WATCH: Asteroid flies over island skies

Monday 13 February 2023

A small asteroid heading for the Normandy region was seen by stargazers in the early hours of this morning - with detection equipment accurately predicting its movements and the time of impact.

Tom Williams (@tw__astro), a 20-year-old amateur astrophotographer based in Wiltshire, last night warned that "a small asteroid" around one metre in size, was expected to "safely impact the French-English Channel".

He predicted it would make impact at around 03:00 and would "appear as bright as the moon momentarily as it enters the atmosphere".

Mr Williams adjusted his prediction as the impact time neared and was able to accurately track the asteroid over a period of five hours.

pic.twitter.com/Ckh5OBsz4l

— Tom Williams (@tw__astro) February 12, 2023

He credited fellow star gazers with helping him including the staff of the Konkoly Observatory in Hungary who initially spotted and tracked the asteroid, and his friend "respectable comet/asteroid enthusiast, friend and planetary scientist, Sam Deen".

Those tracking the asteroid were able to pinpoint its arrival time to 02:59:16.8. After it had landed it was classified as 2023 CX1.

#SAR2776 30 seconds ago pic.twitter.com/6IYwPPazph

— Andy Cooper (@scute1133) February 13, 2023

Mr Williams described the asteroid as a "rare event" and he said he hoped his work in documenting its arrival was "rewarding" for those reading. 

Replying to one follower on his thread, he said: "It's only the 7th such object in history to be detected prior to impact, as I understand", underlining how rare an event it was.

The asteroid was sighted across the south coast of England as well as the French coast. Videos and pictures posted on Twitter depict the asteroid shining brightly as it made impact with people saying it appeared bright orange, or green depending on where they were.

WATCH: A view of the asteroid as seen from Grouville, Jersey, Channel Islands, looking east towards the French coastline.

Within hours of the asteroid having made impact it already had its own Wikipedia page which detailed that 2023 CX1, previously known as SAR2667 had been discovered by Hungarian Astronomer Krisztián Sárneczky who is based at the Konkoly Observatory which Mr Williams credited in his Twitter thread above. 

It was tracked for seven hours before its impact - initially described as "a near-Earth asteroid on an Earth-crossing Apollo-type orbit".

thank you so much for your thread. unforgettable moment

lit up the sky and disintegrated in a bright shade of green before dipping under the treeline
i could see it breaking up as it dove. Pic taken from ~200km away pic.twitter.com/r3ZKWNcRsj

— (@aes_2fish) February 13, 2023

Using Mr Sárneczky's initial observations others were able to track the asteroid as it moved an an angular rate of 14 arc seconds per minute with an accelerating radial velocity of 9 km/s with an initial apparent magnitude of 19.4.

Mr Sárneczky gave it the temporary designation SAR2667 and reported it to the Minor Planet Centre's Near Earth Object Confirmation Page which alerted other observatories to enable clarification from multiple sources. 

The Višnjan Observatory at Tičan, Croatia was next to officially observe the asteroid, confirming at 21:03 UTC that it was heading for the Earth.

It was at this time that Mr Williams started tracking it online with the initial impact time of 03:00 being adjust by milliseconds to give an accurate landing time.

20 observatories are now known to have observed and submitted astrometry of the meteoroid before its impact.

Mike Panter spotted the asteroid from Grouville, Jersey, looking east towards the coastline (video above).

Deputy Yvonne Burford and her son both saw it from their home in Guernsey.

Saw this through my window after been woken up by the sound of my son going out the front door to watch it. It was very bright! https://t.co/FaG0lyoy3T

— Yvonne Burford (@YvonneBurford) February 13, 2023

La Société Guernesiaise said this morning that it was not aware of any confirmed local sightings but volunteers would be checking the All Sky camera at the island's observatory later today which may have captured images of the rare event.