Kiley Price
Mon, January 22, 2024
An asteroid flying past earth.
In the wee morning hours on Sunday (Jan. 21), a tiny asteroid came hurtling through the sky and smashed into Earth's atmosphere near Berlin, producing a bright but harmless fireball visible for miles around. Such sightings typically occur a few times a year — but this one was unique because it was first detected by scientists roughly three hours before impact — only the eighth time that researchers have spotted one of these space rocks before it hit.
The asteroid, dubbed 2024 BXI, was first discovered by self-proclaimed asteroid hunter Krisztián Sárneczky, an astronomer at the Piszkéstető Mountain Station, part of Konkoly Observatory in Hungary. He identified the cosmic rock using the 60-cm Schmidt telescope at the observatory. Shortly after the space rock's discovery, NASA gave a detailed prediction of where and when the meteor would strike.
"Heads Up: A tiny asteroid will disintegrate as a harmless fireball west of Berlin near Nennhausen shortly at 1:32am CET. Overseers will see it if it's clear!" NASA tweeted on the night of Jan. 20.
A live camera in the city of Leipzig in northern Germany caught footage of the exceptionally bright meteor, watching it appear and disappear in the span of a few seconds. The asteroid, which measured an estimated 3.3 feet (1 meter) wide before impact, likely started to disintegrate around 30 miles (50 kilometers) west of Berlin and "probably dropped some meteorites on 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 around two hours before it slammed into Earth's atmosphere. He used Konkoly Observatory data to spot that incoming rock, too.
His sighting is incredibly unusual. According to the European Space Agency, 99% of near-Earth asteroids smaller than 98 feet (30 meters) across have not yet been discovered. The smaller an asteroid is, the closer it must be to Earth before scientists can detect it, which can make it difficult to forecast impacts in advance, experts say.
In some cases, near-Earth asteroids can hide in the glare of the sun, such as the meteor that shot out from the direction of the rising sun over the city of Chelyabinsk, Russia, in 2013. That surprise space rock shattered windows, temporarily blinded pedestrians, inflicted instantaneous ultraviolet burns and injured more than 1,600 people.
Government space agencies are currently developing new technologies to scan the skies for asteroids before they make contact with Earth, including NASA's NEO Surveyor satellite, currently planned to launch in 2027, and ESA's NEOMIR, which isn't expected to launch until after 2030. Starting in 2025, the Vera C. Rubin Observatory in Chile — funded by the National Science Foundation — will catalog the solar system from the ground, and is expected to greatly help asteroid-hunting efforts.
"It took us 200 years to discover all the asteroids we know to date, about 1.2 million asteroids," Mario Jurić, the Rubin Observatory's solar system discovery team lead and the director of the University of Washington's DiRAC Institute, told Astronomy. "In the first three to six months of Rubin, we will double that."
Video shows asteroid burning up as it zooms through skies over Germany
Emily Mae Czachor
Sun, January 21, 2024
A small asteroid entered Earth's atmosphere and burned up early Sunday morning as it hurled through the skies above eastern Germany.
Videos shared on social media throughout the day showed the glowing object's descent over Europe, shortly after the Hungarian researcher and self-described "asteroid hunter" Krisztián Sárneczky spotted it from an observatory in Hungary. Sárneczky is well-known for discovering minor planets and other space objects headed toward our planet, including two asteroids that respectively fell over France in 2023 and the Arctic Ocean in 2022, according to EarthSky, an astronomy website run by scientists and experts in the field.
A small asteroid fell through the skies over eastern Germany early Sunday morning on Jan. 21, 2024. / Credit: Augustusplatz Live Cam via Denis Vida on X
The asteroid seen early Sunday measured about 1 meter end-to-end, according to Denis Vida, a Ph.D. associate in meteor physics at Western University in Canada and the founder of the Global Meteor Project, which aims to better observe meteors using a worldwide cooperative of cameras pointing upward to space.
Vida shared one of the clearest video clips of the falling asteroid, which was originally captured by a livestream camera set up in the German city of Leipzig, in a post on X, formerly Twitter. The asteroid "probably dropped some meteorites on the ground" as it zoomed through the atmosphere and broke apart, Vida wrote alongside the video. He clarified in an email to CBS News that the asteroid began to disintegrate about 50 kilometers, or about 30 miles, west of Berlin.
The asteroid was initially dubbed Sar2736 before the International Astronomical Union's minor planet center went on to officially name it 2024 BX1, EarthSky reported. Funded by a grant through NASA's near-earth object observation program, the minor planet center collects data on comets and "outer irregular natural satellites of major planets," including their sizes and various locations, from observatories everywhere, according to its website.
The center's data log on 2024 BX1 shows input from numerous observatories in various European countries, such as Spain, Croatia and Romania, in addition to Hungary and Germany.
NASA Asteroid Watch first flagged the asteroid's imminent arrival in a social media post shared on Saturday evening.
"Heads Up: A tiny asteroid will disintegrate as a harmless fireball west of Berlin near Nennhausen shortly at 1:32am CET. Overseers will see it if it's clear!" the post read.
The space agency's prediction was correct, and the asteroid rained down after midnight in central Europe as a "fireball," the astronomical term for a shooting star, which the agency defines as "exceptionally bright meteors that are spectacular enough to be seen over a very wide area.
Watch: Fireball lights up Berlin sky
Hillary Andrews
Mon, January 22, 2024
BERLIN, Germany – One scientist caught an amazing display early Sunday morning, an asteroid lighting up Berlin as it burned up, falling through the Earth's atmosphere.
The photographer, Michael Aye, a researcher at the Planetary Research Institute, acted on a tip from a colleague at the SETI Institute.
DEEP IMPACT: WHAT TO KNOW ABOUT ASTEROIDS AND WHEN WE SHOULD BE WORRIED ABOUT THEM
A webcam over Leipzing caught the asteroid.
"A 1-meter (3.2 feet) asteroid called Sar2736 is going to impact Earth, West of Berlin (city of Rathenow) at 00:32 UT, so in 30 min," SETI scientist Franck Marchis posted on X, formerly Twitter. "HARMLESS but several fragments will probably fell on the ground. Look up if you live in the area. It will be a beautiful show."
A Hungarian astronomer detected the Earth-bound rock about 3 hours before impact. He detailed the time and place, Aye told Reuters. He said this is only the eighth time impact, by the minute, was forecast.
Even NASA joined the asteroid watch on social media.
One astrophysicist told German media that it is possible that the asteroid burned completely. But, there is also a possibility that stones, as big as a thumb or fist, survived.
No word yet if any pieces of the asteroid have been found.
Original article source: Watch: Fireball lights up Berlin sky
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