A phenomenon of objects falling from the sky caught on camera. This video caught the attention of netizens, especially astronomy lovers.
This phenomenon was uploaded by the Instagram account @mountnesia. In the upload caption, the account informs that the incident was recorded on Wednesday, June 1, 2022, at 18:32 WIB. The visual was caught on FREKOM's CCTV in Kalitengah Lor (Southeast).
Netizens also flooded the comments column, guessing what the actual object was that slid from the sky. Is it a shooting star, meteor, or other celestial body?
"Wow, it's real, it's thought that only in cartoons or soap operas there are shooting stars," commented one netizen.
"That's an asteroid hey," replied another netizen.
"If a star falls to Earth, our planet is finished. The only thing like that is a meteor or asteroid, and it falls to Earth almost every day, because it is burned by the Earth's atmosphere, so it rarely reaches Earth," said another.
BRIN Antarctic Research Center researcher Andi Pangerang confirmed that the object falling from the sky recorded by CCTV cameras was a sporadic meteor, not related to a meteor shower.
"The basic difference between sporadic meteors and meteor showers is that meteor showers occur on certain dates and the intensity is always constant," Andi told us, Thursday (2/6/2022).
Andi gave an example for Tau-Herculids that is currently happening, it was recorded to be active from 19 May to 19 June with peak activity occurring on 9 June. The intensity is always constant although it varies from 1-72 meteors per hour.
"Meanwhile, sporadic meteors are not scheduled, so they can happen at any time. It can happen at any time and the intensity is not always constant," said Andi.
In comparison, a meteor shower can produce hundreds of meteors in an hour. While the meteors are sporadic, the appearance of only one or two meteors in one hour, and the next hour may not appear at all.
In terms of direction, based on the information in the viral upload, the camera is south of Mount Merapi. Andi mentioned that details such as where the camera is facing, to the direction of observation, are needed to determine what object fell. Because there is a possibility that it was fragments of artificial space falling objects, both rockets and satellites.
"(In this video) Merapi is to the north of the camera, and the camera is facing north, so if the light travels from west to east, then it is not a meteor shower, because for the meteor shower that is currently happening, Tau-Herculids , the appearance is in the evening until dawn, the direction is from the northeast if seen in the evening, then at midnight the direction is in the north, then towards dawn the direction is in the northwest, meaning that it is not related to meteor showers but sporadic meteors," he concluded.