Emily Lakdawalla • Oct 10, 2008
Images of the 2008 TC3 fireball from space!
It seems that no one in Sudan was able to record the Whole-Earth views from Geostationary Satellites" web page. METEOSAT-8 was launched in August 28, 2002. In April of last year, it was relegated to backup status, replaced in active status by METEOSAT-9; both orbit Earth in a geostationary position near about 9°E, which puts all of Africa and Europe in view. As of May 13, 2008, EUMETSAT started using METEOSAT-8 in a "rapid scanning" mode, in which it scans the globe once every five minutes. So it was well positioned to spot the fiery atmospheric entry of 2008 TC3.
Okay, so here's the view of the fireball as seen through an infrared instrument on METEOSAT-8, which records the temperature of the surfaces it scans. The temperature scale on the right is in Kelvin; 273 Kelvin corresponds to 0 Celsius. Most of the land in this desert region of Earth is quite warm, with a few cold clouds to the southwest. And then there's the orange flare of the fireball.