The annual Perseid meteor shower peaked on August 11 and 12 as Earth passed through a stream of debris from the comet Swift-Tuttle. During the Perseids, as many as 100 meteors each hour enter Earth's atmosphere at 100,000 mph and then burn up at a safe distance. Stargazers with a clear view of the night sky captured beautiful pictures from the celestial show.

A Perseid fireball is visible from the McDonald Observatory in west Texas.

A meteor streaks over the North Star in the California skies on Monday, August 12, 2013.

Los Angeles photographers point their cameras at the stars during the Perseid meteor shower.

 An Aerospace photographer uses his iPhone to take photos of the fireballs on Monday, August 12, 2013.

Stargazers gather in Castaic Lake, California, to watch the Perseid meteor shower in the pre-dawn hours on Monday, August, 12, 2013.

A meteor streaks over Castaic Lake, California, during the early morning.

A streak appears in the sky above a roadside billboard of a Spanish fighting bull in central Spain during the early hours of Monday, Aug. 12, 2013.  

A meteor sparks while entering the Earth's atmosphere behind an olive tree in Central Greece on Saturday, Aug. 10, 2013.

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Ancient Egyptian beads found in a 5,000-year-old tomb were made from iron meteorites that fell to Earth from space, according to a new study.

The beads, which are the oldest known iron artifacts in the world, were crafted roughly 2,000 years before Egypt's Iron Age.

In 1911, nine tube-shaped beads were excavated from an ancient cemetery near the village of el-Gerzeh, which is located south of Cairo, said study lead author Thilo Rehren, a professor at UCL Qatar, a Western Asian outpost of the University College London's Institute of Archaeology.

The tomb dates back to approximately 3200 B.C., the researchers said.

Inside the tomb, which belonged to a teenage boy, the iron beads were strung together into a necklace alongside other exotic materials, including gold and gemstones. Early tests of the beads' composition revealed curiously high concentrations of nickel, a telltale signature of iron meteorites. [See Photos of the Egyptian Beads & Other Meteorite Jewels]

"Even 100 years ago, [the beads] attracted attention as being something strange," Rehren told LiveScience.

But without definitive proof of the beads' cosmic origins, questions persisted over whether similar amounts of nickel could be present in human-made iron. By scanning the iron beads with beams of neutrons and gamma rays, the researchers found high concentrations of cobalt, phosphorous and germanium; these elements were present at levels that only occur in iron meteorites.

"It's really exciting, because we were able to detect sufficient cobalt and germanium in these beads to confirm they're meteoritic," Rehren said. "We had assumed this was the case for 100 years, but it's nice to be able to put an exclamation mark on the label, rather than a question mark."

The X-ray technology also revealed that the beads had been hammered into thin sheets before being meticulously rolled into tubes.

"This meteoritic iron, it's very hard material that you find in lumps, and yet here we see it in thin beads," Rehren said. "The real question is, how were they made?"

Unlike softer and more pliable metals like gold and copper, working with solid iron required the invention of blacksmithing, which involves repeatedly heating metals to red-hot temperatures and hammering them into shape.

"It's a much more elaborate operation and one that we assumed was only invented and developed in the Iron Age, which started maybe 3,000 years ago — not 5,000 years ago," Rehren said.

The researchers suggest the iron meteorites were heated and hammered into thin sheets, and then woven around wooden sticks to create 0.8-inch-long (2 centimeters), tube-shaped beads. Other stones found in the same tomb displayed more traditional stone-working techniques, such as carving and drilling.

"This shows that these people, at this early age, were capable of blacksmithing," Rehren said. "It shows a pretty advanced skill with this difficult material. It might not have been on large scales, but by the time of the Iron Age, they had about 2,000 years of experience working with meteoritic iron."

This is not the first time beads from this Egyptian tomb have been linked to the cosmos. Earlier this year, in May, researchers at the Open University and University of Manchester published a paper in the journal Meteoritics and Planetary Science about the celestial origins of the ancient beads.

Other researchers have identified different artifacts that also have space origins. Last year, German scientists discovered aBuddha statue that was carved from a meteorite between the eighth and 10th centuries.

The detailed findings of the new study were published online today (Aug. 19) in the Journal of Archaeological Science.

Follow Denise Chow on Twitter @denisechow. Follow LiveScience @livescience, Facebook& Google+. Original article on LiveScience.

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This stunning time-lapse video of the Perseid meteor shower was shot by Vimeo user Michael Chung, near Victorville, Calif.

He was lucky enough to catch what's called a persistent train after a meteor explosion:

While this does show a meteor breaking apart, the resulting expanding ring is called a "persistent train" and is NOT a debris ring. Rather, it is glowing gas — charged gas that has been heated by compression caused by the meteor and giving off electrons (similar to how a neon sign works). It happens fairly often but it isn't so regularly documented.

2013 Perseids Meteor Shower: Meteor Explosion from Michael Chung on Vimeo.

SEE ALSO: Watch The Sun Release A Huge Burst Of Gas And Dust As A Comet Hits It

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On Wednesday, Russian divers recovered from a frozen lake the largest-known chunk of what's believed to be from the meteor that exploded over the Russian city of Chelyabinsky in February.

The tiny asteroid, which entered Earth's atmosphere weighing around 11,000 tons, burst into small pieces as it burned up, producing a shock wave on the ground that shattered windows and injured more than 1,000 people from flying glass, while raining down fragments of rock across a 60-mile long region.

Most fragments of the meteor — know as meteorites once they hit the ground — were believed to have sunk to the bottom of Lake Chebarkul, a frozen lake in the Chelyabinsky region. Recovery workers initially turned up empty-handed.

The rock that was just pulled from the Russian lake was found at the beginning of September. After it was dragged from the water, it measured five-feet long, and weighed around 1,255 pounds before splitting into three pieces and breaking the scale that it was being weighed on, according to the AFP.

Scientists still need to verify that the hunk of rock came from space and was actually part of the Chelyabinsky meteor, although many features — like fractures and a crust that indicates it survived the heat of passing through Earth's atmosphere — suggest that it is a true meteorite. A small sample will be X-rayed to determine its mineral composition, according to RT.

Over 12 pieces of rock have been pulled from Lake Chebarkul since the meteor explosion, but only one-third of those turned out to be real meteorites, according to the AFP.

PHOTOS: Crazy Images From The Meteor That Exploded Over Russia

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New details about the origin, structure, and impact of the meteor that exploded over the Russian city of Chelyabinsk on Feb. 13, 2013, are reported in three separate papers published Wednesday.

Thanks to cell phones, dashboard video cameras, and other recording devices, researchers have been able to collect a large amount of data about the Chelyabinsk meteor — the largest impact over land since the 1908 explosion over Tunguska in Siberia. That event, believed to have been caused by a comet, was much larger but not well-observed.

Below are some of the key details from the studies. For clarity, a meteoroid is the original object (an asteroid is a larger meteoroid), a meteor is that same rock as it burns up in the atmosphere, also known as a "shooting star"; and a meteorite is the rock once it hits the ground.

Size and speed

• Researchers who published their results in the journal Nature estimate that the asteroid was originally 19 meters (62 feet) wide before it hit Earth's atmosphere and broke apart.
• The meteoroid entered Earth's atmosphere at 19 kilometers per second (42,500 mph), which is slightly faster than previously reported, according to a study in the journal Science.
• A study led by Jirí Borovicka from the Academy of Sciences found that the Chelyabinsk asteroid had a very similar orbit to the 1.2-mile-wide near-Earth asteroid 86039. This suggests that the two were once part of the same object.
• The Chelyabinsk asteroid was probably ejected from asteroid 86039 when it collided with another asteroid.
• Borovicka and colleagues believe that the asteroid broke up into small pieces between 30 and 45 kilometers (19-28 miles) above the ground, based on the timing of secondary sonic booms heard on videos.
• The main body remained intact and quite massive at around 1,000 kilograms (2,200 pounds) until an altitude of 22 kilometers (13.6 miles) above the ground.
• A large dust trail, which started at an altitude of 68 km (42.3 miles) was left in the atmosphere after the meteor passed and extended to 18 km (11.2 miles) above the ground.
• When the meteoroid broke apart in the atmosphere it produced a fireball — also known as an airburst — that released about the same amount of energy as 500 kilotons of exploding TNT.
• At its peak, the airburst appeared 30 times brighter than the sun. It was captured by more than 400 video cameras and other seismic and infrasound instruments almost 700 kilometers (430 miles) away.
• The airburst created a shockwave — known as an airblast — that traveled down through the air and struck the Russian city of Chelyabinsk below. The shockwave shattered thousands of windows and injured more than 1,000 people, mostly from flying glass.
• The airblast that reached the city was generated around 24 to 30 kilometers (15-19 miles) above the ground.

Damage

• Olga Popova of the Russian Academy of Sciences and NASA meteor astronomer Peter Jenniskens visited 50 villages in the area to collect information about damage caused by the shockwave.
• In Chelyabinsk itself, 3,613 apartment buildings (around 44%) had shattered and broken glass. The shockwave was also strong enough to blow people off their feet.
• People also found it painful to look at the fireball. In an Internet survey of 1,113 people who were outside at the time, 25 were sunburned (2.2%), 315 felt hot (28%), and 415 warm (37%).

Meteorite Recovery

• Scientists found fewer fragments larger than 100 grams (0.22 pounds) than they expected.
• However, a 7-8 meter (23-36 feet)-sized hole was discovered in 70-cm (2.3 feet) thick ice on Lake Chebarkul, 43 miles west of Chelyabinsk. A security video camera at the site also recorded the impact.
• Researchers estimate that 76% of the meteoroid evaporated, and much of the remaining mass was turned into dust. Only 0.03-0.05% of the initial mass survived. 
• Jenniskens and colleagues believe that "shock veins" in the original asteroid caused by an impact hundreds of millions of years ago probably weakened the asteroid and caused it to break up easily.
• This team also found that the Chelyabinsk asteroid belongs to a common type of meteorite known as LL chondrite. It was 4.452 billion years old.
• The Chelyabinsk asteroid was possibly once part of a bigger "rubble pile" asteroid that broke apart 1.2 million years ago, according to Jenniskens.

Detection

• In its aftermath, many people wondered why scientists had not detected the meteor ahead of time. A study led by Borovicka reports that before impact, the asteroid had spent at least six weeks within a region of sky that could not be seen by Earth-based telescopes. Before that, it was too faint to be seen.

Future Hazards

• A study led by Peter Brown from the University of Western Ontario found that hazards from small-sized meteoroids are greater than previously thought.
• Telescopic surveys have only discovered about 500 near-Earth asteroids that are comparable in size to Chelyabinsk —10 to 20 meters (33-66 feet) wide — but the population could be much bigger.

SEE ALSO: Here's Why Astronomers Did Not Detect The Russia Meteor Ahead Of Time

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One of the best meteor showers of the year is set to put on a performance tonight (Dec. 13), but if you can't catch the cosmic display in person, you can watch it live online.

The Geminid meteor shower— named for the constellation Gemini — is peaking late tonight into Saturday morning, potentially treating stargazers in light-free areas to about 90 to 120 meteors per hour. Observers can expect to get the best views of the shower, weather permitting, at around 4 a.m. local time in the wee hours of Saturday morning after the waxing moon sets, according to Bill Cooke, head of NASA's Meteoroid Environment Office.

"This year, there will be a magic hour starting at about 4 a.m. up until dawn that there will be no moon and you'll be able to see the Geminids in their full glory," Cooke told reporters on Dec. 11. Space fans everywhere can catch the meteor show live online through two webcasts from the online Slooh Space Camera and NASA. You can watch both NASA and Slooh's live webcasts on SPACE.com. [See Photos of the 2012 Geminid Meteor Shower]

Slooh will provide a free live feed of the Geminids from an observatory on the Canary Islands starting at 5:30 p.m. EST (2230 GMT) and running into the night, ending at 1 a.m. EST (0600 GMT). You can watch the webcast directly at www.slooh.com or by using the space camera's iPad app.

Geminid meteors appear to radiate from the constellation Gemini and have a reputation for being bright and slow. The shower can also produce brilliant fireballs that streak through the sky.

"The best thing to do to observe meteors is to lie flat on your back and look straight up," Cooke said. "You don't want to look at Gemini, you just want to look straight up and take in as much of the sky as possible because meteors can appear anywhere in the sky and the more sky you see, the better you chance of seeing a meteor."

Meteor showers are created when Earth passes through streams of debris left behind by asteroids or comets. Pieces of space rock and dust are in space are called meteoroids and they become meteors when they burn up in the atmosphere. Meteorites are pieces of meteors that make it to Earth's surface.

The Geminid shower happens every year when Earth passes through the trail of debris left behind the asteroid 3200 Phaethon. The meteor display was first officially detected in the 1800s when the peak was marked by only 20 meteors per hour.

"Those rates have increased over the almost two centuries since then by up to over 120 an hour," Cooke said. "This is because Jupiter's gravity is tugging that string of debris that comprises the Geminids closer to Earth as time goes along. Geminid rates over the next decade or century could exceed over 200 per hour."

Editor's note: If you have an amazing night sky photo of the Geminids or any other view you'd like to share for a possible story or image gallery, please contact managing editor Tariq Malik at spacephotos@space.com.

Follow Miriam Kramer @mirikramerand Google+. Follow us@Spacedotcom, Facebookand Google+. Original article on SPACE.com.

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What’s the oldest thing you’ve ever held in your hand? A piece of petrified wood? A fossilized trilobite? A chunk of glacier-carved granite? Those are some pretty old things, sure, but there are even older objects to be found across the world... that came from out of this world. And thanks to “Meteorite Men” co-host, author, and educator Geoff Notkin and his company Aerolite Meteorites, you can own a truly ancient piece of the Solar System that can date back over 4.5 billion years.

Founded in 2005, Aerolite (which is an archaic term for meteorite) offers many different varieties of meteorites for sale, from gorgeous specimens worthy of a world-class museum to smaller fragments that you could proudly — and economically — display on your desk. Recently I had the opportunity to talk in depth with Geoff about Aerolite and his life’s work as a meteorite collector and dealer. Here are some of the fascinating things he had to say...

So Geoff, what initially got you interested in meteorites and finding them for yourself?

“It’s been a lifelong passion for me, but I’m lucky in that I can really put my finger on a specific event when I was a kid and that was my mother taking me to the Geological Museum in London when I was six or seven... I was already a rock hound, I loved collecting fossils, and my dad was a very keen amateur astronomer. And so I had this love of astronomy and this fascination with other worlds for as long as I can remember. I’m a very tactile person; I’m very hands-on. I like to know how things work... I want to know all the bits and pieces. I was frustrated a bit, because I wanted to know more about astronomy. I could see all these planets and places through the ‘scope, but I couldn’t touch them. But I could touch rocks and fossils.

“So I’m six or seven years old, and I’m on the second floor of the Museum in the Hall of Rocks and Minerals. And at the back was this small display area that’s very dark. And you walked through an arch, it’s almost like walking into a cave. And it was very low light back there, and that was the meteorite collection.

By finding or owning meteorites, you are forging a solid and tangible connection with astronomy.

“There were a couple of large meteorites on stands, and in those days — it was the late 60s — security wasn’t the issue that it is today. So you could touch the big specimens, and so I put my hands on these giant meteorites and I was absolutely enthralled. And I had this sort of epiphany: meteorites were the locus between my two interests, astronomy and rock-hounding. Because they’re rocks... they’re rock samples from outer space. I promised myself as a kid that one day I would have an actual meteorite.

“Of course at the time there was no meteorite business, no meteorite magazines, there was no network of collectors like there is today. Back in the late 60s when I gave myself this challenge it was like saying I was going to start my own space program! But not only did it come true, it’s become my career.”

What makes Aerolite such a great place to buy meteorites?

“I think the caring for the subject matter really shows on the website. We have the best photography in the entire meteorite industry. I think we have the largest selection... we certainly spend a great deal of time discussing the history and importance of pieces... every single meteorite on our website has a detailed description and in most cases multiple photographs. My view is if you’re going to do something, you should really do it to the best of your ability. We don’t cut any corners, we don’t sell anything unless we’re one hundred percent sure of what it is and where it came from.

“I want buyers and visitors to look at the website and share my sense of wonder about meteorites. I think meteorites are the most wonderful things in existence, they’re actual visitors from outer space — they’re inanimate aliens that have landed on our planet.”

We do this because we want to share our passion. We stand by every piece that we sell.

How can people be sure they are getting actual meteorites (and not just funny-looking rocks?)

“This is something that’s more important to pay attention to now than ever. Are there fakes, are there shady people? Yes and yes. If you go on eBay at any given time you will find numerous pieces that are being offered for sale that are either not meteorites at all or are one thing being passed off as another thing. Sometimes this is malicious, sometimes people just don’t know any better. So the best way to buy a meteorite and know that it’s real is to buy from a respected dealer who has a solid history in the field.

“I’m by no means the only person who does this. There are a number of very well-established dealers around the world, and a good place to start is the International Meteorite Collectors Association(of which Geoff is a member) which is an international group with hundreds of members — collectors and dealers... it’s sort of a watchdog group that tries to maintain high standards of integrity in the field.

My company has a very strict policy of never offering anything that’s questionable.

“I see fakes all the time,” Geoff added. “On eBay, on websites, in newspaper ads... you do have to be careful. My company has a very strict policy of never offering anything that’s questionable. And we do get offered questionable things. There are some countries that have strict policies about exporting meteorites — Australia and Canada being two of them — and we work very closely with academia in both countries, and we have legally exported meteorites from those countries. Not only do we abide by international regulations, we actively support them.”

So you not only offer meteorites for sale to the general public, but you also donate to schools and museums.

“We work very closely with most of the world’s major meteorite institutions. I have provided specimens to the American Museum of Natural History in New York, the British Museum of Natural History in London, the Vienna Museum of Natural History, the Center for Meteorite Studies... we work with almost everyone. When we find something that is new or different or exciting, we always donate a piece or pieces to our colleagues in academia. It’s just the right thing, it’s the right thing to do if you discover something important to make it available to science.

“Most universities and museums don’t have acquisitions budgets and can’t afford to buy things that they might like to have. In return they classify the meteorites that we found, and they go into the permanent literature and become more valuable as a result. A meteorite with a history and a name and classification is worth more than a random meteorite that somebody just found in a desert. So everybody benefits, it’s a really good match.”

In other words, you really are making a contribution to science as opposed to just “looting.”

“Exactly. And I have, a very few times, gotten emails from disgruntled viewers who didn’t understand what we were doing, saying ‘what makes you think it’s okay to come to Australia and take our meteorites,’ for example. So I wrote a very courteous email back saying that we were in Australia with the express permission and cooperation of the Australian park services and one of the senior park rangers was there with us. And not only did we follow the proper procedure in having those specimens exported from Australia, I donated rare meteorites to collections just as a ‘thank you’ for working with us. It wasn’t a trade, it was a thank you. So everywhere we go, whatever we do, we try and leave a good impression.”

Geoff added, “I do this out of love... this isn’t the best way to make a living! Being a meteorite hunter is probably not the best capital return on your time but it’s a very exciting and rewarding life in every other way.”

And thus, by buying meteorites from Aerolite, customers aren’t just helping pay for your expeditions and your work but also supporting research and education too.

“People who purchase from us are really participating in the growth of this science. Also, something very near and dear to my heart is science education for kids. You know that I am the host of an educational series called STEM Journals, which is a very — I think — amusing, entertaining, funny, fast-paced look at science, technology, engineering, and math topics. But you can’t make a living doing television shows like that. This is a labor of love... we do it because we think it’s important. If I didn’t have a commercial meteorite company to help underwrite the costs of educational programming and educational books, we just couldn’t do it. It’s as simple as that.

“So we always try to give back. That’s why I speak at schools and universities and give away meteorites to deserving kids at gem shows... because it was done to me when I was seven years old. The look of wonder you see on a kid’s face when you connect with them and they start to grasp the wonder of science... that’s something they’ll never forget.”

That’s great. And it sounds like you haven’t forgotten it yet either!

“I must say after all these years, I’ve been doing this close to full time for nearly twenty years and you never lose the amazement and the wonder of when a meteorite’s found or uncovered. I never go ‘oh, jeez, it’s just another billion-year-old space rock that fell to Earth!’ So it is a privilege to be in a work field where almost daily something wondrous happens.”

As we here at Universe Today know, when it concerns space that’s a common occurrence!

“Exactly!”

One last thing Geoff... do you think we’ll ever run out of meteorites?

“The meteorite collecting field has grown tremendously in the past ten years, and Meteorite Men is part of that. There is a finite supply of meteorites. Of course there are more landing all the time, but not enough to replenish the demand. Periodically there is a new very large discovery made, such as the Gebil Kamil iron in Egypt a couple of years ago. But what is happening is a significant increase in price and a decrease in selection, so some of the real staples we used to see... you can’t get them anymore.

“Still, people who want a meteorite collection, now is a great time for them to be buying because there are more meteorites available than in the past — but it’s not going to stay that way for very long. It’s like any other collectible that has a finite supply.”

Makes sense... I’ll take that as ‘inside advice’ to place an order soon!

______________

My thanks to Geoff for the chance to talk with him a little bit about his fascinating past, his passion, and his company. And as an added bonus to Universe Today readers, Geoff is extending a special 15% off on orders from Aerolite Meteorites— simply mention the code UNIVERSETODAY when you place an order!* (Trust me — once you browse through the site you’ll find something you want.) Also, if you’re in the Tucson area, Geoff Notkin and Aerolite Meteorites will have a table at the Tucson Gem and Mineral Show starting Jan. 31.

One of several meteorite-hunting books by Geoff, featuring an introduction by Neil Gaiman.

Be sure to check out Geoff’s television show STEM Journals on COX7 — the full first two seasons can be found online here and here, and shooting for the third season will be underway soon.

Want to know how to find “inanimate aliens” for yourself? You can find Geoff’s books on meteorite hunting here, as well as some of the right equipment for the job.

And don’t forget to follow Aerolite Meteorites and Geoff Notkin on Twitter!

SEE ALSO: Stunning New Details From The Largest Asteroid Impact In A Century

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On Sept. 11, 2013, Spanish telescopes recorded a massive meteorite crashing into the moon, creating the longest and brightest lunar flash ever seen, researchers reported Sunday in the journal Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society.

The energy released by the impact is comparable to a little over 15 tons of TNT (three times higher than the largest previous confirmed impact) and the bright flash that resulted lasted more than 8 seconds, according to the study. The explosion was so bright that it would have been visible to people on Earth.

"At that moment I realized that I had seen a very rare and extraordinary event," Jose Madiedo of University of Huelva, said in a statement. 

Researchers believe the space rock weighed roughly 880 pounds — comparable to the mass of a small car — and was traveling at a blistering speed of 38,000 miles per hour when it smashed into the moon. Last March NASA caught the previous record-holding moon explosion, but that meteor only weighed 88 pounds. 

Below is video footage from the record-breaking blast. The bright white flash shows the impact.

SEE ALSO: Environment South Pole Journey Two Explorers Just Completed A Polar Expedition That Killed Everyone The Last Time It Was Attempted

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CAPE CANAVERAL, Florida (Reuters) - About 5 million years ago, an asteroid or comet slammed into Mars so hard that rocks and other debris launched into space.

After traveling millions of years, some eventually landed on Earth, becoming the biggest of three main types of meteorites hailing from the Red Planet.

Now researchers say they have pinpointed the source of those Martian meteorites classified as the "shergottites." The finding, if confirmed, would give scientists fresh insights into Mars' history and evolution.

"If one were able to say, 'Oh, this Martian meteorite is from exactly this spot on Mars,' then that would have significant added value to what you could get out of it," said Carl Agee, meteorite curator and director of University of New Mexico's Institute of Meteoritics.

"We'd know exactly what material it is made of, we'd know how old it was when it formed. You'd get more of the missing pieces of the puzzle of how Mars formed," Agee said.

University of Oslo planetary scientist Stephanie Werner and colleagues say they have done just that.

The shergottites, Werner said, come from a 34-mile (55-km) wide impact basin known as Mojave Crater in the planet's equatorial region.

The scientists point to the crater's large size, relative youth and chemical composition as good matches for the shergottites, which account for about 75 percent of the roughly 150 Mars meteorites found so far.

Others say the evidence is far from ironclad.

"The (study) strikes me as somewhat speculative," said Agee, who was not involved in the research.

Werner, for example, says the shergottites crystallized some 4.3 billion years ago, roughly the same age as the crater's original terrain.

But Agee said most scientists believe the shergottites are much younger.

"I'm not convinced," Agee said.

Werner's research is published in this week's issue of the journal Science.

(Editing by Kevin Gray and David Gregorio)

SEE ALSO: NASA Scientists Have Found An Ancient Martian Lake That Could Have Supported Alien Life

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An amazing new video posted to YouTube this week purports to show a meteorite hurling dangerously close to a skydiver in Norway.

The astounding improbability of this close encounter warrants skepticism, but if the video is a hoax, it's a pretty good one, said Bill Cooke, NASA's Meteoroid Environment Office at the Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Alabama.

"If you work out the mathematics, the odds of a 1-kilogram- rock (2.2 lbs.) passing within some 30 feet (9.1 meters) of a person on Earth's surface within 10 minutes is about 1 in 500 billion," Cooke told Space.com.

"You have a 1,000 times greater chance of winning the Powerball lottery," Cooke said.

The skydiver, Anders Helstrup, was wearing a wing suit and a camera-equipped helmet when he dropped from a small airplane in 2012 near the town of Rena, about a two-hour drive north of Oslo.

After watching the video footage from the jump, Helstrup saw that a lumpy, gray rock whizzed right in front of him, missing him only by a few feet, Norwegian broadcaster NRK reported.

"At first it crossed my mind that it had been packed into a parachute, but it’s simply too big for that," Helstrup told NRK. "The film caused a sensation in the meteorite community. They seemed convinced that this was a meteorite, perhaps I was the one who was the most skeptical."

Cooke stopped short of debunking the video, because, he said, "It certainly looks like a rock falling." While meteorites do burn and break up when they crash through Earth's atmosphere, they're actually very cold by the time they hit ground, Cooke said, making the rock's dull appearance scientifically sound.

"It's just the sheer improbability of it that gets me," Cooke said, though he admitted, "The improbable does occur from time to time."

An Alabama woman named Elizabeth Hodges is the only person on record ever to be injured by an extraterrestrial object. In 1954, a grapefruit-sized meteorite crashed down through her roof, bounced off her radio and struck her on the hip, leaving her badly bruised.

So far, no one has found a meteorite on the ground that could be linked to the incident in Norway. Multiple searches for the space rock in the marshes and scrub around Rena have not yet turned up any clues, NRK reported.

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A possible meteor exploded over the Russian city of Murmansk early Saturday morning, around 2:10 a.m. local time. 

The bluish flash was captured by several drivers with dashcams. In the video below, you can see a very bright ball of light streaking across the sky toward the ground. However, no explosion sounds were heard, according to various media reports. 

Officials said the nature of the flash is not yet known, according to a Russian report.

NBC News science writer Alan Boyle points to a report from Russian news agency Itar-Tass in which a Russian astronomer says the bright glow was an early fireball from the annual Lyrid meteor shower, which peaks on the night of April 21. 

The blast brings back memories of the meteor that exploded over the Russian city of Chelyabinsk last February, injuring hundreds of people hit by flying pieces of glass from broken windows. 

SEE ALSO: NASA Is Testing A Flying Saucer For Landing On Mars

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The annual Lyrid meteor shower peaks this year on the morning of Tuesday, April 22 (also Earth Day).

It should also be visible for the rest of the week.

The shower happens as Earth passes through a stream of debris from the comet Thatcher, which makes a full orbit of the sun every 415 years. The debris field produces up to 20 meteors per hour during the shower's peak, according to NASA.

Video footage of a possible meteor flying over Russia, captured by dashcams early Saturday morning, is believed to be an early visitor from the shower.

The meteor shower gets its name because the space rocks stream out from a point to the right of Vega, which is the brightest light in the constellation Lyra.

Viewing Conditions

Unfortunately, the half-moon will brighten the sky, making it more difficult to see meteors, especially very dim ones. But the moonlight shouldn't discourage you from looking up.

The best viewing "will be midnight until dawn on the morning of April 22, provided you have clear, dark skies away from city lights,"NASA said. "Northern Hemisphere observers will have a better show than those in the Southern Hemisphere."

Where To Watch

If you can't step outside, there are two options for viewing the meteor show online. The Slooh Space camera is live streaming a view of the Lyrids, weather permitting.

NASA is also live streaming the meteor shower.

Video streaming by Ustream

If you take awesome pictures of the Lyrid meteor shower, send them to dspector@businessinsider.com and we'll share them here.

SEE ALSO: NASA Announces An Earth-Size Planet That May Have Liquid Water

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The annual Eta Aquarid meteor shower will peak on Monday night through the early morning hours of Tuesday, May 6.

The Eta Aquarid happens every May as Earth passes through a string of space debris, including dust, rock, and ice, that comes from Halley's comet. The space dirt flies into our atmosphere and creates a dazzling light show in the sky as it burns up.

The meteor shower gets its name because the dust grains appear to come from the constellation Aquarius. Because Halley's comet orbits the Sun in the opposite direction as the Earth, the Eta Aquarid meteors enter the atmosphere relatively fast, traveling at about 148,000 miles per hour.

What Are Meteors?

Meteors are particles of dust or rock passing through the Earth's atmosphere. As a comet orbits the Sun, the nucleus gets heated and gas and dust flow outwards from the center, forming a trail behind the comet. When the orbit of the dust intersects Earth's orbit, the material enters our planet's atmosphere and gets burned up.

The Best Way To View

The best way to view the meteor shower is to look at the dark sky after midnight. Find a place away from city and street lights. Get a comfy blanket and lie on your back. Then look toward the constellation Aquarius. The best viewing times will be between midnight and the hour or two before dawn with peak rates occurring between 3 to 5 a.m. your local time, according to NASA.

NASA's Marshall Space Flight Center predicts that skygazers will be able to see up to 30 meteors per hour in the Northern Hemisphere and 60 meteors per hour in the Southern Hemisphere.

How To Watch Online

If you aren't able to see the meteor shower in the flesh, NASA will offer a LiveStream of the shower from Huntsville, Alabama, where officials said skies are expected to be clear. You can watch here.

Slooh will also live broadcast the meteor shower, with coverage starting at 9 p.m. EDT on Monday, May 5. An embed is below. The webcast will be accompanied by commentary from Slooh astronomer Bob Berman.

Editor's note: If you snap any great pictures of the meteor shower, feel free to send them to dspector@businessinsider.com and we'll publish them here.

SEE ALSO: How Long Could A Human Survive On Mars Wearing Only Jeans And A T-Shirt?

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A new meteor shower called May Camelopardalis is expected to peak in the early-morning hours on Saturday, May 24, with some forecasters predicting more than 200 meteors every hour.

The shower, which happens as Earth passes through a stream of debris from Comet 209P/LINEAR, has the potential to become a full meteor storm, according to experts at Slooh, a network of ground-based telescopes connected to the internet for public viewing.

Comet 209P/LINEAR was discovered a little more than a decade ago, in February 2004. It makes a full orbit of the sun every five years, but until now, Jupiter's gravity has always pulled the comet's debris stream out of Earth's path. That's why the meteor shower has never been seen before. For the same reason, scientists don't know exactly what we'll see in the sky.

If the debris field is large, it could be a spectacular show that rivals the Perseids in August, which typically produces 100 meteors each hour.

It could also be a snoozefest. "It all depends on how active the comet was more than a century ago,"NASA said in a video. That's when the streams of dust that the Earth is now crossing were ejected by the comet.

The meteor shower gets its name because the space rocks appear to originate from the constellation Camelopardalis, aka the giraffe, near the North Star.

Viewing Times

The best viewing will be between 2 a.m. and 4 a.m. EDT, according to NASA. Folks in the Northern Hemisphere will have a better show — provided observers have clear, dark skies away from city lights — because the peak occurs during the nighttime hours.

Observers in the U.S. and southern Canada will have the best viewing.

"Because this is a new meteor shower, surprises are possible," NASA said. "Outbursts could occur hours before or after the forecasted peak."

Astronomers David Asher and Robert McNaught predict a "significant proportion of bright meteors" and the "possibility of fireballs."

Where To Watch

If you can't step outside, or if weather conditions are poor, Slooh will live-broadcast the shower, accompanied by commentary from a handful of meteor experts. The broadcast will begin at 11 p.m. EDT on Friday, May 23.

SEE ALSO: NASA's Live HD Video Of The Earth From Space Is One Of The Coolest Things On The Internet

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The new project by Aspen-based photographer Thomas O'Brien, simply titled Meteor, is making our minds melt and simultaneously reinforcing the now-classic True Detective line: "It's all one ghetto, man. A giant gutter in outer space." 

The short but oh-so-sweet video is a project seven years in the making. O'Brien told The Creators Project that he's been experimenting with timelapse since 2005, but has never done anything with the footage until now.

He typically works with landscape photos and panoramic views, and often he'd leave his camera on while shooting stills.

"I never even looked at some of the images I shot,until this winter when I reorganized my entire library," he told us. 

O'Brien ended up finding over 500,000 images in his lightroom catalog that he hadn't published, including an excess of photos from the "consistent and reliable" meteor showers the Geminids, the Perseids, and the Leonids. 

He uses mostly a Canon 5DM3 and shoots in 6 and 7k when capturing full resolution raw sequences. Then he uses a program called LRTimelapse to process all the footage.

"It's unique," he added "because it can ramp an adjustment in Lightroom over time to the original raw images...smoothing out the exposure adjustments so its a perfect exposure at the start and end of the sunset."

At one point, his biggest challenge was technological limitations such as RAM size and battery length, but says "it's been getting easier and easier to capture this type of filming."

The landscape photographer has so much footage that he'll soon be releasing new timelapses shot in Utah, Hawaii, and Aspen—again all from old footage he found. This goes to show the wonders that cleaning your studio can offer an artist.

Watch the timelapse above, and head over to O'Brien's website and Flickr page for more starry glory. 

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The search for yield has taken investors into the nether regions of the solar system.

Last month, according to Artemis, a group that tracks catastrophe bonds, insurer USAA took out a policy against the risk it would have to pay out for tropical cyclones, earthquakes, severe thunderstorms, winter storms, wildfire, volcanic eruption and meteorite impact. 

The reinsurer, Residential Re then turned around and issued a catastrophe bond worth $130 million to split up their USAA payout risk among investors.   

Last year, a meteor impact caused millions of dollars' worth of damage to a city in Russia.

Here's the listing:

In a catastrophe bond, investors sponsor a body's insurance policy, betting the disaster won't occur. First, they pay an up-front amount to subscribe to the bond issuance. That amount is called collateral, and it gets parked in a fund managed by the bond issuer to be invested in low-risk securities. The pool is supposed to make interest payments to the investors as the bond reaches maturity. If the catastrophe is avoided, the investors see a nice return. 

But if the catastrophe occurs and the policy is triggered, the fund is abruptly converted into a rainy (or earthquake-y, or tornado-y) day fund, and the investors can lose everything. 

The Wall Street Journal's Ben Edwards said last month USAA's meteor bond was likely to yield 15%. 

Cat bonds have exploded in popularity thanks to their hefty yields. David Cole, the CFO at Swiss Re, one of the world's largest reinsurers, recently told Bloomberg they're actually probably too popular. 

The fact that no major natural catastrophes have occurred over the last two or three years doesn’t guarantee losses won’t occur in the future. Some people are chasing yield and may accept risks that they are not prepared for. Some of the new capital that comes into the market may be not as experienced or able to create a diversified portfolio.

Here's a chart showing the frequency of new catastrophe bond issues. Besides yields, of course, there has also been a huge recent uptick in natural disasters. 

The largest catastrophe bond ever was issued last month — a $1.5 billion note for protection against Florida hurricanes.

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Meet Lebanon, an iron meteorite that NASA's Curiosity rover ran into on its 640th sol (Martian day) on Mars. Back here on Earth, it was May 25, 2014.

It's not clear why Curiosity's engineers named this hunk o' rock "Lebanon." Maybe it's a reference to the Middle Eastern country, which is sort of shaped like this. Other Martian iron meteorites have also received geographic names, including Block Island and Oileán Ruaidh, which is the Gaelic name for an island off the coast of Ireland.

[Jet Propulsion Laboratory]

This article originally appeared on Popular Science

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A loud boom heard Saturday night by residents of Nicaragua's capital Managua was caused by the impact of small meteorite, government officials confirmed on Sunday.

The piece of rock, possibly from an asteroid that passed close to Earth on Saturday, landed near a city airport and did not cause any injuries, the AFP reported.

However, it did create a 16-foot-deep crater, the Associated Press said, citing volcanologist Humberto Saballos from the Nicaraguan Institute of Territorial Studies.

"I was sitting on my porch and I saw nothing, then all of a sudden I heard a large blast," Jorge Santamaria told the Associated Press. "We thought it was a bomb because we felt an expansive wave."

The Nicaraguan government has asked for help from international experts, including the U.S. Geological Service, to further analyze the event.

SEE ALSO: Stunning New Details From The Largest Asteroid Impact In A Century

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Nicaraguan officials say a meteorite gouged out a crater near the nation's capital city over the weekend, but scientists aren't so sure.

A committee formed by the Nicaraguan government determined that a new, 39-foot-wide (12 meters) crater found near the capital Managua's international airport was blasted out by a space rock strike Saturday night (Sept. 6), the Associated Press reported.

Some Managua residents reported hearing a loud boom on Saturday, which would be consistent with a meteorite impact. But other details warrant a healthy dose of skepticism, said Bill Cooke, head of the Meteoroid Environment Office at NASA's Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Alabama. [Nicaraguan Crater Possibly Caused by Meteorite (Video)]

"Something that produced a crater this big should have also produced an incredibly bright fireball in the night sky," Cooke said. "And no one reports a fireball, even though it was near midnight under scattered clouds."

Further, Managua is a big city, with lots of potential witnesses to such a night-sky sight. People saw a bright fireball the last time Cooke can recall a meteorite blasting out a crater on Earth, in September 2007 near the Peruvian village of Carancas — and that impact occurred in broad daylight.

A meteorite strike would also likely leave blackened fragments of the impacting body behind as evidence, both Cooke and meteor expert Peter Jenniskens said.

"If this crater has anything to do with a meteoroid impact, I would expect meteorites to be found in and around the crater," Jenniskens, of the Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence (SETI) Institute in Mountain View, California, told Space.com via email.

No such pieces have been reported, and none are visible in photos of the crater, Cooke said.

"So I'm kind of skeptical of a meteoritic origin for this crater," he said.

If a space rock did indeed carve out the Nicaraguan crater, the meteorite was likely relatively small — about 3 feet (1 m) wide if made of iron, and somewhat larger if composed of rocky material, Cooke added.

Some Nicaraguan officials have speculated that the purported meteorite may be a piece of the asteroid 2014 RC, which flew by Earth on Sunday (Sept. 7), the AP reported. But that is not the case, experts said.

"For those wondering, the event in Nicaragua (poss meteorite?) is unrelated to asteroid 2014 RC. Different timing, different directions," NASA officials wrote today (Sept. 8) via the @AsteroidWatchTwitter account, which is run by the space agency's Near-Earth Object Office at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California.

Follow Mike Wall on Twitter @michaeldwall and Google+. Follow us @Spacedotcom, Facebook or Google+. Originally published on Space.com.

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• Possible Meteor Strike In Nicaragua, Crater Found | Video

PREVIOUSLY: Meteorite Strikes Nicaraguan Capital, Creates 16-Foot-Deep Crater

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WASHINGTON (Reuters) - A blazing meteor lit up the night sky like fireworks across a dozen eastern US states and prompted more than 200 sighting reports, the American Meteor Society said on Monday.

The meteor entered the Earth's atmosphere over central Pennsylvania late on Sunday and wowed observers from Virginia to Massachusetts in a "random fireball event," society spokesman Mike Hankey said.

Most of people who reported the fireball on the American Meteor Society website said it began as a brilliant white color and then turned yellow, green and orange.

A witness in Aliquippa, Pennsylvania, said the meteor "traveled like a bottle rocket from the clouds to the ground. The eastern sky it lit up and it went off like a firework and was gone."

"Biggest I've ever seen!" said an observer in The Plains, Virginia. "It looked like a transformer blew up," said another in Mt. Wolf, Pennsylvania. 

Other observers said the fireball looked like a plane plummeting to the ground or that it pulsed and appeared out of nowhere.

Here's what the meteor looked like from an Accuweather camera in York, PA:

In some places, the flash was so bright it lit up the whole night sky:

You can also watch a full video of the fireball over New Jersey, as captured by the News12 New Jersey team.

A fireball is a meteor that is brighter than the planet Venus, and several thousand of them take place daily. The great majority take place over oceans or uninhabited areas, and many are masked by daylight, according to the society website.

The meteor over the US East Coast came a day after a fireball over the Pacific Northwest drew almost 200 comments on the website.

(Reuters reporting by John Clarke; Editing by Doina Chiacu)

SEE ALSO: Missed The Perseid Meteor Shower? This Time-Lapse Video Is Even Better Than Seeing It Yourself

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