While most of the meteor appears to have burned up in the atmosphere, a piece as large as a "fist or a soccer ball" likely ended up in the North Sea.
Fire in the Sky
While most of the meteor appears to have burned up in the atmosphere, a piece as large as a "fist or a soccer ball" likely ended up in the North Sea.
© Illustration: skeeze from Pixabay; inset: Reuters
Gennady Borisov of Crimea spotted the interstellar space rock on August 30. It has now been given the official name of C/2019 Q4 (Borisov) by the Minor Planet Center.
Thankfully, the rock poses no risk of colliding with the Earth and making us go the way of the dinosaurs.
The comet has what's known as a 'Hyperbolic trajectory' meaning that it hasn't been interfered with by our sun's gravity which suggests it originated from deep space, outside of our solar system.
The rock is reminiscent of Oumuamua, the first interstellar object we detected as it passed through our solar system, briefly greeting our sun before heading back out again, generating huge excitement here on Earth.
© KENS5/K. Palivec
The American Meteor Society confirmed the meteor sighting, which took place Saturday around 10 p.m.
The meteor was seen here in Texas as well as several other states, including New Mexico and Louisiana.
The majority of sightings were reported from the Central Texas area, according to AMS.
Meteors like the one spotted Saturday are often referred to as fireballs, AMS said. They are common events but can often be hard to see in city lights.
The video, shown below, was captured by K. Palivec Saturday night.
It was caught on one of the LTV webcams in the Latvian Television building.
StarSpace observatorija noticed a fireball burning in the Rīga sky, seen for about 5 to 6 seconds and burning out mutely with a blue-green flame and a long tail.
© Rob McDowall
A sonic boom-like noise is baffling people in Glasgow after it was heard over the Southside.
A sonic boom-like noise is baffling people in Glasgow after it was heard over the Southside.
The loud boom was captured on video my a concerned resident around 3:17pm, but the source remains unexplained.
Rob McDowall, a resident in Maxwell Park, in the Southside of the city tweeted around 4pm asking: "did anyone else hear a massive boom in Glasgow? Sounded like a sonic boom."
He went on to share CCTV footage of the mystery bang, prompting one woman to say she thought it was a gas explosion in nearby Rutherglen.
© stuff.co.nz (file photo)
At first Gary Wheaton thought he was looking at a flare, until he saw a plane flying beneath it.
Now the Paekakariki man believes what he saw off the Kāpiti Coast about 1.20pm on Monday was likely a meteor that was also spotted over Nelson.
"It was like a streak of light screaming across the sky," Wheaton said. "It got bigger and bigger and bigger and popped."
Wheaton called his daughter out who got there to see the "huge smoke trail" it left across the sky.
"It just happened so quick," he said.
He initially thought it was a flare from a boat but realised - due to seeing a plane in the sky beneath it - it was far too high.
© FIONA HAYES
The trail, seen here over Torquay, was thought initially to have been caused by an aircraft
The trail, seen here over Torquay, was thought initially to have been caused by an aircraft
© Mwanner/Wikimedia Commons
Many people said it sounded like it was coming from inside their building on on their block. But it wasn't just local; people heard it around the same time across a huge swath of northern New York. In response to an Enterprise Facebook post, people wrote that they had heard it as far west as Cranberry Lake, as far north as Malone, as far east as AuSable Forks and as far south as Eagle Bay, plus throughout the Tri-Lakes villages.
That boom was heard in Saranac Lake 10:13 a.m. Some people also reported hearing a later one, perhaps around 1 p.m.
The cause of the noise remained a mystery as of Friday afternoon.
There was no record of any earthquake within 2,000 miles of the Adirondacks, according to the U.S. Geological Survey's online global tracker.
© NASA . JPL-Caltech
NASA has detected but not taken measures against an asteroid that entered the Earth's atmosphere and exploded over the Caribbean.
The space agency admitted in a statement that the rock, measuring about 5 meters in size and designated 2019 MO, was first spotted when it was about 500,000 kilometres from Earth, just before it hit the atmosphere.
"This was roughly the equivalent of spotting something the size of a gnat from a distance of 310 miles (500 kilometres)," NASA said.
© YouTube/AMS/M. Nixon
Comment: See also the following previous meteor/fireball events in the Netherlands: