Other fireballs over the US, Finland, Brazil…

While the Wisconsin fireball is taking over all other meteoric events, fireball season has began, and this has been illustrated by a few events that occurred during the last 2 weeks all over the world.

First, a few days before the February 6th, 2017 Wisconsin fireball, another very bright meteor was reported by more than 130 persons. On January 30th, around 12h 14min UT, a fast meteor lit up the skies above the Arkansas-Oklahoma border. Lasting around 1 second, it let a persistant train that remained visible on videos for a few seconds after the meteor appeared. The fast and short-pathed fireball started above a position 10 km North of Fort Smith (AR) and headed to a North-West direction (305° azimuth) to disappear 40 km further, at a 50 km altitude, over Oklahoma state.

The same day, but the following night, another bright fireball was recorded over Brazil, in caeté (State of Minas Gerais) by EXOSS Citizen Science project at 23h 54min UT.

And last, but not least,  Northern Finland video stations recorded a long fireball that lasted 7 seconds on February 8th, 2017, at 04h 35min UT. The video below was recorded from a position (lat. = 64° 00′ 28″ N ; lon. = 23° 29′ 13″ E):

This probably antihelion meteor entered the atmosphere with an atmospheric entry speed of 35 km/s, a 16° angle with horizontal and in a 265° azimuth, with a nearly West to East trajectory that ended slighlty East of the border between Finland and Russia. The luminous terminal point seems to have occured at a 37 km altitude, above a no-man’s-land area (closest village is Salla (Finland), 70 km South-West from this point, which lies 35 km East of the border).

The fireball season is just starting, so stay tuned for future meteoric information, and keep an eye on the sky at night!