A small asteroid which entered the Earth’s atmosphere was seen lighting up the sky above the English Channel. A 3 feet meteoroid was witnessed in the sky around 03:00 GMT (8:30am IST) on Monday creating a shooting star effect, BBC reported.
The small asteroid, currently designated as Sar2667, exploded after entering the Earth’s atmosphere and was visible from across most of southern England and Wales – and as far south as Paris, the report added.
International Meteor Organisation (IMO), a Belgium-based non-profit organisation, predicted earlier that, “the object would have entered about 4km (2.5 miles) from the French coast, and would create a ‘fireball’ effect”. It was expected to strike the earth’s atmosphere near France’s Rouen city, it added. This is the seventh time an asteroid impact has been predicted in advance.
The European Space Agency said it was “a sign of the rapid advancements in global asteroid detection capabilities!” The experts believe that the scientists will try to find the debris of the space rock for future studies, the report added.
Several users on social media shared the stunning shooting star effect phenomenon which left the netizens mesmerised.
A user who witnessed the event tweeted, “the asteroid lit up the sky with a pink flash which was spectacular”. Another user wrote, “I just stood at my window and turned on my phone. I wasn’t expecting much but it really was amazing.”
American physicist and airburst specialist Mark Boslough from the Los Alamos National Laboratory told Wales Online that while “airbursts of this size happen somewhere several times per year” they are “rarely discovered in advance”, Manchester Evening News reported.
The last asteroid predicted to enter the atmosphere in advance was witnessed in the sky above Ontario, Canada in November 2022.
Asteroids are small rocky objects that orbit around the sun. Over 1.1 million asteroids are being recognised by scientists, though the actual number is believed to be much higher, the BBC report added.
