Updated: 19th February 2023
Exciting news!!!!!! An asteroid that had only been discovered in space a few hours before impacting the Earth has been caught by the Crayford (CMHASD) meteor camera on Monday 13th February 2023 at 2.59am.
It is only the seventh time an asteroid strike had been successfully forecast, in what the European Space Agency said was ‘a sign of the rapid advancements in global asteroid detection capabilities’.
Despite all the cloud that was around at the time; our meteor camera managed to capture the small 1 meter asteroid now called 2023 CX1 as it entered the Earth’s atmosphere creating a brilliant fireball as it disintegrated, lighting up the night sky over the English Channel as it travelled eastward over the coast of Normandy, France. The 3ft meteoroid created an ‘airburst’ that could be seen across southern England and Wales and in parts of northern France as far south as Paris.
Below is the CMHASD meteor camera video showing the fireball.
The one-metre asteroid was discovered by Krisztián Sárneczky with the 60-cm Schmidt telescope of the Piszkéstető Observatory in Hungary. It is his second discovery of an impactor,
‘’The fireball event happened at the predicted time (02:59 UTC) and location, with observations mostly from Southern UK and France, but also from Belgium, the Netherlands and even Germany. It is likely that some fragments of the meteoroid may have survived the atmospheric pass and fell somewhere onshore close to the coast north of Rouen, in Normandy, France’’ ref: https://neo.ssa.esa.int/-/new-imminent-impactor-found-by-european-astronomer
Now a space rock (meteorite) from that fireball has been found in northern France and CMHASD are absolutely thrilled. On 15 February 2023 art student Loïs Leblanc found the first meteorite of 2023 CX1 in a field located in Saint-Pierre-le-Viger.
Update on Asteroid 2023 CX1 aka SAR2667 – YouTube
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2023_CX1
More news still to follow – so do check back.