Asteroid burns up in Earth’s atmosphere over Philippines, creating ‘spectacular fireball’
A small and “harmless” asteroid entered the Earth’s atmosphere over the Philippines Wednesday afternoon, creating a fireball that lit up the sky, photos show.
The asteroid zoomed high above🐻 the northernmost island of the Philippine archipelago shortly before 1 p.m. at expected speeds of 17.6 kil﷽ometers per second, or 63,360 kilometers per hour before burning up, the .
The European Space Agency had that the roughly 3-foot 𓃲asteroid, named 2024 RW1, would break apart near Luzon Island at 12:39 p.m. ET, (4:39 p.m. UTC).
This is just the ninth asteroid spotted before impact, the ESA wrote in a post on ಌX.
“The object is harmless, but people in the area may see a spectacular fireball!,” ESA said.
NASA that the asteroid would “harmlessly impact Earth’s atmosphere” and “create a fireball off the east coast of the northern Philippines.”
Stunning video footage shared on X showed the asteroi🦋d burning up over the Philippines.
Jacqueline Fazekas with the NASA-ꦏfunded , a NASA-funded obs𒁃ervatory near Tuscon, Arizona dedicated to tracking near-Earth objects,space rock, which it called CAQTDL2.
Images were captured of the asteroid, but viewing conditions were expected to be less than ideal due to cloud cover from Typhoon Yahi, which has impacted the northern Philippines as a𒁃 tropical storm for the past few days and is now equivalent to a Category 3 hurricane, located about 250 mile🔜s west of Luzon Island, .
In a few weeks, skygazers will be able to see asteroid “2024 ON” as it ไswings by Earth at an astronomically close, but still safe distance, according to the Virtual Teles✱cope Project.
Measuring at least 720 feet wide, or ab🦂out the length of two🌌 football fields, the asteroid will be visible from the Northern Hemisphere.
Asteroids are rocky remnants left over after the solar systꦦem formed 4.6 billion years ago, .
