Asteroid Discovered Hours Before Strike Produces Brilliant Fireball Over Europe [Videos]

An asteroid struck the Earth over the weekend, producing a stunning fireball over Europe as it entered the planet's atmosphere. It was discovered hours before its imminent entry, making it only the seventh such detection of its kind.

The asteroid erupted into a bright fireball over European skies at around 2:59 UTC on Feb. 13 (9:59 p.m. EST on Feb 12). Many witnessed the stunning sky event, with both experts and members of the public capturing videos of the show.

In the videos shared on social media, one can see the asteroid entering the atmosphere as a bright fireball then brightening the evening skies as it erupted. In one video, for instance, its immense brightness is quite apparent, showing the fireball gradually intensifying before it finally erupted.

Another video shows just how brightly the asteroid lit up the evening skies, showing its beautiful reflection in the water.

While another even shows "four different views" of the event.

As of writing, the International Meteor Organization (IMO) has received 61 reports of the event, now dubbed Event #937-2023. But apart from being an interesting spectacle, the event was rather special in that the asteroid was detected mere hours before it was bound to enter the atmosphere and hit the Earth.

In fact, it was only the seventh asteroid to have been discovered before it entered the atmosphere, according to the IMO.

The asteroid, about a meter long in diameter and initially called Sar2667, was reportedly discovered by Krisztián Sárneczky at Konkoly Observatory's Piszkéstető Station in Hungary. It was soon confirmed by several other observatories, and the expected atmospheric impact time was "predicted within a minute," thereby giving many the chance to get ready for its imminent arrival.

It's quite likely that some fragments of the doomed asteroid, now officially designated as 2023 CX1, survived and landed "somewhere onshore, close to the coast north of Rouen in Normandy, France," the European Space Agency (ESA) noted.

It also shared a rather haunting view of the event.

Of the seven asteroids that were detected prior to impact, this is the second one that was discovered by Sárneczky.

"At the time I thought it was a once-in-a-lifetime event," he told Space.com, pertaining to his previous discovery in March 2022. "I was wrong."

The last three predicted impacts all happened within just the last 12 months, according to the ESA. The previous one — the sixth ever to be predicted — was the "Earth impactor" asteroid that was also spotted just a few hours before it entered the atmosphere above the Great Lakes Region in November 2022.

These detections, the ESA said, are quite "encouraging" as they show "how asteroid detection capabilities are rapidly advancing."

"As it becomes more common that we can predict these small, stunning shooting stars in our skies, more people can be in the right place at the right time to witness a phenomenon only few have been lucky enough to spot before," the agency said.

"Of course, one day we'll find an imminent impactor that isn't one meter in size, but perhaps 100. To protect ourselves, as NASA's DART mission has shown is possible and ESA's Hera Mission will build on, we need to see them coming," it continued.

Indeed, the DART mission in 2022 demonstrated that it's plausible to alter a celestial body's motion by deliberately crashing a spacecraft onto it.