Space|Star Flight came from far outside the Solar System. Proving it is laborious, but the world’s third sighting of a visitor was made thanks to the curiosity of a Finnish hobbyist.
The summary is made by artificial intelligence and checked by a human.
A bright shooting star was seen in October 2022.
According to the study, it was an interstellar meteor.
The enthusiasts found the meteor and received a reward for their work.
The researchers found that the stone was less than 10 cm in diameter.
In October in 2022, a strange sight appeared in the sky. A bright shooting star flew in the evening sky, which was visible in the dark for a long time, about five seconds.
It was caught on the cameras of enthusiasts and attracted attention with its beauty, but at first it didn’t seem anything special.
However, the vision turned out to be rare, almost unique in science.
A man from Päntyharju was able to trace the observation Mark Siljama. He is not an astronomer, but an avid hobbyist. He decided to learn more about shooting stars. Finally, he got his name on the list of authors of a scientific publication.
As a light The space rock seen in the sky had come from far away, from outside the Solar System. So it was an interstellar meteor that happened to end up in the Earth’s atmosphere.
This is only the third time that it has been reliably established that such a meteor has indeed entered the Earth’s atmosphere, says Ursa.
Scientists identified two previous sightings as interstellar visitors a few years ago.
Even earlier, in the 2010s, US military intelligence satellites detected two similar cases that fell into the sea. However, the findings are not entirely reliable in the eyes of the scientific community, as the material is not handed over to researchers.
Thus, Siljama’s discovery is the third of its kind, and the first to be confirmed by enthusiasts.
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“For a while, I watched that there was no such thing.”
Interstellar visitors can be identified based on their trajectory. Ordinary comets and asteroids orbit the Sun, and their orbits are different.
Interstellar visitors are probably encountered more often, but the majority of flashes of light remain unexplained, as making accurate calculations is very laborious.
Siljama started working for his own fun. He is involved in the fireball working group of the astronomical association Ursa. It is interested in meteorites falling to earth, and this was not it.
But Siljamma had time, so he collected material and started calculating. The numbers said that the shooting star was flying so fast that it couldn’t be an orbiter of the Solar System.
“Then when I got the results on the computer screen, I looked for a while to see that there is no such thing.”
However, it was. Spanish researchers performed a check calculation, and the finding was published in a peer-reviewed journal in a scientific publication last January.
Case reveals that hobbyists can play a big role in astronomy. The decisive observations came from the members of the fireball working group, who together with Siljama received an award from Ursa for their work in August.
The group’s analyst also received the award Jaakko Visuriwho calculated the track more precisely.
Jaakko Visuri works at Ursa. He calculates the trajectories of fireballs as a hobby in his spare time.
He has an education in the field, but he also counts shooting stars in his spare time, as a hobby. The purpose of the group is to search for and find meteorites that have hit the ground in Finland. They are delivered to researchers.
Visuri found out that the stone touched the upper atmosphere at an altitude of more than a hundred kilometers, i.e. at about the height of the northern lights. He also made sure that its speed was not explained by any more mundane reason.
Researchers also found out that the shooting star set another record. It was probably less than 10 centimeters in diameter and about a kilogram in mass.
Even more could be found out if a similar piece ever fell to the ground. Then it could be properly investigated.
“That would be hot currency,” says Visuri.
Astronomical association Ursa awarded those who made calculations of shooting stars and collected observational data. In the photo provided by Ursa, from left to right, Jarmo Moilanen, Harri Kiiskinen, Markku Lintinen and Markku Siljama. On the right, Kai Hämäläinen, who received an award for his long-term star hobby.
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