The camera of the Cairns airport in Australia witnessed a green explosion in the air. Experts said it was a meteor. The airport’s security camera captured the meteor’s flight, and eyewitnesses within a radius of 400 kilometers also saw the fall and filmed it on their smartphones, DVRs.
The Guardian reported that the sound of the explosion was heard most clearly over the city of Croydon, which was located about 100 kilometers east of Normanton, indicating that the meteor exploded somewhere very high in the atmosphere.
Dr. Brad Tucker from the Australian National University told the publication that the asteroid was probably about a meter wide and probably moving at a speed of more than 150 thousand km/h. The astrophysicist explained that the reason for the greenish color of the meteorite was probably caused by overheating of fragments of iron and nickel, when the rock gradually burned up in the atmosphere.
Social media videos have captured the shocking moment a meteor crashed into northern Queensland, describing the impact as a “huge explosion”.
Residents in parts of Townsville, Cairns, Mt Isa, Mareeba, Normanton, and Mackay reported the skies turned green as the meteor crashed… pic.twitter.com/val62u2w32
— 10 News First Queensland (@10NewsFirstQLD) May 21, 2023
A rock of this size almost never reaches the surface of the Earth, but explodes in the atmosphere at a high altitude. “It’s a mid-air detonation, so if it’s over a populated area, that can cause the damage. This one is on the small side, but we worry about the 10-metre, 20-metre sized meteors,” says Dr. Tucker.
Similar meteors appear about once a month, but mostly they happen in a deserted area and get unnoticed. “This one happened at a convenient time in a relatively populated area – 9pm on a Saturday night means lots of people are going to see it.”
Earlier we reported about how recently a bolide exploded in the sky over Kyiv.
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