They capture the exact moment a meteor hits a volcano in Indonesia

The past Thursday May 27 an unusual event occurred, which was also fortunate enough to be captured on video. The phenomenon occurred in one of Indonesia’s most active craters, the Merapi volcano, where suddenly a meteor fell on top of the volcano. The images captured by the security cameras of the company Megadata and by Gunarto Song, a photographer in the city of Jakarta, quickly went viral on social media.

In January of this year, the Merapi volcano made headlines with a dramatic eruption, which released ash and smoke up to two miles high. Last week, Merapi went viral again, but due to an unusual astronomical fact: the apparent fall of a meteor on its summit. Located in the Java island, Merapi is one of the most active volcanoes in Indonesia and in the world. “Mountain of Fire” means his name, eloquently enough.

“Does a meteor fall on the summit of the Merapi volcano?Asked the Indonesian professional photographer on his Instagram account. Gunarto song, who managed to snap photos of the shocking moment. Song shared three photos in which you can see the unusual fact, which speaks volumes: in the distance you can see the imposing volcano, where you can see a beam of light falling at the top. “I saw all of a sudden, it was a very bright light falling up and down in the space of a second. Very bright and fast», Revealed the photographer to local media.

The expert is a fan of Merapi: he was near the mountain for four months, between February and May. When the particular astronomical event occurred, Song was taking photographs of the 2,900-meter-high volcano because there was a full moon, which gave it excellent visibility. Anyway, in strictly astronomical terms there was no record that what collided was a meteorite, since, as indicated by the Class I geophysical station at Sleman, no meteor-related vibrations were recorded in monitoring the region.

Mount Merapi is the most active volcano of the 500 discovered on Indonesian territory and sporadically in recent times it has released lava, gas and ash. The most significant eruption in recent years has occurred in the 2010, when more than 300 people died. It is worth clarifying that Indonesia is an archipelago of 270 million inhabitants who prone to earthquakes and volcanic activity, as it is located in the Pacific Ring of Fire, an arc of faults around the ocean.