March 26, 2019
Cosmos Editorial
On December 18, 2018, a large meteorite exploded about 26 kilometres above the Bering Sea, generating approximately 173 kilotons of energy – about 10 times more than the power unleashed by the nuclear bomb dropped on Hiroshima in 1945.
The explosion was captured by several cameras onboard NASA’s Terra satellite.
The resulting imagery has just been released. The dark red line is actually the shadow cast by the fireball as it passed above the cloud tops.
The yellow area in the lower right of the frame is super-heated air left behind as the rock zoomed through it.
Related reading: Fireball over SA could have been a “Minimoon”
