Well, it was too close for convenience.
A fireball that swept across the sky on Monday was so close to Earth that the American Meteor Society received 259 reports and nine videos of its celestial sprint. In Grand Bahama, residents not only saw it, but heard a sonic boom, reports the Guardian.
CBS12 reporter Jay O’Brien recorded a Facebook story for the local news office when he saw it rushing through the sky and apparently disappearing into a blue flame.
“WOAH! Large flash and streak across sky in West Palm Beach. “It happened moments ago while we were on Facebook Live,” he said. tweeted. “Work to find out what it was.”
NASA astronomer Bill Cooke told the Palm Beach Post that it was a nearly 900-pound asteroid fragment that penetrated the Earth’s atmosphere at 38,000 km / h and crashed 23 miles above the Atlantic Ocean. In the process of breaking apart, Cooke said the meteor generates the energy equivalent of 14 tons of TNT.
“These things just come randomly,” Cooke added. “The atmosphere will break apart into something smaller than a soccer field.”
Meteorologists refer to Monday’s fireball – which has been documented by numerous dashcams and doorbell cameras – as a ‘bolide’, referring to the fact that it explodes when it enters the earth’s atmosphere. Gianluca Masi, of VirtualTelescope.eu, told the publication it traveled 12,430 miles from the earth’s surface, which is considered ‘extremely close’.
“It’s a special kind of fireball that ends with a big burst of light and often a tree sound,” Mike Hankey, operations manager of the American Meteor Society, told the Palm Beach Post.
This particular one was actually quite small – about 2 feet in diameter – meaning that it is not technically an asteroid, but only an asteroid fragment or meteoroid.