friday's event, unlike the object that
crashed down in the Ural Mountains of Russia less than 24 hours
earlier shattering windows, scattering debris and injuring an
estimated 1,100 people.
NASA
scientists said that object, described as a "tiny asteroid,"
measured about 45 feet across, weighed about 10,000 tons and was
traveling about 40,000 mph before it exploded 15 miles above the
Earth's surface with a force equivalent to a small nuclear bomb.
Astronomers
at the Chabot observatory said Friday night's light show was not
connected to the fly-by of a small asteroid earlier in the day. The
asteroid, which NASA dubbed 2012 DA14, came within 17,200 miles of
the Earth before continuing on its cosmic journey.
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