A social media post purporting to show a bright fireball in the evening sky over Thailand on Monday night (Mar 4) has sparked debate among netizens about its identity.
Citing a statement from Jonathan McDowell, a space expert from the United States, the Thai Astronomical Society’s Facebook page reported that the blazing object, visible in several central regions, has been identified as a large meteor.
The association also mentioned that the other possibility is that the fireball was debris from a spacecraft, satellite, or parts of a rocket re-entering the Earth’s atmosphere.
Verification of the latter case can be done by checking rocket launch records or re-entry logs, which space agencies keep. However, preliminary checks did not find any such activity in the area.
The International Olympiad on Astronomy and Astrophysics at Chulalongkorn University also supports the theory that the object was an iron meteorite or a meteor falling through the atmosphere, appearing green due to magnesium content.
The center explained that the speed at which a meteor enters Earth’s atmosphere affects its color; the faster it moves, the more intense the color.
Similarly, the National Astronomical Research Institute of Thailand elaborated that meteors are caused by the Earth’s gravitational pull on rocks and dust from comets or asteroids, leading to combustion in the atmosphere. This process causes the meteor’s atoms to emit light at various wavelengths, so we see different colors depending on the chemical composition and surrounding air molecules. (NNT)
