Another celestial phenomenon just after Thursday’s eclipse appeared Friday night over Guam’s skies.
A bright light was seen falling from the sky and the spectacle was caught on camera by island residents who shared those videos with PNC.
To get to the bottom of what the bright light was, PNC spoke with Patrick Chan, a meteorologist with the National Weather Service. He says they received a video taken outside Home Depot in Tamuning.
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Friday night lights may have been debris from Chinese commercial rocket. https://t.co/GWo23r43Fo https://t.co/NrG6lEsfmK
“Yes, I watched the video myself. One of our co-workers sent us a video over in the parking lot of Home Depot Guam seeing a bright light breaking up in the sky. And then Saipan also called us earlier. They saw the same image and based on the image in the video it looks like a meteorite breaking up in the sky,” Chan said.
PNC asked, so it’s a meteor? Chan responded, “yeah it’s a meteor.”
He told the Pacific News Center that it was a reasonably-sized meteor, which broke up into multiple pieces before making impact.
“Based on the distance of the sky it probably landed somewhere in the ocean in small pieces,” said Chan.
But unlike meteors depicted in movies, tonight’s celestial event won’t have an effect and according to Chan, it is a pretty quick phenomenon.
“Once the meteor enters the atmosphere of earth, because of the friction it starts to burn and that’s why you see the bright light, the meteor itself burning and if you look at the video it actually breaks up into smaller pieces earlier and as it entered further into the atmosphere it broke up into multiple pieces probably more than three. At the last minute, it kind of looks like a fireball…different bursts of lights. That’s very small pieces breaking up,” he concluded.
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