Brazil meteor cluster
© BRAMON
A very rare cluster of meteors was registered in the early hours of June 26 from the BRAMON EMM2/MA Station managed by Edgar Merizio in São José do Ribamar, Maranhão, Brazil. Where at least 9 meteors registered simultaneously in less than 1 second, all parallel to each other.

Meteor cluster like these originate from the same meteoroid that broke apart before it hit Earth. Usually this fragmentation occurs a few hours, perhaps days, before its encounter with the terrestrial atmosphere.


There are several possible origins for the fragmentation that generates a cluster of meteors like this. It's possible that the meteoroids originated from a recent common ejection of a comet or asteroid passing close to the Earth, it may have been a low cohesive meteoroid that has been fragmented by the collision of a microparticle, or may have originated from a meteoroid with volatile material in its composition that has been vaporized due to the action of the Sun, dispersing the rocky fragments shortly before its encounter with the Earth.

Meteor groupings have been recorded previously, most of them during the outburst of the Leonids meteor shower in the early part of this century. This one recorded by Edgar appears a very rare type of cluster recorded out of a period of a great shower and its preliminary calculated radiant does not seem to be associated to any known meteor shower.