Watching A Large Impactor From Orbit
A video showing the smoke trail from the #Meteor over the Bering Strait last December, produced using data from @JMA_kishou's #Himawari satellite.
The orange meteor trail in the middle, shadow above-left.Hi-res copy: https://t.co/EXn8sFb556 pic.twitter.com/X54InkvMnl
— Simon Proud (@simon_sat) March 19, 2019
Any estimates on what the ground damage would have been if this was over land?
If you know the particulars you can calculate it here:
http://convertalot.com/aste…
It was 10 times as powerful as the Hiroshima bomb, about 173 kilotons. The Chelyabinsk meteor was even more energetic, 400-500 kilotons according to Wikipedia, so assuming this latest one exploded at a similar height, the damage may have been noticeable, but probably not life threatening.
Perhaps, but it was near one of the main air routes to Asia. Still it was high up, so likely it was not dangerous to any of the aircraft that use it. It is surprising the were no reports of it from any of the airline pilots.
The article I saw said they were asking around, since it was relatively close to the main US to East Asia routes. It would most likely be the pilot, not a passenger; passenger windows don’t offer much of a view, and they’re generally asked to close them on long flights (so people can sleep without being woken up at dawn.)
But remember the history of sprites (cloud to ionosphere upward lightning.) Pilots had seen them long before the official discovery, but they were transient enough the reports weren’t taken seriously. Or the pilot didn’t mention it because he didn’t want to say he saw an UFO.
It depends on the people involved. Most of the injuries from the Chelyabinsk impact were from people doing exactly the wrong thing. They saw a bright flash of light, ran to the window to see what it was, and got hit by flying glass when the pressure wave hit and shattered the window. In fact, one school teacher got a medal because she was old enough to remember the cold war “duck and cover” drills and made sure her students did that.
Based upon a Scott Manley You Tube video the JPL Center for Near Earth Objects, it was 173 kilo tons. Less than half of the size of the meteorite explosion over Russia several years ago.
Kewl! Is this the first time an Earth impact has been imaged from space?
I can’t think of specific references, but no. This could easily be the biggest even observed from space, but smaller things hit the atmosphere all the time. If you go down to the level of meteors, I’m pretty sure I’ve seen papers on the bolides observed from space. (And real ones; don’t get me started on Lou Frank and his small comet theory…)
No, I don’t think it is. Several years ago a small object was detected several hours before it hit the atmosphere and was tracked all the way to the ground. I think that may have been imaged from a satellite but I’m not sure.
Then there’s this:
https://earthobservatory.na…