A small asteroid certainly, but the images are impressive. An asteroid crossed our Earth's atmosphere on the night of Tuesday December 3 to Wednesday December 4 above Siberia before crashing near the town of Olekminsk, located in the Republic of Sakha in Siberia.
The celestial object, which became a ball of flame, lit up the Russian sky and surprised the inhabitants of this region of northeastern Russia, but it did not cause any damage when it crashed into Earth, even though it it was “potentially dangerous,” according to the Russian space agency.
The European Space Agency (ESA) claimed on X that the asteroid measured 70 cm in diameter but, more worryingly, it was only spotted around twelve hours before it appeared in the sky. “The impact will be harmless and will undoubtedly result in a pretty bolide in the sky above northern Siberia” warned the agency.
Astronomer Alan Fitzsimmons, from Queen's University in Belfast, quoted by New Scientist magazine, specified before the fireball was visible that it would be a “small event, but still quite spectacular “. “It will be dark above the impact site and, several hundred kilometers away, there will be a very impressive and very bright fireball in the sky,” he predicted.
The astronomer was right since several residents of Olekminsk, a small town located 650 km southwest of the regional capital Lakutsk, published videos on social networks showing the comet lighting up the Siberian night sky.
This latest asteroid, named COWEPC5, was spotted by NASA's Asteroid Land Impact Warning System (ATLAS), which has four telescopes operating around the world, designed to give warning up to a week before impact.
