/data/photo/2022/06/02/62987f5d5ec36.jpeg "Many Shooting Stars Over Mount Merapi, Expert: It’s Just a Plane")
KOMPAS.com- A viral video shows an object falling from the sky above Mount Merapi. Netizens were also busy commenting and calling the sighting shooting star.
In a video uploaded by the Instagram account @mountnesia, he questioned whether the object that slid from the sky above Mount Merapi on June 1, 2022 was a bintang fall?
“Wednesday, June 1 2022 At 18.32 WIB, visuals of #Merapi can be seen from FREKOM CCTV in Kalitengah Lor (Southeast). What do you think that is? Is a shooting star?” write account @mountnesia quoted by Kompas.comThursday (2/6/2022).
As of today afternoon, Thursday (2/6/2022) the video has been watched by around 370,000 netizens and has been commented on by around 821 people.
The responses of netizens were varied, some said that it was not a shooting star but an asteroid or meteor.
There are also those who say that the celestial bodies that seem to have fallen are indeed shooting stars and they write their requests in the comments column.
As it is known that the myth of a shooting star that most people believe in is the right moment to pray because it can be granted.
Read also: Not Answering Prayers, Shooting Stars Are Actually Meteors
Apart from the various comments from the netizens, how do the experts see the appearance of the celestial body falling on Mount Merapi, is it the appearance of a shooting star?
Answering this question, the Indonesian Amateur Astronomer and Advisor and Assistant to the Gombong Astronomy Study Forum (FKIK) and the Kebumen Astronomy Study Council (MKIF) of Kebumen Central Java, Marufin Sudibyo said that it was clear that what was in the video was not a shooting star.
Marufin Sudibyo actually said that the phenomenon was just a passing plane.
There are three main reasons or factors mentioned by Marufin to support his statement, namely as follows.
1. The incident was still in the evening
As we can see from the video. The CCTV footage shows the time the sighting occurred, which was around 18.31 to 18.32 WIB.
Marufin said, the phenomenon that is believed shooting star seen above Mount Merapi This was recorded at sunset, where the sky was still bright and objects at a fairly large height were still illuminated by the sun.
Read also: The hottest star has a surface temperature 35 times higher than the sun, what is it?
That way, when a plane passes by when an object in the sky can still be illuminated by the sun, the CCTV camera must still be able to capture its appearance.
Meanwhile, it is believed that if the incident happened a little later at night or the weather in the sky was dark, the potential for the plane to be seen would be small.
“Yes, because (the plane) is still shining with sunlight. So it can be seen,” said Marufin to Kompas.com, Thursday (2/6/2022).
“If it’s not illuminated, it’s dark except for the red light (on the plane) which is difficult to record on CCTV,” he added.
2. Unsupported CCTV settings
The next factor that strengthens Marufin’s statement is the ability or setting of CCTV which is considered not so capable of capturing images of an object clearly.
“(The plane) was then recorded by CCTV, which generally tends to record bright objects moving as ‘tailed objects’ (such as tailed stars),” he said.
Read also: Why Are Stars Able To Emit Their Own Light?
Furthermore, he said, if CCTV is not regulated properly, then when a bright enough international space station (ISS) crosses the local sky or where the CCTV is located, it will still look like a ‘tailed star’ sighting.
3. Long enough duration
The third factor mentioned by Marufin to mention that the object as if it fell on Mount Merapi was not a shooting star was the long duration of the event.
Seeing what was recorded on CCTV in the video, the sighting of objects falling from the sky was recorded at 18.31.57 WIB. Then the recording ended at 18.32.46 WIB.
This means that in real terms, the recording took about 49 seconds. However, the uploader of the video accelerated it to 3 times faster so that the duration of the circulating video was only about 17 seconds.
“Then this phenomenon looks quite long (~30 seconds), so it can’t be a bright meteor (fireball),” he said.
He also compared it with the super bright meteor cone in the 2013 Chelyabinsk event which fell by releasing 600 kilotons of TNT energy, only glowing for 20 seconds.
“The combination of the three factors concludes that the phenomenon is most likely a passing plane,” he explained.
Read also: The Red Giant Star Pollux Tonight Aligns The Moon, Here’s The Explanation
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