15 April 2010: big meteor spotted over Madison, Wisconsin

Nice! This was a pleasant surprise, the appearance of a meteor over the city of Madison, Wisconsin. The chance of a meteor this visible falling over a populated area is extremely low, and though Madison may not be Los Angeles or Tokyo, it still has half a million people and quite a few phoned in to report seeing it in the sky. A large amount of sightings also makes it easier to track the trajectory of a meteorite after it has hit the ground.

An animated image of the meteor in the sky can be seen here.

Edit: here's a much better view of the asteroid, from a video taken from a squad car.




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On a related note, I'm currently watching this video on how to create economic incentives for exploring space. I'm only a few minutes into it but it seems worth sharing with others so I'm embedding it here. Also see here for a previous post on asteroid mining.