Meteorite falls in northern Siberia
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Meteorite falls in northern Siberia

April 05, 2021

Everyone thought it was an April Fool’s joke, but it turnes out that everything is quite real.

#ARCTIC. #SIBERIA. THIS IS TAIMYR. The AstroAlert|Observational astronomy society of the social network VKontakte informed astronomy lovers about the interesting phenomenon.

On April 2, 2021, at 18.52 Moscow time, infrared sensors on US satellites recorded an explosion over the southeast of the Taimyr Dolgan-Nenets district of the Krasnoyarsk region – more precisely, 71° north latitude and 106° east longitude. The explosion was caused by the invasion of the Earth’s atmosphere by an asteroid several meters in diameter. Its destruction took place at an altitude of 40 km. Norilsk falls into the theoretical field of visibility of the meteor flash! The nearest settlement from the site of the event is the village of Hatanga, located 170 km to the north-west.

According to NASA, the energy released as a result of the explosion was 0.4 kilotons of TNT. For comparison: the energy of the explosion of the Ozersk (Lipetsk) meteorite in June 2018 was 3 kilotons, and the Chelyabinsk meteorite was 440 kilotons in TNT equivalent.

By the way, those interested in meteor observations can take part in the international project of the Global Meteor Network (almost two dozen cameras are already working in Russia).

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Text: Victor Tsaryov, Photo: cneos.jpl.nasa.gov and astroalert.info

April 05, 2021

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