A meteor blazed across the night sky over eastern parts of Germany on Sunday.

A dazzling moment, usually only captured by chance or permanently installed webcams.

In a rare event the impact around 1:30 a.m. local time on Sunday was predicted by astronomers. Michael Aye, a researcher at a Planetary research institute in Berlin, was able to capture the meteor after a tip from his colleague Franck Marchis at SETI Institute.

Aye told Reuters the meteor had a size of one meter diameter and was detected only three hours before impact by Hungarian astronomer Krisztián Sárneczky. According to Aye it was only the eights time that a prediction of such an impact by the minute was possible.

According to NASA, the tiny asteroid was set to "disintegrate as a harmless fireball" west of Berlin near the town of Nennhausen in Brandenburg. Meteors are objects in space that range in size from dust grains to small asteroids. When they heat up in Earth’s atmosphere, they make a bright trail.

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Report from Reuters