Photographer Accidentally Captures Rare Astronomical Phenomenon

On Friday night, while taking time-lapse pictures of the night sky, a photographer from Iowa, Ben Lewis, accidentally captured an explosion of a meteorite which was entering the Earth’s atmosphere. American Meteor Society, explains that in most cases trains of light from meteors can only be seen for a few seconds. Lewis was able to capture bright meteor trains for 12 minutes. What he shot was a bolide, a “fireball” type of meteor that is brighter than the planet Venus.

His camera was set in auto mode, and the fireball was captured exploding into the Earth’s atmosphere at 4:30 a.m. while Lewis was sleeping. When he came back to review the footage he did not understand what was documented and initially thought it was an airplane. The pictures were taken with a Canon 6D and 35mm lens at f/1.4 10 sec, and ISO 1600 with a 10 second delay between frames.