The search continues for a full moon-bright meteoroid likely to have landed in west suburban Beijing on Wednesday in what astronomers said could lead to one of the biggest discoveries in Beijing this year.
Witnesses in Beijing and nearby Tianjin recorded a clearly visible fireball-like meteorite descending near the west horizon of Beijing at 10:23 pm on Dec 16.
The surveillance camera from the planetarium taped a 2-second footage of the fall phenomena, in which a bright shooting star, carrying a visible tail, flew towards the east and exploded into greater brightness before disappearing on the horizon.
"We were at Jianxiangqiao Bridge when driving west-bound on the North Fourth Ring Road when we caught sight of the brightness moving to the southeast," Li Xin, a researcher with the Beijing Planetarium, wrote on the organization's online forum before posting the surveillance video right after the witness.
"The brightness of the meteor was close to a full moon," he wrote. "If this meteorite can be recovered, it can become one of the biggest discoveries in Beijing."