Saturday, October 11, 2008

UA-discovered asteroid impacts as predicted


The first meteor identified before it hit the Earth, was spotted as it exploded into the atmosphere over Sudan on Monday night. The asteroid 2008 TC3 was discovered by the UA's Mt. Lemmon observatory about 20 hours before it entered the Earth's atmosphere.

There was little news coverage of the impact, but Wired Science has a good summary published on Thursday. Spaceweather.com reported an estimated impact energy equal to 1.1 to 2.1 kilotons of TNT.

The Meteosat 7 satellite captured the event which was seen by a KLM pilot and recorded on seismograms in Kenya [above, cross is location of KLM plane, circle is the asteroid impact site.]

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