Colour Out of Space in New Mexico

Fireball Over New Mexico
SPACE.com
posted: 24 September 2010
06:20 pm ET

A brilliant fireball lit up the night sky above parts of New Mexico and Texas ...
The fireball, thought to be created by a small space rock, occurred Tuesday night (Sept. 21) at about 11:01 p.m. EDT (0301 GMT) and was captured in a video camera ... It lasted 23 seconds ..."I was inside at the time, but heard and felt the sonic boom," said radio astronomer Thomas Ashcraft... outside of Santa Fe, NM ...

Colour Out of ... The Washington Post?

The Washington Post of 11 May 2010 reports a meteor streak ...

Meteor spotted in Gaithersburg, MD

Early-morning commuters in Maryland - and as far away as Pittsburgh and Massachusetts - were startled by a spectacular meteor that crossed the sky in the pre-dawn darkness, The Baltimore Sun reports.

Dawn Teagle Dobbs spotted the fireball as she drove south on Interstate 270 near Gaithersburg at 4:47 a.m. "At first I thought it was a shooting star, but it was huge and bright green with a tail," she wrote in a post to The Baltimore Sun's Weather Blog.

Similar reports - - from all across Central Maryland and the Eastern Shore, and as far off as Ashburn, Va., Pittsburgh, Greencastle and Gettysburg, Pa., and New Jersey and central Massachusetts.

Meteor Impacts Jakarta: "Colours" Populace

Per press releases 3 May 2010
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Blast in East Jakarta Believed to Be Meteorite
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Police and astronomers are investigating Thursday’s blast from a falling object that damaged three homes in Duren Sawit, East Jakarta --- witnesses claim it was a meteorite strike.

Experts are combing the site, saying that while there was no conclusive proof the damage was caused by a meteorite, it was the most likely explanation.

One house was moderately damage and two adjoining properties suffered minor damage after blast on Jalan Delima II. There were no reported casualties.

No fragments of the projectile had yet been found but the deep crater in the floor of the house, the residual heat footprint and melted items pointed to a meteorite.
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The incident comes on the heels of the Lyrid meteor shower, which ended on Monday, but an expert ruled out any connection between the two. “It could, however, be part of the Eta Aquariid meteor shower, which peaks on May 7 and 8,” he said. The phenomenon often begins in late April.

“Another possibility is that this wasn’t a meteorite at all, but man-made space debris like a satellite,” Evan said.

Police, meanwhile, are pursuing their own line of investigation. Jakarta Police spokesman Sr. Comr. Boy Rafli Amar said the Densus 88 counterterrorism squad had been called in to search for possible traces of explosives.

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Last October, a mysterious explosion in Bone, South Sulawesi, was determined to have been a meteorite that hit the Earth’s atmosphere at a mind-boggling 20.3 kilometers per second.

According to Thomas Djamaluddin, head of atmospheric sciences and chief of astronomy research at Lapan, the blast released energy equal to about 50 kilotons of TNT, more than three times the force of the atomic bomb dropped on Hiroshima, Japan, near the end of World War II.

A 9-year-old girl suffered a fatal cardiac arrest after hearing the explosion, and shock waves damaged homes in a village.

Wisconsin Meteor: Ground Zero Found

Lovecraft's fascination with meteors probably started when he saw the periodic showers over Providence. He says he witnessed a "great meteor" in 1906. So, we like to mention anytime a "colour out of space" is noted in the media.

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Meteor Fragment From Wisconsin Fireball Discovered by Farmer
By Tariq Malik
SPACE.com Managing Editor
posted: 17 April 2010

A small chunk of rock believed to be a fragment from a meteor that burst into a stunning fireball over Wisconsin Wednesday night was discovered by a farmer after it fell on the roof of his shed.

The meteor fragment is peppered with gray, white and reddish minerals, though one side is covered in what scientists called a "fusion crust" – a layer of dark material forged during the meteor's fiery passage into Earth's atmosphere. It weighs just 0.2 ounces (7.5 grams) and is about 2 inches (5 cm) long and less than an inch wide.

Breaking News: Colour Out of Space and Over Wisconsin!

In search of all things Lovecraftian and apocalyptic, Chrispy brings you metoeric news from around the world... :)
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From Star Tribune (link embedded with title)
Last update: April 15, 2010 - 9:19 AM

Excerpt:

A meteor ... provided a brilliant and entertaining light show across the Upper Midwest Wednesday night. {14 April 2010}

Just after 10 p.m., 911 call centers began to light up across at least six states, including Minnesota, as a bright light flashed across the sky from west to east.

The National Weather Service confirmed countless anecdotal accounts of the meteor late Wednesday, reporting that "a fireball or very bright meteor was observed streaking across the sky. The fireball was seen over the northern sky, moving from west to east. Well before it reached the horizon, it broke up into smaller pieces and was lost from sight."

In Davenport, Iowa, Weather service meteorologist Mike Zenner said staff members "could see it from the office and saw the explosion as it came down. You could see the smoke trail over by Dubuque. The sonic boom was really loud, lasted at least 30 seconds. It looked like it was coming out of southern Minnesota, heading to the east or southeast."

According to the weather service, it was seen across Minnesota, Iowa, northern Missouri, Illinois, Indiana, and southern Wisconsin.

Controversy! Meteorite Raucus!

WASHINGTON – An out-of-this world rock has become the center of a down-to-earth dispute over who its rightful owner should be. The tennis ball-sized meteorite plummeted through the roof of a Virginia medical office just after dusk on Jan. 18, the same time as people reported seeing a fireball in the sky. It plunged through the ceiling of an examination room and landed near the spot where a doctor had been sitting a short while earlier. Dr. Marc Gallini said. "It just wasn't my time, I guess."

He and fellow practitioner Dr. Frank Ciampi say their first thought was to give the rare find to the Smithsonian Institution, which offered $5,000 for it. The doctors are worried, though, that their longtime landlords plan to stake their own claim to the space rock.
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"Where two or more are gathered, there shalt be conflict..."

Colour Out of Space Nearly Hits Doctor !

... there had come that white noontide cloud, that string of explosions in the air, and that pillar of smoke from the valley ... all Arkham had heard of the great rock that fell out of the sky ... three professors from Miskatonic University ... hastened out the next morning to see the weird visitor from unknown stellar space ...
- "The Colour Our of Space" (1927), HP Lovecraft

Dateline 22 January 2010

A small Meteorite crashed through a doctors office in Virginia. The meteor crashed through the roof of the docs office and hit an internal wall, then an upper floor before hitting concrete and shattering.

"Literally an explosion went off," Dr Marc Gullani told a local TV station WUSA9. "It came from the roof, through the fire wall, through the ceiling and hit the ground right here," said his colleague Dr Frank Ciampi. Nobody was hurt in the meteor strike, and the pieces of interplanetary debris were subsequently identified as being extraterrestrial by a geologist, fortuitously married to the doctors' receptionist.
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Meteorite hunters are descending on Washington's Virginia suburbs this week, drawn by news of a space rock that lit up the night sky on Monday and drilled through the roof of a Lorton doctors' office.

Steve Arnold, co-star of the Science Channel's TV series "Meteorite Men," grabbed an early-morning flight from Arkansas to Baltimore on Thursday to launch a search for fragments of the meteor.
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Russ Baldwin of Henrico County, Frederick Kraft of Mechanicsville and John McGinty of Richmond said they saw a very bright meteor Monday roughly between 6:30 and 6:40 p.m. But Lee Ellison, a Baptist pastor in Chesterfield County, said yesterday that he saw one to his left about 5:20 p.m. as he was driving east on U.S. 60 near the Cumberland-Powhatan county line. “For all the world it looked like a small shower of bright, white lights sparkling down, like a firework,“ he said.
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Nearly 700 fireballs were reported in the U.S. and Canada in 2009.

Twin "colours" out of space ...

*sigh*. I was going to type in about the two metoer events of the 18th-19th, but Blogger is not allowing much right now. So, I'll just refer you to the news services for:

About 12:07 AM local time in Utah, the sky lit up with a meteor fragment on the 18th. It may have hit near Dugway in the desert.

In addition on the Gold Coast near Brisbane, the sky also lit up at locat time 9:45 AM on the 19th.

This is in addition to a 6 Nov report that an asteroid glanced off the Earth's atmosphere.

In the same reports, they revealed that a very large object burned out over Africa 13 months ago (a piece was found in the Sudan), and another a month ago over Indonesia.

Strange things are happening!

Up Close and Personal with a "Colour Out of Space"

Yow!!
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Boy Hit by Meteorite
SPACE.com Space.com Staff
Fri Jun 12, 9:45 am ET

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A 14-year old German boy was hit in the hand by a pea-sized meteorite that scared the bejeezus out of him and left a scar.

"When it hit me it knocked me flying and then was still going fast enough to bury itself into the road," Gerrit Blank said in a newspaper account. Astronomers have analyzed the object and conclude it was indeed a natural object from space, The Telegraph reports.

Most meteors vaporize in the atmosphere, creating "shooting stars," and never reach the ground. The few that do are typically made mostly of metals. Stony space rocks, even if they are big as a car, will usually break apart or explode as they crash through the atmosphere.

There are a handful of reports of homes and cars being struck by meteorites, and many cases of space rocks streaking to the surface and being found later.

But human strikes are rare. There are no known instances of humans being killed by space rocks.

According to SPACE.com article on the topic a few years, back:

• On November 30, 1954, Alabama housewife Ann Hodges was taking a nap on her couch when she was awakened by a 3-pound (1.4-kilogram) meteor that crashed through the roof of her house, bounced off a piece of furniture and struck her in the hip, causing a large bruise.
  
• On October 9, 1992, a large fireball was seen streaking over the eastern United States, finally exploding into many pieces. In Peekskill, New York, one of the pieces struck a Chevrolet automobile owned by Michelle Knapp. Knapp was not in the car at the time.
  
• On June 21, 1994, Jose Martin of Spain was driving with his wife near Madrid when a 3-pound (1.4-kilogram) meteor crashed through his windshield, bent the steering wheel and ended up in the back seat.
  
• In 2004, a 2,000-pound space rock bigger than a refrigerator exploded in the late-night sky over Chicago, producing a large flash and a sound resembling a detonation that woke people up. Fragments rained down on that wild Chicago night, and many were collected by residents in a northern suburb.
  

-What would Lovecraft Have Said??

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Click image to expand.

A Meteor Event of 1922: Antecedent to Colour Out of Space?

(Portion of article from http://articles.adsabs.harvard.edu/cgi-bin/nph-iarticle_query?1925PA.....33..502O&classic=YES. Click the image and it should epand and be more readable.)
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Lovecraft's Colour Out of Space isa horrific weird tale. However it's filled with tid bits of astronomy, chemistry, ad contains myriad allusions to his grandfather's descriptions of Idaho. Still, I've been in persuit of a eteor which may have specifically influenced his idea of a "meteor" as a key weird event. Over the years, I've listed numerous ancient meteor stories (and a number of current events, too).

Here's one that is significant, timed withing a few years of his setting pencil to paper, and would certainly have been one he'd be familiar with. Lovecraft mixes chemistry with the supernatural, alludes to perhaps both HG Wells and Ambrose Bierce stories, and finally states, "It was a metal, though, beyond a doubt. It was magnetic, for one thing; and after its immersion in the acid solvents there seemed to be faint traces of the Widmanstatten figures found on meteoric iron."

This meteor has been classified as the "Blackstone, Virginia meteor of 1922". More information below...


DUNGANNON METEORITE, SCOTT COUNTY
This iron meteorite (Figure 5) was found in 1922 or 1923 in a plowed field, some 3 miles southeast of Dungannon, Scott County, by Mr. C. W. Castle of Nickelsville, Virginia. Merrill(1923) describes the meteorite as follows: "As received, it more nearly resembled an irregular mass of terrestial limonite than a meteorite, though
occasional depressions or thumb. markings on the badly oxidized surface suggested its true nature. Oxidation had proceeded so far that in plowing it was broken into
450 feet of the impact area, and she heard the explosion directly overhead. The weight of the stone was 1,850 grams (approximately 4 pounds). No. 3 stone fell on
Mrs. Trutter's place making a hole 6 to 8 inches deep; it weighed 853 grams (approximately 1.9 pounds). About 50 to 75 people near a cemetery saw No. 4 stone fall. The stones show both primary and secondary encrustations. They are classified as spherulite chondrite.
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Lovecraft to poet, and Lovecraft the atheist might have snuffed at the poem below, but it was attached to the scientific and mathematical article alluded to above, and has a nice romantic sentiment. It contrasts to Lovecraft's different brand of poetic brandishment. :)


I do not know fro whence we came or why,
Nor whither bound. 'Tis true there comes to me
Oft-times a whisper - imortality?
Ah, whisps of Beauty that enchant the eye:
The sunset flush, the stars, the morning sky,
The winds that blow across a sapphire sea.
I know I am, and all of these things be,
And more: that Beauty was not born to die.
If God created man from common clay,
For soul I think He must have found a cloud
With star-dust from the summer Milky Way
Caught in its misty summit rosy browed,
And mixed it with the dust of earthy gray -
I still look to the stars with head unbowed.

Sterling Bunch or Springtown, Texas

Recently Seen News

In HPL's Colous Out of Space, it was obvious that his fascination for astronomy and chemistry came together in his weird imagination to make a meteor the theme of his story. Meteors always fascinate us, because they are true aliens to our world.

Elizabeth Wilson, Astronomy: Found Meteorites Could Aid Asteroid Studies, March 30, 2009, Chemical and Engineering Magazine.

Chrispy’s digest: Recently meteorites sprayed over the Nubian Desert in northern Sudan (October 2008). The uniqueness of this event is that the precise fragmentation of an asteroid is known and was tracked to the minute of disintegration in the Earth’s atmosphere.

Hundreds of the fragments were collected, and found to consist of dark, fragile, porous rock. Analysis continues.

Colour Out of Space: Dateline Virginia

Keeping you updated as the end of the world approaches, more gloabal weirding. Lovecraft's Colour Out of Space centered around a crashed meteor. I include a brief report (from T Peter Park's email alert from his Mythos group) and some emails to a local (WAVY) TV station. Makes it dramatic. :)
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Streaking lights, explosions reported all along coast
Posted to: News
Did you see something? Click here to send us your photos
By Patrick Wilson
The Virginian-Pilot
© March 30, 2009

http://hamptonroads.com/2009/03/mysterious-loud-explosion-heard-hampton-roads


Were they meteors? A comet? UFOs?

People from Maryland to Hampton Roads heard loud explosions and saw brilliant, streaking lights in the sky Sunday night.

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Emails about the mystery in the sky
Updated: Monday, 30 Mar 2009, 8:04 AM EDT

HAMPTON ROADS, Va. - Emails received to the WAVY Newsroom:

9:55 p.m. - Jim in Virginia Beach: Hello, we heard a loud boom and the ground shook a little at about 21:48, the same noise was heard by my son's friend who lives in Bayside. We have no clue as to the origin of the noise nor its damage. I pray it is not serious. Respectfully.

10:16 p.m. - Bernard in Virginia Beach: Just wanted to let you guys know that we our house also shook. We live off of Centerville in Virginia Beach on the Chesapeake line.

10:28 p.m. - Duane in Williamsburg: Subject- house shaking in Williamsburg. I saw a flare flying through the air about 45 minutes ago. It should have landed between big bethel road and Hardy cash drive. Maybe close to commander sheppard/simple farm road. This was unusual. I stayed outside to listen for a noise, but on noise and nothing else.

10:31 p.m. - Carl in Virginia Beach: IS THE WORLD ENDING???

10:41 p.m. - Kelly in Onley: I just saw the news clip about the bright light in the sky reported by several Hampton Roads and Williamsburg residents. I live on the Eastern Shore of Virginia (Onley, VA) and also witnessed the bright flashes and what appeared to be a fireball falling from the sky. I did not feel any rumble but could see the bright light and fireball very clearly. Since we live in the country with no street lights, I could see it vividly across the field. I saw three bright flashes which appeared to be lightning and then the bright fireball appeared. As it rapidly fell, the fire grew brighter and bigger. I have no idea what I saw, but it sure was scary. My eyes are still hurting from the extreme bright light and I keep seeing spots. I would really like to know what it was I saw. Thank you.

10:44 p.m. - Robert in Sunbury, NC: At 9:38 PM, I watched a meteor cross over Sunbury, NC. It was traveling from the West towards the East. My wife and our friend also saw this event. Very exciting!!!

11:01 p.m. - Alan in Hampton: At approx. 9pm I had just walked up to my kitchen sink and thought I saw lightening outside...I said to my wife, I just saw lightening and a minute later my dog who has a doggie door comes in and he was spooked! He went directly upstairs which is what he does if he hears a loud noise etc... He is very skittish. I thought this was very weird then they said on the news, we do not know what is going on but they were getting reports!

11:06 p.m. - Kel in Norfolk: My Mom & I Both heard a LOUD Bang and felt a vibration or a Shake of the ground and house.

11:08 p.m. - Lou and Bill Pollard: My husband and I both heard a very large boom accompanied by rattling windows for about 10 seconds tonight. At first because of the wind we thought maybe there was a weather related reason, such as thunder. Then we guessed it might be an explosion of some sort or a crash on the highway just outside our neighborhood.

11:09 p.m. - Diana in Virginia Beach: At around 9:45 pm I was driving, almost to my house and saw the bright streak of light. It lit up the whole area. I thought it was just lightening because it branched out in the sky like lightening. Then I arrived at home, put some stuff in the house and went back out to help my roommate who was bringing stuff into the house too and that's when we both heard the explosion, but honestly, the noise was heard about 15 minutes after I saw the streak. In fact I had just finished telling my roommate that I saw some strange lightening when we heard the explosion. We thought it was fireworks or something. But the noise occurred at least 10-15 minutes after the light. Weird!

11:10 p.m. - Richard in Virginia Beach: At some time this evening between about 9 and 10 I was lying in bed ready to go to sleep when I heard a loud bang and my house shook. It felt as if a car had hit the building. I went outside to investigate and the winds had picked up but I couldn't see anything that may have hit the house. I went back to bed. Then, as I was turning the channel at 11 o'clock, I heard your story about the possible meteorite this evening. I wonder if the sound I heard was a sonic boom that shook my house. That certainly would fit with the idea of a meteorite as it slows down through the atmosphere. Anyway, I thought you might like to hear my story. Have a good night.

More "Colour Out of Space" in the 21st Century

FAA says Texas fireball was meteor, not a UFO

By JEFF CARLTON, Associated Press Writer Jeff Carlton, Associated Press Writer – Mon Feb 16, 4:58 pm ET

DALLAS – The fireball that streaked across the sky and alarmed numerous Texas residents was likely just a big meteor and not wreckage from colliding satellites, experts said Monday.
Federal Aviation Administration spokesman Roland Herwig said the fireball seen across a wide stretch of the state Sunday morning probably was a natural phenomenon and not debris from last week's collision between an Iridium communications satellite and a Russian military space vehicle.
And Preston Starr, observatory manager at the University of North Texas, said it probably was a meteor about the size of a pickup truck with the consistency of a chunk of concrete.
The Williamson County sheriff's office in central Texas said it received so many emergency calls about the light in the sky that it sent deputies out in a helicopter to look for a plane crash.
The FAA had said during the weekend that the fireball possibly was caused by falling debris from the satellites. It also posted a weekend warning telling pilots to watch out for satellite debris but rescinded the warning Sunday, Herwig said.

Colour Out of Space: 6 December 2008

The Colour Out of Space ranks as one of Chrispy's favortie Lovecraft stories. Lovecraft was also partial to it, I think because it brought back fond memories of his grandfather's tales of the west in Idaho and the SnakeRiver. It also features one of the strongest descriptions of chemistry - a rarity in his fiction, but a subject close to Lovecraft's heart (and mine!).

I've had conversation with some of you, and I've done a great deal of research and have yet to find a smoking "New England" sighting of a meteorite that fits the exact (1882) details. My favorite possibility was of Willamette Oregon published about 1904.



If you type in "meteor" in the search funcion {above} you'll find numerous other discussions of meteors and The Colour Out of Space.

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Dateline: Colorado.
Early Morning of 6 December 2008
100 times brighter than the moon.

... the Colorado skies played host to a dazzling fireball event. The meteor blasted through the atmosphere, detonated and outshone the Moon by 100 times. ... the Cloudbait Observatory (5 km north of the town of Guffey, CO) ... managed to capture an all-sky camera video of the early morning explosion.

The Colorado fireball comes shortly after a similar event over Canada on November 20-th, where over two dozen meteorite fragments have been recovered from agricultural land. We wait in anticipation to see if this huge Colorado fireball produced any similar fragments, but eyewitness accounts will be critical to aid such a search. ... All in all, North America is having a great meteor season with no lack of observers, eye witnesses and all-sky cameras. ... astronomer Chris Peterson describes the event: "In seven years of operation, this is the brightest fireball I've ever recorded. I estimate the terminal explosion at magnitude -18. ... Fireballs are defined as meteors that are brighter than the planet Venus. Saturday's fireball was probably caused by a rocky asteroid that was several meters across, said Steve Lee, curator of planetary science at the Denver Museum of Nature and Science. ... "They're not entirely rare - it's probably several times a year somewhere on the globe," Lee said. "It's not something that happens every day." ...Fragments of the fireball, if anything survived the explosion 54 miles above the Earth, would have fallen between Pueblo and Penrose, Peterson estimates. Some pieces may have even landed on Fort Carson.

A Meteor Report: 1929

Lovecraft would have no doubt spotted this article in the NYT. It comes from the very cool site: Water UFO: http://www.waterufo.net/nodate.php?date=1067_1946

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June 11, 1929

SEES GIANT METEOR FALL
Prospector Reports One “Big as a Ship” Hitting Lake Superior.

SAULT STE. MARIE, Ont. June 18 (Canadian Press). -- A strange tale was brought down to “The Soo” today from Michipicoten Island by Frank Kushick, a prospector, who said a huge meteor "about the size of a ship" fell into Lake Superior close to the island about 10 o'clock on the night of June 11. The meteor illuminated the island brilliantly and created a rumbling noise which was heard at Puckasaw and Pipe Rivers, twenty and twelve miles away, respectively, for two minutes after it fell.

Kushick’s story is supported by his brother Gordon and Augusta Weidman, camped about two miles away on the island.

The meteor fell between the island and the mainland, and there appeared to be two balls of fire, either following the meteor closely or attached to it. The air was full of sparks, he said. Quite a sea arose after the meteor struck the water. The rumbling noise is believed to have been caused by boiling water.
This is the original reference: N.Y. Times, June 19, 1929, p. 14

1906 Meteor Report

Lovecraft probably read of this report, as he did follow the NYT. It comes from the very cool site, Water UFO: http://www.waterufo.net/nodate.php?date=1067_1946


October 30, 1906

A SHOWER OF METEORS AROUND THE ST. ANDREW
One, Weighing Tons, Hit the Sea a Mile Away.
A GREAT SHOW, EVEN BY DAY
Chief Officer Thinks Such Messengers from the Blue Have Sent Many a Ship Down.

When the Phoenix Line steamship St. Andrew arrived from Antwerp yesterday, Capt. Fitzgerald reported that the steamer had passed through a meteoric shower at 4:30 o'clock on Tuesday about 600 miles northeast of Cape Race. The largest meteor observed fell into the sea less than a mile away. Had it struck the St. Andrew, all hands would have perished.

Yesterday afternoon Chief Officer V. E. Spencer, who was on the bridge when the meteors appeared, told what he saw there.

“On Tuesday afternoon," said Mr. Spencer, "the weather was clear and bright, although there was little sunshine. Just after one bell, 4:30 o’clock, I saw three meteors fall into the water dead ahead of the ship one after another at a distance of about five miles. Although it was daylight, they left a red streak in the air from zenith to the horizon.

"Simultaneously the third engineer shouted to me. I then saw a huge meteor on the port beam falling in a zigzag manner less than a mile away to the southward.

“We could distinctly hear the hissing of the water as it touched. It fell with a rocking motion, leaving a broad red streak in its wake. The meteor must have weighed several tons and appeared to be from 10 to 15 feet in diameter. It was saucer shaped, which probably accounted for the peculiar rocking motion.

“When the mass of metal struck the water, the spray and steam rose to a height of at least forty feet, and for a few moments looked like the mouth of a crater. If it had been night, the meteor would have illuminated the sea for fifty or sixty miles. The hissing sound, like escaping steam when it struck the water, was so loud that the chief engineer turned out of his berth and came on deck, thinking the sound came from the engine room. I have seen meteors all over the world, but never such a large one as this."

Asked what would have happened if the meteor tumbled on the St. Andrew, Mr. Spencer said:

"The ship would have been burned out immediately and every soul on board destroyed. I have no doubt that many of the vessels which have been lost at sea in apparently fine weather have been destroyed by falling meteors."

Capt. Russ of the Hamburg-American steamer Brazilia, which arrived yesterday about the same time as the St. Andrew, reported having seen a large meteor at 7 P.M. on Tuesday, Oct. 30, in latitude 47 degrees north and longitude 48 degrees west. This is believed to have been part of the intermittent meteoric shower observed by the St. Andrew earlier in the evening.

This is the original reference: The New York Times, November 5, 1906, p. 1

The Condrite Out of Space

Previously, we posted on the blog about this fireball. The video links are still working if you want to see or download them: http://chrisperridas.blogspot.com/2008/11/fireball-from-beyond.html

Now an update.



... the hills rise wild ... with deep woods ... dark narrow glens ... farms, ancient and rocky ... It all began, old Ammi said, with the meteorite. Before that time there had been no wild legends at all ... till the strange days. Then there had come ... explosions in the air, and ... by night all ... had heard of the great rock that fell out of the sky and bedded itself in the ground ... {from The Colour Out of Space, HP Lovecraft}


Grad student wins space race: Fragments of fireball that exploded over Prairies found on frozen pond (excerpt from Keith Gerein, The Edmonton Journal; Published: Saturday, November 29, 2008 )

LONE ROCK, SASK. -

...Small, blackish lumps on a frozen pond are the kind of sight easily dismissed while driving along rural roads in Saskatchewan.
Yet the University of Calgary master's student was immediately intrigued, knowing these lumps were in the area where a meteor was thought to have exploded last week. Stopping the car, she and her travel partner -- U of C meteorite expert Alan Hildebrand-- gingerly stepped on the ice for a closer look.

The first lump they investigated turned out to be a leaf. The second was a stone, but of inconclusive origin. But there was no doubt about the third. Hildebrand recognized it instantly as a cosmic treasure -- a 250-gram piece of frozen space rock.

"He looked at me and said, 'Yes, this is definitely a meteorite,' " said Milley, who found the fragment about 3:50 p.m. Thursday in a picturesque valley known as Buzzard Coulee.



... The sloping property a few kilometres from the Alberta border is part of a cattle ranch owned by Ian Mitchell. ... The fragments, which can be worth thousands of dollars, belong to the owner of the land on which they fall. ... Space rocks are typically named after where they are found.

The fireball caused a stir in Alberta and eastern Saskatchewan on Nov. 20. ildebrand estimated the rock weighed 10 tonnes as it descended to Earth, breaking up in a series of spectacular explosions before hitting the ground. The fireball first appeared about 80 kilometres above and just east of Lloydminster, then moved south.
Based on this information, Hildebrand identified an area of about 20 square kilometres near Battle River for a probable impact site. It was in this search area that Milley spotted the first pieces.

A preliminary analysis shows the meteorite to be a fairly common type of space rock, Hildebrand said. It is believed to have originated as part of a larger asteroid that was formed some 4.5 billion years ago.

"We call it an ordinary condrite," he said. "These are mostly stone, with what I would guess is about 20-per-cent iron metal." Further analysis must be done to learn more about it age, composition and place of origin. Hildebrand said he hopes to get more researchers looking for space rocks. The race is on to find as many as possible before the snow falls, he said.

© The Edmonton Journal 2008

T Peter Park: Speculation on Colour Out of Space

The ever thoughtful Fortean, T Peter Park sent this out to his Mythfolk Group.



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I just thought of one possible inspiration for H.P. Lovecraft's story "The Colour Out of Space," where a mysterious meteorite landing on a New England farm poisons the soil and the well water, causing all living things on the farm including the farmer and his family to be permeated, possessed, and eventually killed by luminous, weirdly colored alien entities from the meteorite.The meteorite and its luminous malign entities might have been suggested in part by the legend of the luminous "pearl" or "carbuncle" allegedly responsible for the seismic "Moodus Noises" of East Haddam, Connecticut, supposedly found and removed by an English wizard or alchemist, "Dr. Steel," in the 1760's.


For centuries, the vicinity of East Haddam CT has been plagued by mysterious booming noises, nowadays usually explained by geological causes, but attributed to the demon "Hobomoko" by the Indians, and to Satan himself by the Puritans. The name "Moodus Noises" is derived from the traditional Indian name of the locality, Mackemoodus, "Place of Bad Noises." Anyway, a local legend claims that "Dr. Steel" made the noises stop by removing the "carbuncle" supposedly responsible for them.Here is the legend as described in a website on "The Moodus Noises" at:


http://www.curbstone.org/index.cfm?webpage=96



All of these notions pale, however, in comparison with the imaginative theories inherent in the legend of Dr. Steel and the "carbuncle." As the story went, there arrived in East Haddam sometime in the 1760s a mysterious stranger who claimed that his name was Dr. Steel. They say he was an Englishman possessed of strange and magical powers, who had been sent to Connecticut by King George to lift the curse of the Moodus Noises, which had lately been reported to the monarch.The learned and aged physician built a crazy-looking house in a lonely spot on Mount Tom, near a cave that some said gave direct access to the realm of Hobomoko. Dr. Steel had determined that if he could find and seize the "great carbuncle" -- a pearl of gigantic size -- which blocked the mouth of the cavern, the Noises would temporarily cease and the countryside would have peace, at least for a time. After he retired behind the walls of the house, closing every window, crack and keyhole behind him, Dr. Steel and his research became mysteries as deep as the Noises themselves.While no one was admitted to the odd little building on Mount Tom, curious observers were intrigued by the clang of hammers issuing from the house all night, the endless showers of sparks from the chimney and the sulphurous odors emitted from within. Then, one night, all activity ceased. Dr. Steel emerged from his house and, walking along a path marked by a faint light which moved before him, made his way to the closed entrance of the singular cave.They say that as the ancient alchemist fell to his task of digging at the immense pearl that lay across the mouth of the pit, loud grew the Moodus Noises that night. Finally, with near superhuman effort, Dr. Steel pried the carbuncle from its resting place and removed it from the cavern mouth. What followed would be long remembered by astonished witnesses. From the depths of the cave a blood-red light shone forth, streaming into the heavens like a crimson comet or a spear of the northern aurora. It was, they believed, the flash of the great carbuncle, and all who looked through it said that the stars beyond appeared dyed in blood.When the sun rose the next day, the people of East Haddam discovered that both Dr. Steel and the monstrous pearl had departed earlier that morning on a ship bound for England. Later, news reached Connecticut that the magnificent stone had continued to bring evil to its surroundings, for the galley carrying the pearl and Dr. Steel had sunk in mid-ocean, with the loss of all hands. Ever since, so they say, from the depth of a thousand fathoms the crimson rays of the carbuncle have occasionally shone forth, lighting up a morning sky and striking fear into the hearts of sailors who have seen it.But in East Haddam, the residents were pleased that Dr. Steel's prophecy had come true. Before he sealed himself away in the funny house on Mount Tom, he had told the people that removal of the offensive carbuncle would quiet the Moodus Noises for years to come. And so, indeed, it did. Even decades later, when the sounds and shocks occasionally recurred -- and the Indians said the mountain was trying to give birth to another stone -- things never were as bad as they were in the days before Dr. Steel delivered them from evil.

Lovecraft's Legacy (1980) Daniel Cohen

Here is an excerpt about HP Lovecraft by a notable writer of the 1980's. He writes rapturously about his favorite: The Colour Out of Space.

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SCIENCE FICTiON'S GREATEST MONSTERS

What is the most frightening of all the monsters in science fiction? I suppose everybody has his or her own favorite. And I have mine. Like the other creatures discussed in this chapter {#7 "What Was It?}, my favorite does not have a solid body. It only appears as a color.

The thing - it has no name - is in a story called The Colour Out of Space. The story was written in 1927 by H. P. Lovecraft. Lovecraft is not usually thought of as a writer of science fiction. He is better known as a writer of horror stories. He is probably the second-best American writer of horror stories. The best in America, and the world, was Edgar Allan Poe.

In the story, a meteor lands near a remote New England farm. Scientists come to examine it. It is not like anything they have ever seen before. The meteor begins to shrink rather quickly. After a few weeks it is gone.

The scientists forget about it. But strange things begin to happen on the farm. The vegeta- bles grow to huge sizes. But they taste horrible. Then they crumble to gray dust. The farm animals and the wild animals begin acting strangely. Then they, too, begin to decay.

And the farmer, Nahum Gardner, his wife and boys-what happened to them?

First, the farmer's wife begins to go mad. "When the boys grew afraid of her, and Thaddeus nearly fainted at the way she made faces at him, he decided to keep her locked in the attic. By July she had ceased to speak and crawled on all fours, and before the month was over Nahum got the mad notion that she was slightly luminous . . . "

Things just got worse and worse on the farm. When a friend came to visit, he found that the boys had disappeared. Nahum was dying or, to be more accurate, rotting. The friend went upstairs to find out about the wife who had been locked in the attic:

"When he did enter he saw something dark in the corner, and upon seeing it more clearly he screamed outright . . . the terrible thing about the horror was that it very slowly and perceptibly moved as it continued to crumble."

The cause of all these unnatural terrors is a thing. It doesn't have a body or a shape. It is just a color, but not a color that has ever been seen before on this earth. The thing was brought to earth by the meteorite. It lived in the bottom of the farmer's well. It drew its strength from the living things around it. The more they died, the stronger it became.

At the end of the story the color shoots back into space. But one person sees a small part of it fall back to earth. The whole terror may begin again.

The Colour Out of Space is a truly frightening story. Someday you may wish to read it yourself. Let me give you one piece of advice. Don't read itjust before going to sleep.

Daniel Cohen, Science Fiction's Greatest Monsters [They Come From Spaceships, Flying Saucers, The Outer Limits.], Archway; Simon & Schuster, 1980, 2nd June 1986, pp. 85-88.

News Bulletin Submitted by T Peter Park

T. Peter writes: Another classic science-fictional story with the theme of a disease-bringing meteorite is C.L. Moore's 1946 Astounding Science Fiction novelette "Vintage Season," where time-traveling dilettante voyeuristic tourists from a decadent future civilization rent a 20th century house for a close "ringside" view of a meteorite (actually, more like an asteroid) they know from their ancient history will devastate a certain 20th century American city in a super-Hiroshima catastrophe--and introduce a lethal "Blue Death" plague produced by extraterrestrial microbes against which they themselves are inocculated but which decimates the 20th century American population--just like the decimation of 14th century Europe by the Black Death, known by the future visitors to have ALSO been introduced by a meteorite!

Story from BBC NEWS: http://news.bbc.co.uk/go/pr/fr/-/2/hi/americas/7001897.stm

Scores ill in Peru 'meteor crash'

Some 600 people in Peru have required treatment after an object from space - said to be a meteorite - plummeted to Earth in a remote area, officials say. They say the object left a deep crater after crashing down over the weekend near the town of Carancas in the Andes. People who have visited scene have been complaining of headaches, vomiting and nausea after inhaling gases. A team of scientists is on its way to the site to collect samples and verify whether it was indeed a meteorite. "It [the object] is buried in the earth," local resident Heber Mamani told the BBC. "That is why we are asking for an analysis because we are worried for our people. They are afraid. A bull is dead and some other animals are already sick," he said. The incident began on Saturday night, when people near Carancas in the Puno region, some 1,300km (800 miles) south of Lima, reported seeing a fireball in the sky coming towards them. The object then hit the ground, leaving a 30m (98ft) wide and 6m (20ft) deep crater. The crater spewed what officials described as fetid, noxious gases. The gases are believed to have affected the health of about 600 people who visited the site. Most of the victims have been complaining of headaches, vomiting and nausea.