Does a video circulating on TikTok show footage captured by Hubble space telescope and released by NASA, featuring the moment a meteorite entered the atmosphere on the evening of July 11, 2023, alarming many people in Bulgaria? No, that's not true: The easily distinguishable watermark on the displayed video suggests the origin of the footage. It can be traced to iStock, a website that sells stock videos, which can also be used for free, carrying a watermark advertising the website.
The claim appeared in a video on TikTok (archived here) published by @avgustinov7 on July 13, 2023.
The Bulgarian caption text placed above the video footage, translated by Lead Stories staff, read:
Breaking
NASA has released footage captured by Hubble, showing the meteorite entering the atmosphere right before it hit Bulgaria.
This is what the post looked like on TikTok at the time of writing:
(Source: TikTok screenshot taken on Tue Jul 18 05:59:23 2023 UTC)
According to the Bulgarian Academy of Sciences (BAS), the celestial event that was spotted in various parts of Bulgaria, alarming people in the evening hours of July 11, 2023, was registered on the territories of four Balkan countries: Romania, Bulgaria, Serbia, and North Macedonia. According to scientists, the meteorite traveled at about 200 times the speed of sound and disintegrated upon entering the atmosphere, above Romania.
However, the footage in the video does not show this event or any other event that the Hubble space telescope or NASA captured. The dramatic images are from a digitally created stock video, available on iStock. It shows a meteorite entering the Earth's upper atmosphere, with the description: "Apocalypse concept," and the date in which it was uploaded on the platform: July 5, 2022, a year earlier than the meteorite appeared in the sky over Bulgaria and neighbouring countries. The same video appears among the works of Cesm Studio - whose logo can be clearly seen on iStock, next to the uploader's name, Andrey Semenov - with the following caption: "3D animation made using Blender 3.2 and Adobe after effects."
The screenshots below show that the TikTok video has undergone minimal processing, being cropped on both sides. The images, in comparison, can be seen below:
(Source: istockphoto screenshot taken on Tue Jul 18 05:50:02 2023 UTC)
(Source: TikTok screenshot taken on Tue Jul 18 05:48:17 2023 UTC)
The actual video footage of the meteorite exploding in the atmosphere above Romania on July 11, 2023, can be seen here.
