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Old 15-06-2020, 11:01 AM
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MikeyB (Michael)
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Green glow seen shooting across WA night sky

I was interested to come across the below news item this morning, with its very cool amateur videos of a spectacular fireball over north-west WA last night:

https://www.9news.com.au/world/wa-as...e-9d4d71fc9a77

However the article goes on to say:
Quote:
Astronomers believe it was Asteroid 2002 NN4, which was scheduled to pass Earth at about 11.20pm yesterday.
The asteroid is estimated to be the size of six football fields, with estimated diameter of up to 570 metres, according to the Centre for Near Earth Object Studies.
Despite being clearly visible, the asteroid was about 5.2 million kilometres away from our planet, 13 times further away than the moon, NASA says, so there was no risk of it hitting the Earth.
Somebody has their wires very crossed - 2002 NN4 passed by Earth on 6th June and for all its size would have been invisible to the naked eye. This event is clearly an atmospheric burn, possibly space junk (the spent kick stage from Rocket Lab's 13th June Don't Stop Me Now launch perhaps?), although from the colour and lack of obvious fragmentation, it could also have been a nickel-iron meteor, I think.
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Old 15-06-2020, 02:10 PM
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Yeah I laughed at that too. They said in the article astronomers believe it was N44 which passed a few million miles from Earth.

They must have a strange idea about high the Earth's atmosphere goes.

Greg.
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Old 15-06-2020, 02:19 PM
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Outcast (Carlton)
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ABC has a somewhat better article...

Apparently the jury is out on what it was exactly... definitely not an asteroid some 5.2 million km away though... LOL

https://www.abc.net.au/news/2020-06-...lbara/12355358

Last edited by Outcast; 15-06-2020 at 04:25 PM.
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Old 15-06-2020, 03:19 PM
glend (Glen)
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Well, SpaceX had just launched its latest crop of Starlink satellites (58 of them), along with three ride share cube says. It could be the second stage burning up on re-entry, or one of the sats that misfired on its orbit burn. It would not be the first time SpaceX stuff has created events over Australia.
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