‘What was THAT?’
Residents from Western Australia to Victoria Australia have witnessed an amazing light show when the night sky turned glowing green as a huge asteroid shoot across Australia on June 14, 2020.
Australian skywatchers have been treated to a stunning show by what astronomers believe was a distant asteroid.
Residents from across Australia shared vision to social media of the object streaking across the sky on Sunday night, creating a green glow.
Night owls in a remote part of western Australia captured a stunning green fireball streaking across the night sky.
Astronomers believe it was “asteroid 2002 N-N-4,” which was scheduled to pass Earth around 11:20 p.m. on Sunday.
The asteroid, around 570 metres wide, was an estimated 5.2 million kilometres from Earth, but still created a spectacular light show.
The asteroid was seen from Victoria to Western Australia and it created a stunning green glow in the sky as it passed by.
NASA had identified 958,703 asteroids, and said impacts with Earth can be expected every 200-300 years.
‘Asteroids range in size from Vesta, the largest at about 530 kilometers in diameter, to bodies that are less than 10 meters across,‘ a NASA statement read.
But why is it so hard to detect dangerous asteroids:
Still, the probability of an asteroid actually hitting Earth is pretty slim — occurring once every two or three centuries. There is no such thing than an asteroid impact. Just look at the Tunguska event in Siberia:
And we have been lucky Sunday night that this glowing green asteroid didn’t explode in the night sky over Australia. Because then, skywatchers and residents could have had experienced something like Chelyabinsk, a meteor just 17 meters in diameter that broke through the Earth’s atmosphere over Russia, injuring more than 1000 people:
We were lucky, asteroid 2002 NN4 was millions of kilometers away. The next time 2002 NN4 will be anywhere near this close to the Earth will be in June 2029.
I don’t want to say that NEOs projects from NASA and ESA aren’t worth the taxpayer money we invest inside… But this latest asteroid event over Australia just shows that our technology isn’t ready to hinder a catastrophic impact right now. We aren’t even capable of precisely forecast a flyby… More space news on Strange Sounds and Steve Quayle. [9News, DM]
