This is only the ninth time that an asteroid heading towards Earth has been detected before entering the atmosphere.
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Nothing to report, except for some impressive lights. A small asteroid entered the Earth’s atmosphere and burned up in the sky above the Philippines on Wednesday, September 4, in a large flash of light captured by several Internet users.
Unusually, the phenomenon was not a surprise. The asteroid was detected earlier that day before it entered the atmosphere by Jacqueline Fazekas, an observer with the Catalina Sky Survey (CSS), a NASA-funded program. It was dubbed CAQTDL2 by the CSS, which released images on X. This is only the ninth time an asteroid heading toward Earth has been detected in this way.
The object, less than a metre in diameter, was judged “safe” by NASA, which eventually named it 2024 RW1 and indicated on X that it would enter the atmosphere over the northeastern coast of the Philippines at around 00:45 local time (18:45 Paris time). The sky was overcast due to Typhoon Yagi/Enteng, NewScientist reports, but that didn’t stop many amateur observers from filming footage of the event.
