Fireball brings Mid-Autumn surprise to Chinese skywatchers seeking the full moon
Dramatic footage shows how shooting star lights up the night sky above Yunnan province
A fireball lit up the sky in southwestern China on Wednesday night, surprising many people who were looking up to watch the full moon during the Mid-Autumn Festival.
Video circulating on Chinese social media showed that at a few minutes past 8pm, a ball of flame arched across the sky and lit up the darkness for several seconds, leading many observers to wonder whether they had seen a rare shooting star.
Nasa’s fireball database recorded one incident at around 8.07pm Beijing time on Wednesday at a location about 164km northwest of Lijiang, Yunnan province.
Nasa has been tracking fireballs – which are unusually bright meteors – with US government sensors since 1988.
Its last recorded sighting of a bright fireball took place in Canada on September 5.
The Yunnan fireball was a meteor that entered the Earth’s atmosphere at a velocity of 14.6 kilometres per second and carried an impact energy equivalent of 540 tonnes of TNT explosives, according to Nasa.