University of Antioquia, Columbia | 2019 Feb 13
On February 1, 2019 a bright meteor crossed the sky over Cuba just in the middle of the day. The phenomenon, that was followed by a "smoke trail" (a characteristic cloud left by the burn in the atmosphere of a meteoroid) and a sonic boom, was witnessed by thousands of locals and tourists in the region of Pinar del Rio (western side of the island).
Almost at the same time of the impact, a cruise ship was leaving the Havana harbor and on board, Rachel Cook, an american tourist and vlogger, was making a timelapse of the undocking process. Without knowing, she was recording one of the few videos known to date of the falling meteor. Meanwhile, 400 km away, in Ft. Myers beach, Florida, a web cam of the EarthCam network was filming the midday activities in the beach. Luckily, the camera was aimed at the right direction to record the meteor from afar.
Just a couple of minutes after the event, social networks, especially instagram and twitter, received a flood of tens of videos and pictures, taken from the island, most of them showing the smoke trail left by the meteor (see the image below). One of those videos was particularly interesting. It was recorded in one of the main streets of the city of Pinar del Rio, and showed tens of people in the street contemplating with awe the remnant cloud (see the video in this link). Although the video does not show the meteor, it was full of details about the place and time when it was recorded. ...
Can We Predict the Impact Conditions of Meter-sized Meteoroids? ~ Jorge I. Zuluaga et al
- arXiv.org > astro-ph > arXiv:1902.03980 > 11 Feb 2019