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Possible Collision Between Asteroids?

-- Jay | April 14, 2020

Question:

Hello I was observing Mars through my telescope on November 20, 2019 at 4:51 AM out of panama city beach, FL when I decided to capture a short clip on my camera that fits in the eyepiece of my telescope. Between 1 and 2 seconds into the filming I noticed a very, very quick spark on the screen towards Mars and after doing some reviews of the clip I was able to stop the clip exactly on the sparks and it turned out it appeared to be a collision between 3 space rocks. I was curious if you had any data on the rocks that collided, such as were they known asteroids, or was this collision documented?

-- Jay

Answer:

Even though collisions between asteroids (what you have called “space rocks”) are expected to be common, they have not, to my knowledge, been caught in the act of collision. Furthermore, such a collision would likely not be bright enough to be observed using a small telescope. I suspect that what you might have seen is one of the many atmospheric phenomena that produce flash-like signals in the sky. Another possibility is a terrestrial source of light which has scattered into the optics of your telescope (i.e. a lens flare).

-- Jeff Mangum

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