REPUBLIKA.CO.ID, BERLIN — A asteroid A small rocket glided across the sky and crashed into Earth’s atmosphere near Berlin, Germany, in the early hours of January 21. The incident produced a bright but harmless fireball.
A phenomenon like this usually occurs several times a year, but this time is unique because it was first detected by scientists, about three hours before the incident. This is the eighth time researchers have seen one of the space rocks before it collided.
The asteroid, named 2024 BXI, was first discovered by Krisztián Sárneczky, a astronomer at Piszkéstető Mountain Station, part of the Konkoly Observatory in Hungary, a self-proclaimed asteroid hunter. He identified cosmic rock The study used the 60 cm Schmidt telescope at the observatory.
Not long after the discovery of the space rock, NASA provided detailed predictions regarding where and when the meteor would hit. NASA also said that the resulting fireball would not be dangerous.
“Attention: A small asteroid will disintegrate into a harmless fireball west of Berlin near Nennhausen at 01:32 CET. Monitors will see it when it is clear!” said the tweet NASA on the evening of January 20, as reported on the page SpaceTuesday (23/1/2024).
Camera live in the northern German city of Leipzig captured footage of the incredibly bright meteor as it appeared and disappeared in the span of a few seconds. The asteroid, estimated to be 3.3 feet (1 meter) wide before the incident, likely began disintegrating about 30 miles (50 kilometers) west of Berlin.
“And perhaps dropping some meteorites to the ground along the way,” Denis Vida, a postdoctoral associate in meteor physics at Western University in Canada, told CBS News.
Sárneczky has discovered hundreds of asteroids in recent years, and was the first to detect asteroid 2022 EB5 about two hours before it hit Earth’s atmosphere. He also used Konkoly Observatory data to find the incoming rock.
The incident was very unusual. According to the European Space Agency, 99 percent of near-Earth asteroids less than 98 feet (30 meters) have yet to be discovered. The smaller an asteroid, the closer it will be to Earth before scientists can detect it, making it difficult to predict its impact in advance, according to experts.
In some cases, near-Earth asteroids can hide in sunlight, such as the meteor that streaked from the rising sun over the Russian city of Chelyabinsk in 2013. The surprising space rock shattered windows, hit pedestrians and caused burns as a result. instant ultraviolet light, and injured more than 1,600 people.
Government space agencies are currently developing new technology for sky screening to look for asteroids before they make contact with Earth. These include NASA’s NEO Surveyor satellite, currently planned for launch in 2027, and ESA’s NEOMIR, which is not expected to launch until after 2030.
By 2025, the Vera C Rubin Observatory in Chile, funded by the National Science Foundation, will catalog the solar system from Earth. This is expected to greatly help asteroid hunting efforts.
“It took us 200 years to discover all the asteroids we know about to date, about 1.2 million asteroids,” Mario Jurić, head of the solar system discovery team at the University of Washington’s DiRAC Institute, told Astronomy.
2024-01-23 09:32:39
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