First question: What exactly is this image? Well, let’s look at the clues first before discussing the answer. There’s a bright light in the sky, but it can’t be the sun, because the sun is currently past the horizon, setting, or rising. The setting appears to be the road, and it is 9:20 on the 15th of February. So what is that bright light? It looks like a rocket, but rockets have long streams of fumes and dust from burning fuel behind it. So what is it? It’s a meteor that hit Russia, whose impact shockwave blew out over 4000 windows. This the the photograph that covers an article on how scientists will prevent impact of other asteroids sure to come in the future.
But why is this picture used? At first glance, it’s rather ambiguous. There’s obviously some significance, it’s presented with an article, but taken by itself, it just looks like a startlingly bright light or bomb in the sky. The date stamp and rate in the corner of the picture offers no help except when this picture was taken. It seems as if the only use for this picture is to act as a short glimpse of the meteor in the sky before impact, so that viewers may get a chance to see it before continuing on to read the article. It’s effectiveness seems only due to its caption, which explains what the picture is and where and when it was taken, as well as the circumstances surrounding it. .
A link to the actual article:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/science/2013/feb/16/scientists-earth-asteroid
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