A small rock in the Atlantic: Asteroid strike

A small asteroid, some 3 metres in diameter, came screaming in at 12 km /s (27,000 mph) and exploded over northern Sudan at 2:45 am on Tuesday October 7th. They don't think any of the bits would have been big enough to hit the ground. This is the first time an asteroid has been spotted and tracked before impact.

And the reason it's on this blog is that the William Herschel Telescope got a spectrum of the fireball as it zipped over the CanaryIslands.

Cool!

Labels: asteroid, astronomy, La Palma, La Plama, observatory, Roque de los Muchachos, William Herschel Telescope