A SUSPECTED METEOR stunned Thai commuters on the way to work this morning with dashboard cams picking up the moment the sky was lit up.
Footage shows a fireball travelling almost vertically downwards through the morning skies followed by a brilliant white flash.
It happened at about 08.40am local time and it was spotted throughout the country.
“It was the middle of a blue sky day and there was a quick, bright light coming down,” said Porjai Jaturongkhakun whose dashcam recorded the scene as he drove to work.
“I usually see shooting stars at night but I have never seen one in the day before,” the 30-year-old satellite engineer told AFP.
Porjai was one of a number of Thais who managed to capture the dramatic incident on their car dashboard cameras — with footage and witness accounts quickly going viral on social media.
“It was a meteor for sure, I am confident, because it was fast and very bright”, according to Voravit Tanvuttibundit of the National Astronomical Research Institute of Thailand.
“It is a normal occurrence but the meteor this morning was especially big and very bright”, Voravit explained.
In a country imbued with superstition, many took the meteor strike as an ill omen.
“It was a bad sign showing the country and the government is in chaos,” Facebook user Dilok Jantaradilok wrote.
What we often call “falling stars” are actually tiny bits of space rock that smash into the atmosphere at about 60km, burning up in flashes of light.
Occasionally, much bigger strikes are seen involving larger chunks of debris.
In October 2013, many Russian dashcams captured the astonishing moment a meteor weighing 10,000 tonnes exploded above the Urals, scattering over a wide area and injuring more than 1,000 people.
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