A very rare cluster of meteors was registered in the early hours of June 26 from the BRAMON EMM2/MA Station managed by Edgar Merizio in São José do Ribamar, Maranhão, Brazil. Were at least 9 meteors registered simultaneously in less than 1 second, all parallel to each other. Meteor cluster like these originate from the same meteoroid that broke apart before hits Earth. Usually this fragmentation occurs a few hours, perhaps days, before its encounter with the terrestrial atmosphere.

There are several possible origins for the fragmentation that generates a cluster of meteors like this. It’s possible that the meteoroids originated from a recent common ejection of a comet or asteroid passing close to the Earth, may have been a low cohesive meteoroid that has been fragmented by the collision of a microparticle, or may have originated from a meteoroid with volatile material in its composition that has been vaporized due to action of the Sun, dispersing the rocky fragments shortly before its encounter with the Earth.

Meteor groupings had been recorded previously, most of them during the outburst of the Leonids meteor shower in the early part of this century. This one recorded by Edgar appears as very rare type of cluster recorded out of period of a great shower and its preliminarily calculated radiant does not seem to associated to any known meteor shower.

Atualmente, esse registro já está sendo suficiente para determinar suas possíveis origens. Registros como esses, além de sua beleza e raridade, sempre ajudam a ciência a conhecer ainda mais a dinâmica desses pequenos corpos do sistema solar.