Mysterious blue fireball streaks above Western Australia, puzzling astronomers

#Perth #WA have you seen the AWESOME fireball that sailed through the sky over the #Pilbara last night? If you haven't check out the online article in @thewestaustralian: https://thewest.com.au/technology/science/meteor-lights-up-pilbara-sky-in-vision-captured-by-fifo-worker-miller-frunks-ng-b881578595z Image taken from footage by Shaz Hussien at Cape Lambert #fireball #meteor #meteors #space #astronomy #whatsinthesky #sky #nighttime #night #nightsky #ironmeteor #perthnews #perthevents #perthlife #perthhappenings #ThisisWA #westernaustralia #justanotherdayinwa #westisbest #visitwa #amazingwa #perthobservatory #perthobs Perth Observatory
A photo posted by @perthobservatory on Jun 14, 2020 at 11:36pm PDT

A streak of blue light that flashed across the sky on Monday surprised western Australia's night owls and befuddled the astronomy community.

Many observers caught the phenomenon on video. The fireball streaks steadily across the sky. At first, it appears orange or yellow, with a short tail streaming behind it. After a few seconds, the bulk of the fireball lights up blue.

Scientists aren't quite sure what object was burning up in the atmosphere to create the brilliant light show, according to ABC News. Some amateur astronomers speculated that the object could be human-made debris, perhaps from a recent rocket launch. But that seems unlikely, Renae Sayers, a research ambassador at Curtin University's Space Science and Technology Centre, told the news agency.

A fireball flashes across the night sky in Western Australia’s remote Pilbara pic.twitter.com/UF9JqNIRiRJune 16, 2020

When space junk reenters the atmosphere, "what we tend to see is sort of like crackles and sparks," Sayers said. "This is due to the fact that there is stuff burning up — so you've got solar panels going all over the place, you've got hunks of metal moving around."

The fireball over Pilbara, on the other hand, glided smoothly through the sky. That makes it more likely to be a natural space object. The blue color, according to Nagle, indicates a high iron content. Many meteorites — space rocks that survive their fiery trip through Earth's atmosphere — are high in iron. Some may be the cores of ancient asteroids, according to the Natural History Museum in the U.K.

Sayers said that the fireball looked similar to another spectacular meteor sighted in Australia in 2017. That 2017 fireball whooshed across the sky, but instead of hitting the ground or burning up in the atmosphere, it bounced back into space. The June 15 fireball may have been another grazing encounter, she told ABC News.

Meteors bright enough to be classified as fireballs are rare, but encounters with space rocks are common. According to NASA, about 48.5 tons (44,000 kilograms) of meteor material falls on Earth every day. Most space rocks disintegrate entirely or are the size of a pebble by the time they make it through Earth's atmosphere. Occasionally, one makes a truly spectacular entrance: In February 2013, a meteor that would become known as the Chelyabinsk meteor entered the atmosphere over Russia and exploded in the biggest space blast since the 1908 Tunguska explosion. The explosion blew out windows in buildings in six different cities.

Originally published on Live Science.

Stephanie Pappas is a contributing writer for Live Science, covering topics ranging from geoscience to archaeology to the human brain and behavior. She was previously a senior writer for Live Science but is now a freelancer based in Denver, Colorado, and regularly contributes to Scientific American and The Monitor, the monthly magazine of the American Psychological Association. Stephanie received a bachelor's degree in psychology from the University of South Carolina and a graduate certificate in science communication from the University of California, Santa Cruz.