A stunning photo of the fireball spotted incinerating above Australia’s sky has been released. And scientist know believe the unexpected visitor over the skies was in fact a minimoon that had lost its place in orbit.
Such minimoon are objects believed to be space rocks briefly attracted by Earth’s gravity.
This was an extremely slow fireball that had an initial velocity of around 6.8miles per second
Curtin University
The fireball was first spotted by the Australian Desert Fireball Network in August 2016.
Astronomers at the time thought it was merely a normal meteor.
Researchers studying the fireball’s trajectory say the fireball, dubbed DN160822_03, actually circled the Earth before losing orbit, transforming the rock into a minimoon.
Only one other minimoon has ever been observed with a telescope.
This rocky object orbited Earth for 11 months before hurting back into space.
The University of Arizona’s Catalina Sky Survey discovered a minimoon about the size of a car in 2006.
2006 RH120 orbited Earth for less than a year after its discovery, then resumed its orbit around the Sun.
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Our planet’s Moon is 2,000-miles across and Earth’s lunar orb has orbited us for four billion years.
A minimoon is in contrast only a few feet across and can be attracted to Earth for less than a year.
The space rock will then resume its life as an asteroid or falling to Earth as a spectacular meteor fireball.
Researchers from Australia’s Curtin University have revealed these celestial objects can be a vitally important sub-population of near-Earth objects.
The scientists claim it is important they are studied as they are close to Earth so make the easiest targets for future sample-return, redirection, or asteroid mining missions.
The fireball researchers said in a paper published in the Astronomical Journal: “This was an extremely slow fireball that had an initial velocity of around 6.8 miles per second.”
“It was detected by six of the high-resolution digital fireball observatories located in the South Australian region of the Desert Fireball Network.”
US-based space agency NASA says there should be at least one asteroid with a diameter of at least three feet orbiting the Earth as well as many smaller objects at any given time.
Sightings of minimoon fireballs are extremely rare.
This is only the second time a fireball has been spotted, the first was seen by cameras in Europe only in 2014.
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