Northern spring is fireball season

[Panich52]

Northern spring is fireball season
by Deborah Byrd in » Space

The rate of fireballs – or bright meteors – goes up by as much as 30% for several weeks around every March equinox. Why? No one is entirely sure.

Northern spring – for a few weeks around the March equinox – is a good time to see especially bright meteors, aka fireballs. It’s fireball season — a time of year when bright meteors appear in greater number than usual. In fact, in the weeks around the start of spring, the appearance rate of fireballs can increase by as much as 30 percent, NASA has said.

Why does this happen? Why should there be more fireballs at one time of year than at another? The American Meteor Society said in its meteor outlook for early March, 2015:

… there is not much to look forward to this month except for the evening fireballs that seem to peak this time of year from the northern hemisphere. This could be due to the fact the Antapex radiant lies highest above the horizon this time of year during the evening hours.

The antapex radiant, by the way, is the the point the solar system is moving away from, as we orbit the sun.


Fireball! Against the backdrop of the northern lights, no less. Captured March 6, 2014 by Yuichi Takasake in Canada.

NASA has a different view on the possible cause. A NASA website has suggested:

The reason why is still unknown, but one hypothesis is that more space debris litters this section of Earth’s orbit.

More
http://earthsky.org/space/spring-is-fireball-season?utm_source=EarthSky+News&utm_campaign=bbd09bb0e8-EarthSky_News&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_c643945d79-bbd09bb0e8-393525109

[Hoppy]

1. Dey's flying saucers. Ain't no fireballs. Just that the D.o.D. doesn't want to upset the public.

Look how they covered up Area 51.