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A rare series of events occurred early Tuesday morning, October 7, as asteroid 2008 TC3 hit Earth releasing a huge amount of light and energy before exploding in the atmosphere over northern Sudan. Even better is that amazingly, the Meteosat-8 Rapid Scanning Service managed to capture the impact. This brief flash was captured by Meteosat-8 in Rapid Scan Service, as the image to the right shows. The asteroid 2008 TC3, entered the Earth's atmosphere at a velocity of 12.8 kilometers per second at around 02:46 UTC above northern Sudan, Africa. As it entered the Earth’s atmosphere, it compressed the air in front of it. The compression heated the air, which in turn heated the object to create a spectacular fireball, releasing huge amounts of energy as it disintegrated and exploded in the atmosphere, dozens of kilometers above... [read full story]
