Fiery meteor crashes in Columbia.

[barracuda]

Colombia: 'Giant fireball' was a meteorite

Colombian authorities confirmed that a "giant fireball" that fell from the sky in the Santander department, central Colombia, was a meteorite.

The Colombian media has been buzzing with eye witness accounts of the fireball, which caused a massive explosion at 3:15PM local time Sunday.

Andina.com reported that Bucaramanga Mayor Fernando Vargas confirmed that the phenomenon was a meteorite that left a crater 100 meters in diameter when it crashed into the earth in the San Joaquin municipality in Santander.

Colombian air force helicopters were commissioned to fly over the area to try to locate the source of the explosion.

The director of the University of Nariño's Astronomic Observatory, Alberto Quijano, told RCN Radio Sunday that he believed the object was a meteorite.



In rural areas of Santander, police received reports that the explosion had shattered windows in the area.

[barracuda]

This footage of the meteor/asteroid was taken in Brazil.

[barracuda]

Are we in the midst of an area of unusual asteroid activity right now?

Asteroid near-misses actually common, scientists say
But seeing two within 24 hours on Wednesday was a first for observers

Two asteroids that swooped past Earth Wednesday may have caught the attention of the public, but events like these are not actually rare, NASA scientists say.

"This is the first time we've seen (two) combined within a 24-hour period, but that's probably because we don't know everything that is out there," said Lindley Johnson, program executive of the Near-Earth Object program at NASA headquarters in Washington.

Single asteroids have been known to make such close passes, but they usually slip by unnoticed, Johnson told Space.com.

In fact, with a rough estimate of 50 million unknown asteroids, a 33-foot-wide near-Earth object could pass harmlessly between Earth and the orbit of the moon every day, Johnson added. Such an asteroid might hit Earth's atmosphere once every 10 years, but because of its small size, it would pose no substantial threat to the people or property below.
"They would certainly break up in Earth's atmosphere, or we might get some meteorites on the ground," Johnson said.

In Wednesday's double flyby, the larger of the two space rocks, asteroid 2010 RX30, approached Earth at 5:51 a.m. EDT (0951 GMT), passing within 154,000 miles. It was estimated to be between 33 and 65 feet wide.

The second asteroid was came closer. The 20- to 46-foot-wide asteroid 2010 RF12 passed within 49,000 miles of Earth at 5:12 pm EDT (2112 GMT), NASA asteroid trackers said.

Both asteroids flew well inside the orbit of the moon.

Preliminary observations suggested both rocks and their orbits are fairly standard.

"They're pretty common from what we see," Johnson said. "RF12 is in a very Earth-like orbit. If it was larger and worth going to, it might be a candidate for a spaceflight mission in the future, but at 10 meters in size, it's not very interesting."

Astronomers are still unsure where the asteroids originated, but they are hoping that observations taken during the flybys will shed some light.

"We can project their orbits back to see what part of the solar system they came from, and hopefully we'll get some information and be able to relate them to asteroid families," Johnson said.

Because the two asteroids discovered only three days before their flyby were moving quickly, finding and tracking them across the sky posed a challenge for seasoned skywatchers. Viewers using a 20-inch (50-cm) telescope should have been able to catch a glimpse, Johnson said.

Asteroid 2010 RF12 was particularly well-positioned for observers in Europe and Africa, he said "a fairly rapidly moving object across the stellar background, (looking) very much like a satellite that you see crossing through the star field, though not quite that fast."

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/39068311/ns ... nce-space/