Dashcam puts a fireball outstretched above the province of Antwerp: “Multiple sightings reported” (Putte)
On Thursday morning, an alert reader saw a short but eventful light spectacle above Beerzel, a sub-municipality of Putte in Antwerp. His dashcam limits the phenomenon enormously. It is probably a large meteor that evaporated into the atmosphere. The sighting was reported several times around 7:13 am on the website of the International Meteor Organization.
According to doctor Lê Binh San Pham of the Royal Observatory of Belgium, it is most likely a fireball. “Or another word for a big meteor,” says the doctor. “Whether it is composed of comet debris or space debris, we cannot determine exactly. Such fireballs can occur in the same region at least several times a year. In general, they can be taken over a distance of several hundred kilometers, but as they are very fast, you need to be there at the right time and place. The weather also has to cooperate.”
Fireballs almost always evaporate into the atmosphere. “A small minority can hit the ground and leave behind meteorites, but that is freely available. In Belgium we just found six meteorites,” says doctor Lê Binh San Pham. “The greatest danger to humanity comes from asteroids orbiting the solar system. And even then, the chance of one of these hitting the earth from a few meters is very rare. It concerns one asteroid of 50 to 140 meters per millennium.”