Asteroid shines ‘ten times brighter than moon’ in astounding footage

The flash was approximately 10 times brighter than a full moon

Adam Smith
Friday 04 December 2020 16:19 GMT
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A meteor crashed and burned in Earth’s atmosphere over the US and Canada, with astonishing footage by a 24-hour streaming camera.

Footage picked up by the live webcam service EarthCam shows an object passing by the CN tower in Totonto.

The website tweeted a GIF of the fireball, which appeared with a huge flash of light, at the same moment as a bird flies past the tower. It is unclear if the two events are related.

A number of Toronto residents saw the meteor at approximately noon local time on Wednesday, according to CTV News. 

“The flash was probably about 10 times brighter than the moon, the full moon,” Dr Denis Vida, from the University of Western Ontario’s physics and astronomy department, said.

“At that moment the body either completely disintegrated or lost a lot of mass.”

At the same time, over 150 reports were made about a fireball seen at that time – although the average time of those sightings was in the evening, rather than in the middle of the day.

It is estimated that the meteror was the size of a basketball, entering the atmosphere at a 45-degree angle approximately 50 kilometres (31 miles) north of New York.

It was travelling at an estimated 100,000 kilometers (62,000 miles) an hour, but scientists are still unsure whether the rock made it to Earth.

A sonic boom was also heard across New York; For meteors, however, that’s comparatively slow. Bill Cooke, who leads NASA’s Meteoroid Environment Office, told NBC that its slow entry speed suggests that it could have come from a larger asteroid.

“To have something so close to a major city, that's pretty rare,” Robert Lunsford, of the American Meteor Society, said.

Two weeks ago, another huge meteor was seen over the southern coast of Tasmania. The incredible footage shows its bright green debris, which shot over the research vessel Investigator. 

A fireball that fell to Earth in 2018 was recently found to be containing “pristine extraterrestrial organic compounds” that could help tell us how life formed, according to scientists. 

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