On Tuesday, August 28, at 19 hours 40 minutes local time, a meteorite flew over the Australian city of Perth. CCTV cameras installed on cars and homes filmed the event.
Eyewitnesses told about what happened. One of them is Rosena Cox, who lives 125 kilometers from Perth: “I heard a deafening rumble, it sounded like something had exploded.”
Robyn Garratt personally saw the flash: “We heard noise, saw light and thought it was lightning, but the rumble that followed was definitely not thunder. The glass in the windows and the house itself shook from the impact, the dog went mad. In York, everyone ran out, thinking that the sky had hit the ground."
Scientists from Curtin University were most interested in the event. They began triangulating to determine where the meteorite fell. Professor Phil Bland said the flash was unusually bright, so the object is likely to be large:
“We got an image from different cameras, which means that we can precisely triangulate where the meteorite flew, determine what its speed was and what size. We will find out where it landed and what part of the solar system it came from. Usually they fly at a speed of 17 kilometers per second in the upper atmosphere, but if he later reduced the speed to four, it probably survived."
Phil Bland also added that most meteorites usually burn up in the earth's atmosphere and only two to three percent reach the planet's surface. To everyone who wants to find a fallen meteorite, he described how it should look:
“Outwardly, he is very strange. Because of the fire, a black crust appeared on it, and it itself forms a rounded shape, which you will not find among ordinary stones. He will be knocked out of the environment. Besides, meteorites are often heavier than rock."
Alexey Evglevsky
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