Weird meteor-like sight over Rio de Janeiro, Brazil.

Forgive me if this is already posted, but I could not find anything in the search engine.

News article.

Since this is a Brazilian news report, I'm going to summarize and translate a little bit of info here.

02/17/2013 around 5:30 pm hundreds (maybe more) of eye witness reported a meteor over Rio's sky.

According to the INPE ( National Institute of Space Research ), Brazilian official institute regarding Space related phenomena, the object is NOT a meteor.

"uma das pesquisadoras chegou a considerar que, pela foto, até parece um meteoro, porém ela mesma ressaltou que no vídeo a passagem parece ser muito lenta. Os meteoros costumam ser muito mais rápidos do que aparece no vídeo. O próprio exemplo do meteoro da Rússia mostra isso".

"One of our researchers, taking the pictures in consideration, said it may look like an meteor. But, she emphasize, in the videos the object travels too slow. Meteors are usually much faster. The recent Russian exemple shows this." (Free translation)

Brazilian Air Force refuses to comment on the subject saying "We don't have information regarding this event".

Another astronomer, Fernando Roing, researcher from the National Observatory also discards the meteor possibility. According to him this is probably an commercial airplane. Given the late afternoon time, the reddish collor is atribute to sun reflection and it only appears to be falling due to optic illusion, since the plane follows Earth curvature. Also according to him, the light trail is only a contrail.



I've been searching the web for another explanations or any official statement confirming the statement above. Nothing so far. Some news agencies are trying to see if there was any plane in that particular trajectory at that time, but no official notes in this case at the moment. I will keep searching and posting!

Sorry about my grammar!

yep, just a plane and contrail.

too slow for a meteor and a meteor trail doesn`t disburse that quickly. Look at the russian meteor trail that stay visible for a long time and a long distance.

Looks like a contrail but keep up the good work looking for stuff.

Never know when someone may run across something. Its nice you can translate the language also.

Agreed! Although it may look weird, It does move like a plane, behave like a plane and well...It makes perfect sense.

There are only 2 problems; apparently, there was no know planes flying in that specific trajectory at that time. I can't confirm that and I'm having a hard time trying to verify this info. And, also according to the witness, there was no sound. That's the reason they actually believed this was a meteor.

I will keep working on this.

reply to post by theiceone

Who?

According to the INPE ( National Institute of Space Research ), Brazilian official institute regarding Space related phenomena, the object is NOT a meteor.

Seems everyone is saying Not a Meteor, but others who want it to be are finding reasons, such as No Sound, to make it into one.

Planes on the horizon wouldn't be audible to someone very far away.

for example of similar appearing planes:

Evening Flight

this plane contrail caught me ye after shooting the sunset by the Emley Moor Tower, aka the Mast. This was further across the horizon, but it was that point in time where the blue and red tones in the sky meet and fade into each other,and the striking white line in the distance caught my eye,
Taken from Emley Village across the fields.
February 2013

Probably a contrail but it reminded me of the ionization trail the space shuttle used to make. If the tail dissipated at a uniform distance from it's head at all times (and the distance was short) then that was probably an ion trail from a returning space craft .

Airplane at sunset.. nothing to see here.

(Qualidade Globo de jornalismo hahaha) The Globo television network is famed for lacking journalism skills

Or it's a UFO that has shape shifted into a aeroplane ... Sorry that was joke related to another thread