Whereas most Alaskans had been tucked up in mattress early on Wednesday morning, quite a lot of residence safety cameras in and round Anchorage captured a pure phenomenon that might in any other case have gone largely unnoticed.
At round 5:45 a.m. native time, a meteor hurtled throughout the sky, its velocity because it hit Earth’s environment inflicting a brilliant mild that momentarily lit up a big portion of Southcentral Alaska.
In footage captured by a resident’s doorcam and shared by Reuters, we will clearly see the meteor blaze throughout the sky above Anchorage.
However not everybody was sleeping, with some people witnessing the occasion from their car earlier than reporting it on the American Meteor Society’s web site.
“Noticed this from the automotive driving north on Boniface Parkway in Anchorage,” wrote one witness. “I’ve seen meteor showers prior to now, and this was in contrast to something I’d ever seen … the streak was a lot, a lot wider, not like the skinny strains of taking pictures stars or meteor showers. I had two folks within the automotive with me who additionally noticed it, considered one of whom has a private curiosity in astronomy, and she or he agreed she had by no means seen something prefer it.”
One other wrote: “I used to be driving my automotive when the brilliant mild got here behind me and lit up the sky after which it got here excessive of my automotive after which in entrance of my imaginative and prescient after which disappeared abruptly. Shiny white on the entrance with a brilliant blue tail.”
Mark Conde, a physics professor on the College of Alaska Fairbanks, advised an area information website that the occasion was most likely part of the Ursid meteor bathe, originating from comet 8P/Tuttle.
In actual fact, Thursday evening is a superb evening to stay your head out of the window, or make you method to a location free from mild air pollution, to see if you happen to can spot any taking pictures stars from the Ursids, as this yr’s bathe is about to peak. EarthSky suggests you could be fortunate sufficient to see as much as 10 meteors per hour, however they’re unlikely to be as large because the one noticed over Alaska on Wednesday.
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