Three fireballs simultaneously lit the Chinese sky

Chinese residents of Yunnan Province witnessed three shooting stars simultaneously explode, unleashing the equivalent of 540 tons of TNT.

Meteor stars turned into fireballs flying through the sky in Shangri-La district in southwestern China's Yunnan province, the IFL Science reported yesterday. According to one witness, two meteors are small in size while the remaining stars are quite large. They make the night sky bright for 5 seconds.


Fireballs due to exploding meteorites fly across the sky of China.(Video: Sina).

Many clips of the shared scene on the Chinese social network show that a meteor among them turns into a fireball as it flies quickly across the sky.

An employee at Desti Youth Park Hotel in Shangri-La said he and many guests saw celestial bodies lit up around 8 o'clock last night. At that time, they were sitting in the hotel courtyard to watch the full moon. Everyone present at the time was surprised when a series of fire bridges appeared. According to the staff, the meteor falls to a small village about 40 km from Shangri-La.

Zhang Xingxiang, an expert at the Yunnan Observatory of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, said the footage in the video is very similar to a bullet , a very bright meteor. A local villager said he heard a loud explosion and felt the ground shake and the pigs fled.

Picture 1 of Three fireballs simultaneously lit the Chinese sky
A meteor among them turned into a fireball when flying quickly across the sky.

According to the US Aeronautics Agency (NASA), a fireball was observed yesterday at 7:07 pm at 28 degrees north latitude and 99 degrees east longitude. The time and location of fireballs coincides with reports in China.

NASA said the fireball moved at a high speed of 14.6 km / sec and released 0.54 kiloton of energy, equivalent to 540 tons of TNT.