by Jayane Leslie Felicino | Photo credits to CNN
Harmless asteroid, “2024 RW1” exploded as a bright green fireball above the Western Pacific Ocean near Luzon, Philippines at around 12:46 AM, last early Thursday afternoon, September 5.
According to the American Meteor Society, the event was seen from at least 400 kilometers away, despite the European Space Agency's (ESA) initial prediction that the nearby tropical storm Enteng would make fireball observations difficult.
The bright green light emitted from the space rock’s explosion was attributed to its high magnesium content, which allowed people to view the phenomenon from a great distance.
According to a Twitter (X) post by the ESA, the astronomers from the Catalina Sky Survey discovered the estimated 1-meter asteroid just 8 hours before its disintegration.
Moreover, ESA explains that astronomers rarely see space rocks like 2024 RW1 enter the Earth’s atmosphere due to their small size despite 1-meter asteroids being said to come once every two weeks on average, making the event an extremely rare one.
This accounts for only the 9th time astronomers have spotted an asteroid before it had hit the planet.
The last time such an event occurred was when a similarly sized space rock, ‘2024 BX1,’ was spotted by the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) approximately 3 hours before it exploded above Berlin on January 21, 2024.
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