An exploding meteor caught on video in the sky over Golden and posted Tuesday nightԻ has lots of people wondering what might have been the cause. And let’s face it: In 2020, it would seem almost anything is possible.
John Keller, director of the planetarium at the University of Colorado, says it was “definitely” a meteor that disintegrated into smaller pieces which continued to burn up in the atmosphere. One clue for him is that it was moving too fast to have been part of a falling human-made satellite, and must have come from somewhere else in our solar system.
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Keller said the object is called a “bolide,” meaning an extremely bright meteor. Often they explode, and he’s seen “half a dozen” in his lifetime.
“What they were seeing was a very large rock burning up in the atmosphere,” Keller said after viewing the video. “You can see it breaking up and disintegrating and continuing to burn.”
Keller estimated that the object was slightly less than a meter in size before it encountered the earth’s atmosphere.
“The mass and the speed determine how much energy it has,” Keller said. “All of that energy turns into thermal energy as it burns. If it’s massive enough to not be burned up by that much energy, it can make it down to the ground.”
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If it had made it to the earth’s surface, it would be called a meteorite. Keller is curious whether any meteorite debris for the one over Golden will be found.
The Chelyabinsk meteor, a “superbolide” that exploded over Russia and Ukraine in 2013, occurred during the day and produced light that was brighter than the sun. It also produced a shock wave and many meteorites. Keller said that one is estimated to have measured 65 feet long before it entered the atmosphere.
