Look! Up in the Sky, It's....

Black Caviar raced in Australia today, and won her 23rd straight race, in a race named after her - the Black Caviar Lightning Stakes. The sprinter started slowly in her first race since Royal Ascot, but she won by 2 1/2 lengths, setting a new course record for 5 furlongs. The mare tore muscles and ligaments in her back during her single race in England, and it was not known if she'd be able to race again. Well... Black Caviar is back in impressive style! ..... Former Horse of the Year Rachel Alexandra is still in serious condition at Rood and Riddle Equine Hospital. She is still listed as being in "serious" condition, but her attending vets said that she had "brightened" yesterday, and actually wanted a mint as a treat, which she hadn't before. Best wishes to Rachel A. and her filly, now on a nurse mare at Stonestreet Farm.
  Look, up in the sky! Wow. Three "close encounters" yesterday between our mother Earth and errant space debris - that was quite a surprise for the day after Valentine's Day! We all knew about the asteroid that passed between the Earth and our GPS, etc. satellites at 2:24 EST - I watched it live on NASA, myself. The surprise encounters occurred in the Ural Mountains in Russia Friday morning, and in northern California Friday evening/night. The most frightening event happened above the city of Chelyabinsk: The meteor was a once-in-a-century event, NASA officials said, describing it as a "tiny asteroid." The space agency revised its estimate of the meteor's size upward late Friday from 49 feet (15 meters) to 55 feet (17 meters), and its estimated mass from 7,000 tons to 10,000 tons. The space agency also increased the estimated amount of energy released in the meteor's explosion from about 300 to nearly 500 kilotons. By comparison, the nuclear bomb the United States dropped on Hiroshima in 1945 released an estimated 15 kilotons of energy. The whole event, from the meteor's atmospheric entry to its disintegration in the air above central Russia, took 32.5 seconds, NASA said. Reports from Russia have said that up to 1,200 people have been treated for cuts and abrasions caused by flying glass and the pure concussive force of the blast. More than 4,000 buildings received damage, and the roof of a zinc manufacturing plant collapsed from the force of the blast.
  What freaked me out, was a headline that appeared a few hours after the blast, stating that US fighter jets had scrambled when two Russian bombers had appeared over Guam's air space. The last paragraph of the story explained that this had happened during President Obama's State of the Union Address on Tuesday evening, and not after the blast over Chelyabinsk. I guess I still haven't out-grown our Kindergarten and first grade training during the Cuban Missile Crisis - just goes to show how old, remembered drills and training can jump into life again.
  The third encounter was seen and recorded in northern California last night - The fireball was seen around 7:45 p.m., by witnesses as far north as Fairfield and as far south as Gilroy. It was also reportedly seen in Sacramento and Walnut Creek. Folks in Monterey said it was visible along California's Central Coast, too. NBCBayArea.com said Candice Guruwaiya gave this account on Facebook of seeing it in San Jose: "I was leaving Safeway on Branham and Snell when I saw it. ... It was a bright green when it first appeared, then it went to a bright yellow. It was awesome!" An astronomer at the Chabot Space and Science Center in Oakland told NBCBayArea.com that Friday night's event wasn't related to the asteroid's passing: Gerald McKeegan, an astronomer at Chabot, said he did not see it, but based on accounts he thinks it was a "sporadic meteor," which can happen several times a day but most of the time happens over the ocean, away from human eyes. Sporadic meteors bring as much as 15,000 tons of space debris to Earth each year, according to McKeegan. He explained that meteors, which are hunks of rock and metal from space that fall to Earth, burn up as they go through Earth's atmosphere, which is what apparently caused last night's bright flash of light.