EIU Astro

Inga Vetere of the Fire and Rescue Service said they received a call about the alleged meteorite on Sunday evening from an eyewitness. She said a military unit was dispatched to the site and found that radiation levels were normal. There were no injures.  The planet is constantly bombarded with objects from outer space, but most burn up in the atmosphere and never reach the surface.

Latvia meteor ?

Suspicion grew on Monday about the nature of the crater.  There are reports of shovel marks and doubt that a meteor would be flaming after impact with the ground.

Asta Pellinen-Wannberg, a meteorite expert at the Swedish Institute of Space Research, said she didn’t know the details of the Latvian incident, but that a rock would have to be at least three feet (one meter) in diameter to create a hole that size. Henning Haack, a lecturer at Copenhagen University’s Geological Museum said more information was needed to confirm that the crater was indeed caused by a meteorite.

“With all these kind of reports we get there always is a pretty large margin of error,” he said.

There have been cases that were not hoaxes. Just two years ago in 2007, a meteorite crashed near Lake Titicaca in Peru, causing a crater about 40 feet (12 meters) wide and 15 feet (five meters) deep.

Peruvian Crater near Lake Titicaca(Photo: Miguel Carrasco/La Razon, via AP)

Tests confirmed that the crater contained telltale magnetic fragments of a meteorite, and Peru’s Geophysics Institute recorded a large tremor in the area at the moment of impact, according to The Associated Press.

The Perseids are the remnants of comet Swift-Tuttle that passed by Earth in 1992. This regular event offers some of the best naked eye astronomy. The naked eye is the best instrument to use.

Astronomers are now estimating a double peak this year for viewers in the eastern portion of North America on Wednesday morning the 12th of August 2009. One peak should occur around 1:00 a.m. EST and the other peak around 5:30 a.m. EST.

Look to the North East after midnight. and you should see a score of meteors every hour. If you miss it tonight you can still see some activity over the next two days.