On April 22, 2012, a chunk of asteroid one or two meters across burned up in Earth's atmosphere. It came in over California and was seen by a lot of people, despite it occurring at about 8:00 a.m. local time and in broad daylight. I just became aware that some footage was taken of the event, and as far as I know is the only video we have of it. It was taken by Shon Bollock, who was making a time-lapse kayaking video just outside Kernville, California as part of his Shasta Boyz adventuring website:
[embed width="610"]http://vimeo.com/42056769[/embed]
Pretty cool! It looks like he caught the very beginning of it burning up in the upper atmosphere. Not long after this, the meteoroid broke apart, raining down small meteorites onto the ground which were later found spread over the countryside
. The video is being studied by astronomers and meteoriticists to try to calculate the trajectory, speed, and possible orbit of the object. This is difficult with just one video, so if you have pictures you took or, better yet, more video, please let me know!
Tip o' the Whipple Shield to Aaron Johnson on Twitter.
Related Posts: - A meteor’s lingering tale - Meteor, Crater - Best video of Soyuz rocket burning up so far - Fireball over Germany
