Mysterious fireball lights up over Thailand
What was it? An asteroid, a burnt balloon or space junk? People on their way to work early Monday morning were surprised by a mysterious fireball that briefly lit up the sky. The object fell from the sky and burned up about 100 kilometers above the Earth.
Photos and videos – recorded by dashboard cams – of the event were posted on social media in Thailand, which was seen from several locations north of Bangkok and also in Kanchanaburi. It became world news (cucumber time?) because the story with photos and videos reached many news media from CNN to De Volkskrant.
It is not yet clear what it was. Saran Poshyachinda, deputy director of Thailand's National Astronomical Research Institute, believes it was an asteroid that turned into a fireball on its way to Earth. It was probably just a small object weighing a few kilograms. So far it appears to be an isolated incident, he added, though he said there was not enough evidence to definitively say what the object was.
The Bangkok Post quotes an official at the Bangkok Planetarium as suggesting it could have been a burning balloon.
The incident is being investigated, because it could also just be space debris that returns to Earth. The website Satview notes that around that time there was a report of an object passing through the Earth's atmosphere on fire.
The provincial deputy governor told the Bangkok Post it was unlikely it was a downed plane or helicopter.
All sorts of ideas, but no one knows for sure. Or actually again. A Twitter user posted the photo, which accompanies this article. True or False: You know, there may be more between heaven and earth than you think!
Below is a video with a nice shot of the flash of light:
[youtube]https://youtu.be/rOoKv2OMpOw[/youtube]
A burning balloon is excluded, given the speed of the object (at a distance of many (tens of) kilometers at least several degrees of arc per second).
Space debris is highly unlikely. Space debris is in an orbit around the Earth that is very slowly getting lower and lower. The resistance slowly increases and combustion starts while the object is still moving mainly horizontally. You may remember the images of the space shuttle that crashed while re-entering the atmosphere.
With a probability bordering on certainty, it was therefore an 'ordinary' meteorid, possibly a small asteroid, which entered the atmosphere at a speed of a few tens of kilometers per second, heated up and slowed down very quickly, as a meteor was visible during combustion, and of which possibly a remnant – a meteorite – has landed on earth, although when I see the images I rather assume that everything in the atmosphere has burned up.