October 10th 08, 01:03 PM
posted to uk.sci.astronomy,uk.sci.weather
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Small Bang Expected
On Oct 10, 8:18*am, "N_Cook" wrote:
Dr J R Stockton wrote in erlyn.invalid... FYI : 2008-10-07 Tue - Aten asteroid 2008 TC3 likely to hit Earth's
atmosphere over N Sudan, 02:46 UT; ~ 1 kT airburst, harmless.
spaceweather.com seen 2008-10-06 19:25 UT
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*(c) John Stockton, nr London, UK. *Turnpike v6.05
MIME.
*Web *URL:http://www.merlyn.demon.co.uk/ - FAQish topics, acronyms, &
links.
Usenet News services are currently unreliable; I may not see all articles
here.
3 days after the event, eventually some hard evidencehttp://www.satnews.com/cgi-bin/story.cgi?number=1802299945
http://www.satnews.com/cgi-bin/displ....cgi?448235268
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 ground. The asteroid exploded with the energy of around
one kiloton, equal to the power of a small nuclear bomb. Infrasound detector
arrays in Kenya also detected a sound wave from the direction of the
expected impact corresponding to the energy of 1.1-2.1 kilotons of TNT
Nice one.
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