An asteroid discovered JUST YESTERDAY entered the earth’s atmosphere over Sudan at 7:46 pm PST yesterday evening. Probability of impact is 99.8% in the area of 21N 33E. I hope some footage of this turns up. Aside from some great footage that I hope turns up, this is important because this is the first time that an asteroid on a collision course was spotted and tracked before impact.

map from Google Maps

From NASA’s spaceweather.com:

If predictions were correct, asteroid 2008 TC3 hit Earth this morning (Oct. 7th at 0246 UT), exploding in the atmosphere over northern Sudan like a kiloton of TNT and creating a fireball as bright as a full Moon. Most of the 3-meter-wide asteroid would have vaporized in the atmosphere with only small pieces possibly reaching the ground as meteorites.
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2008 TC3 was discovered on Oct. 6th by astronomers using the Mt. Lemmon telescope in Arizona as part of the NASA-funded Catalina Sky Survey for near-Earth objects. Asteroids the size of 2008 TC3 hit Earth every few months, but this is the first time one has been discovered before it hit.

This pre-impact image is from Paolo Beltrame of CAST Astronomical Observatory, Talmassons, Italy. See spaceweather.com for more information.

I pulled my faves for future reference. (more…)