A fireball fell over Western Australia, lighting up the night sky and attracting many onlookers.
Camera captures fireball in Western Australia. Video: 9news
Dashcams and multiple observatories in Western Australia captured images of a green-blue fireball streaking across the sky on November 22 at around 8:50 p.m. local time. According to the Perth Observatory, many people witnessed the moment the fireball fell in the southwestern region of Western Australia.
These types of fireballs are usually caused by meteorites and are larger than average. They are also known as bolides and are accompanied by a blinding flash of light due to the intense heat generated by friction with the atmosphere. The green color of the fireballs may be a result of iron in the meteorite.
Some people speculate that the meteorite could be a large object from the Leonid meteor shower, which peaked on November 24. The Leonids are an annual meteor shower that occurs when Earth passes through ice and rock left over from a comet that orbits the Sun in a 33-year orbit. According to Samantha Rolfe, a lecturer at the University of Hertfordshire in England, the Leonids are one of the more frequent and predictable meteor showers of the year. The dust cloud that Earth passed through was formed when the Temple-Tuttle comet heated up in the inner solar system, releasing gas that pushed away small rocks.
As Earth passes through the part of its orbit that intersects the Temple-Tuttle comet's dust trail, rocks and ice fall through the planet's atmosphere, Rolfe explains. They're usually as small as grains of sand and become meteorites when they interact with Earth's atmosphere. They vaporize and create a flash of light lasting about a second, called a shooting star.
However, it is possible that the meteorite that hit Western Australia was just a stray object unrelated to the Leonid meteor shower. Curtin University’s Desert Fireball Network is trying to determine where the meteorite fell, using its trajectory across the sky. If the original rock was quite large, more than 50 to 100 meters long, it would likely be able to maintain much of its speed and survive its journey through the atmosphere, said Annemarie E. Pickersgill, a meteorite impact scientist at the University of Glasgow in Scotland.
An Khang (According to Newsweek )
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