Watch A Meteor Explode Over Earth In Stunning Video From Space

By Em Helena
| Up to date 1 hour in the past

NASA Astronaut Matthew Dominick, commander of the continuing SpaceX Crew-8 mission, unintentionally captured footage of a meteor exploding right into a vivid inexperienced fireball. The video was taken from the Worldwide House Station throughout an try and doc a time-lapse of the Milky Approach’s core. It didn’t take lengthy for his mistake to go viral.

Matthew Dominick, who has been in house since early March, posted the footage of the meteor on September 3 on the social media web site, X. Within the higher right-hand nook, on the 10-second mark, you’ll be able to see the item burst into flames, emitting a vivid bluish-green gentle in opposition to Earth’s horizon. The footage was slowed down to at least one body per second, permitting viewers of the video to concentrate on an occasion that, in actuality, would final nearly so long as a blink of an eye fixed.

Your common on a regular basis meteor couldn’t produce such a visually gorgeous show, so let’s give credit score the place credit score is due.

As a result of sheer brightness of the epic explosion, many consider the captured meteor to be a bolide. Bolides are outlined as extraordinarily vivid meteors that explode when hitting our ambiance. To succeed in classification, their fireballs should obtain an obvious magnitude of -4 or brighter. Superbolides, their larger sibling, should attain a magnitude of -17 or brighter, roughly 100 occasions brighter than the complete moon.

One of the current examples of a superbolide is the Sutter’s Mill meteorite, which entered Earth’s ambiance on April 22, 2012, breaking apart over Northern California.

Whereas many will drop the time period and simply name it a fireball, it’s vital to make the excellence. Your common on a regular basis meteor couldn’t produce such a visually gorgeous show, so let’s give credit score the place credit score is due. Look-wise, bolides are lovely and vivid, and meteors are mediocre and measly.

As a result of sheer brightness of the epic explosion, many consider the captured meteor to be a bolide.

In his submit, NASA astronomer Matthew Dominick revealed that he didn’t initially catch the “meteor’s” fireball because it was occurring, confessing that it wasn’t till he reviewed the photographs he had taken that he witnessed the charming phenomenon play out. 

Most of our planet’s inhabitants won’t ever make it out of our ambiance, making the sharing of those images, even when they’re only a meteor, all of the extra vital and thrilling.

This isn’t the primary spectacular picture that Matthew Dominick has captured throughout his time on the Worldwide House Station. His documentation of what the Aurora Borealis seems like from house went viral final month. He has obtained over 200,000 images whereas on the mission, dubbing him the ISS’s veteran photographer.

Many followers are appreciative of Matthew Dominick’s documentation because it has made the huge great thing about house extra accessible to normal audiences. Most of our planet’s inhabitants won’t ever make it out of our ambiance, making the sharing of those images, even when they’re only a meteor, all of the extra vital and thrilling. His pictures are really, in each sense of the phrase, out of this world.

He steadily shares his images and movies taken from his mission onto the platform, so we advocate giving him a observe for extra of his unimaginable work. For now, we wait and see what sort of magnificence Matthew Dominick captures subsequent.