Photographer tells the tale of world-famous photo
Photographer says fireball 'exploded so bright' he had to close eyes
Daniel Campbell
Northern News Services
Published Wednesday, March 12, 2014
SOMBA K'E/YELLOWKNIFE
It was shortly after 2 a.m. on Vee Lake when Yuichi Takasaka saw what he describes as something like a camera flash going off in front of him.
This meteor, estimated at about one metre in size, streaked across the sky near Yellowknife in the early hours of March 6, lighting up the Vee Lake area as if it were daytime. - Yuichi Takasaka photo |
The large meteor streaking across the Yellowknife's sky last week - making international headlines - was captured by the photographer who was leading a tour outside the city March 6.
In an e-mail, Takasaka said he had set up two cameras that night to record time-lapse photography for a tour group. He had one camera pointing west and another pointing north, each taking hundreds of images for about two hours.
"I was teaching one of the participants when this bright meteor started to move," Takasaka wrote.
He said the meteor came from the western sky and got bright very quickly.
"Both of us just yelled 'wow' and it exploded so bright I had to close my eyes momentarily," Takasaka wrote.
"The fireball kept going towards north then disappeared."
Denis Laurin, senior program scientist with the Canadian Space Agency, estimates the meteor was about a metre in size - though he figures there wasn't much left of the small asteroid by the time it hit the Earth.
Meteor events of this size aren't very rare, Laurin said, but we normally can't see them because it happens during the daytime or over an area with no population.
"You have to be at the right place at the right time," Laurin said, noting Takasaka's luck last week.
Laurin attributed the brightness of the meteor to the speed and size of the object.
"As they enter the atmosphere, travelling at 20,000 km/h, the friction of the air causes it to melt very quickly and it basically glows."
A few moments after seeing the bright glow, Takasaka said he heard an "explosive sound" from the north. At the time he thought the meteor hit the ground, but later thought it sounded more like a jet, and the sound could have been a sonic boom caused by the high speed of the meteor's descent.
Takasaka lived in Yellowknife from 1992 to 1999, working as a general manager at Raven Tours, providing aurora tours to the Japanese market. He now lives in B.C., but periodically returns to Yellowknife to lead tours.
Laurin estimates people within 50 to 100 km of the site where the photograph was taken would be able to see the meteor - meaning this Earth-bound asteroid was for Yellowknifers' eyes only.
