On the morning of 06 October 2008, astronomer R. Kowalsky of Mount Lemmon Survey detected a small object (absolute magnitude H=30.4) now designated 2008 TC3.
According to NeoDys and Jpl Neo experts, the impact with the Earth atmosfere is almost certain and it should be at 0246 UTC of 07 October 2008. Fortunately this object is only a small chunk of rock few meters in size and should not survive passage through the atmosphere. In case some fragments should reach the ground, the impact zone has been located in the northern Sudan.
No damage is expected.
The entry in the atmosphere should be visible over northern Africa and possibly even over southern Europe.
Almost certainly 2008 TC3 will be the first impacting object discovered before entry into the Earth's atmosphere.
Here you can see our follow-up images of 2008 TC3 taken few hours before its entry in Earth's atmosphere (click on the image for a bigger version):
The discovery mpec:
http://www.cfa.harvard.edu/mpec/K08/K08T50.html
By G. Sostero, E. Guido and P. Camilleri
2 comments:
Could the TC3 have been viewed in Colorado, USA? There was a very bright fireball (?) with long tail (significantly brighter than the moon) which passed over the Colorado evening sky in October. I'm not even an amateur astronomer, so I have no clue; however, would love to know what we saw.
Hi
No, the bright fireball You saw wasn't 2008 TC3. But please consider that many fireball sightings are reported from all over the world each month.
For example a bright fireball has been witnessed from Colorado on 28 October 2008.
You can know more about it here:
http://tinyurl.com/5sh3eq
On our blog you can find a couple of nice fireball imaged here in Italy in December with our new meteorcam:
http://remanzacco.blogspot.com/2008/12/ursid-bolide.html
http://remanzacco.blogspot.com/2008/12/meteor-camera-and-one-nice-fireball.html
While for most recent and beautiful examples of fireball please check the November 2008 Fireball over Canada:
http://tinyurl.com/57gbd7
and the really recent (17 January 2009) Scandinavian Fireball:
http://tinyurl.com/7pbnzk
Thanks for visiting our comets/asteroids blog :)
Cheers,
Ernesto
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