A small and “harmless” asteroid entered the Earth’s atmosphere over the Philippines Wednesday afternoon, creating a fireball that lit up the sky, photos show.
The asteroid zoomed high above the northernmost island of the Philippine archipelago shortly before 1 p.m. at expected speeds of 17.6 kilometers per second, or 63,360 kilometers per hour before burning up, the NewScientist reported.
The European Space Agency had predicted Wednesday morning that the roughly 3-foot asteroid, named 2024 RW1, would break apart near Luzon Island at 12:39 p.m. ET, (4:39 p.m. UTC).
This is just the ninth asteroid spotted before impact, the ESA wrote in a post on X.
“The object is harmless, but people in the area may see a spectacular fireball!,” ESA said.
NASA also noted that the asteroid would “harmlessly impact Earth’s atmosphere” and “create a fireball off the east coast of the northern Philippines.”
Stunning video footage shared on X showed the asteroid burning up over the Philippines.
☄️💥Woah! Newly discovered 1-1.5m asteroid 2024 RW1 (spotted by near-Earth asteroid hunters in the US) burns up above the Philippines just hours after it was first seen.
This asteroid wasn’t a risk. But if it was, a duck-and-cover warning was possible. pic.twitter.com/Fht4yqRsBP
— Dr Robin George Andrews 🌋☄️ (@SquigglyVolcano) September 4, 2024
Jacqueline Fazekas with the NASA-funded Catalina Sky Survey, a NASA-funded observatory near Tuscon, Arizona dedicated to tracking near-Earth objects, discovered the space rock, which it called CAQTDL2.
Images were captured of the asteroid, but viewing conditions were expected to be less than ideal due to cloud cover from Typhoon Yahi, which has impacted the northern Philippines as a tropical storm for the past few days and is now equivalent to a Category 3 hurricane, located about 250 miles west of Luzon Island, CNN reported.
In a few weeks, skygazers will be able to see asteroid “2024 ON” as it swings by Earth at an astronomically close, but still safe distance, according to the Virtual Telescope Project.
Measuring at least 720 feet wide, or about the length of two football fields, the asteroid will be visible from the Northern Hemisphere.
Asteroids are rocky remnants left over after the solar system formed 4.6 billion years ago, NASA said.
