Last Wednesday (2) the skies of three Brazilian states in the Northeast region were illuminated by the passage of a meteor that was seen in Paraíba, Pernambuco and Ceará. The event was observed in at least seven cities.
According to the technical director of the Brazilian Meteor Observation Network (BRAMON), Marcelo Zurita, columnist for Olhar Digital , the fireball's trajectory went from southwest to northeast, heading towards the municipalities of Patos and Santa Luzia, both in Paraíba.
Zurita, who is also president of the Associação Paraibana de Astronomia, explains that the clear skies in these regions this week helped in the observation of the meteor, but these phenomena rarely happen at this time of year. “At this time, no one knows the exact reason, there are few meteor records. They reappear at the end of March.”
According to Zurita, the first report of this meteor was made by Thalles Oliveira, an internet user from Crato, Ceará, in the BRAMON Facebook group, who reported having seen the passage of a “comet”.
“From the description in your post, what Thalles saw was actually a meteor”, explains Zurita (see how to differentiate). Knowing this, the researchers analyzed the images from the cameras of the Clima ao Vivo monitoring platform, and confirmed that the meteor reported by the internet user, in fact, happened.
Despite not having caused a very intense glow, what draws attention in the occurrence of this phenomenon is, precisely, the fact that it was not a time of many records.
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"We don't have more detailed analyzes about the meteor, but what we can see from the images is that it occurred in the Paraíba hinterland, and that its trajectory ended between Patos and Santa Luzia", said Zurita, who estimates that the object that generated the event was a space rock about the size of an orange. “And certainly he was fully vaporized in the atmospheric passage. If anything was left, it would only be small fragments of a few grams.”
This meteor was not recorded by BRAMON. Zurita explains that this sometimes happens, mainly due to clouds in the regions where the cameras are positioned, and that the organization always receives reports such as that of a resident of Ceará, which helps in the work. “BRAMON always receives this type of report through social networks and also through an online form that we make available for this purpose”.
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The post Meteor crosses the sky of three states in Northeast Brazil appeared first on Olhar Digital.
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