«It was small — less than a meter»
It looks like «heavenly punishment» indeed descended on Ukraine. More precisely, — the space «wanderer» — a meteoroid. Russian scientist, senior fellow at the Institute of Astronomy of the Russian Academy of Sciences Sergey Naroenkov recognized the object of his numerous observations from a video circulating on the Web.
A bright flash in the sky, which many Kievans observed on April 19 at about 10 p.m., made a lot of noise. The head of the Kyiv city military administration, Sergei Popko, in particular, said that it was a fallen American satellite.
NASA hastened to refute this message, saying that their satellite RHESSI, which should go out of orbit in the coming days, is still in space. This was followed by arguments of the military that air defense systems could “blaze” in this way.
Disputes seem to have been resolved by astronomers.
— Judging by the videos, it was an ordinary small meteor, — said us Sergey Naroenkov. — The main sign that the outbreak was of natural origin is the threefold illumination of the sky and their scale.
— Flying through the dense layers of the atmosphere, the cosmic body heats up, often splits into separate fragments, which usually flare up not simultaneously, but in turn.
As for the meteor, one can only say that it was small in size — less than a meter. Most of it, most likely, burned up in those very dense layers of the atmosphere.
— If any pebbles fell, they could be millimeter size.
— It is possible, but, alas, we have no way to check this. It could also be a sporadic meteoroid that accidentally flew up to the Earth.