That could just have been another freaky idea to make Halloween even more spectacular: on October 31, 2016, short before 8:00 pm, people leaving near Perth (WA, Australia) could see a bright light literally lit up the sky, shortly followed by a few sonic booms. But it was not. The event was clearly natural: a space rock had just entered the Earth’s atmosphere, leading to a huge fireball… and meteorite fall!
![AU](http://www.imo.net/wp-content/uploads/2016/11/AU.jpg)
When scientists knew that such an event occured, they started calculating the trajectory of the fireball from witness reports and 4 video records.
And after 6 days of search, that was it! Just over a kilogram of fresh chondrite was recovered near the town of Morawa, 300 km North of Perth, remnants of a body which weight should have ranged around 100kg before it entered its final journey in the atmosphere.
![Part of the fresh recovered meteorite. Credit: Desert Fireball Network, Curtin University](http://www.imo.net/wp-content/uploads/2016/11/1479703883484.jpg)
With camera monitoring the sky, and new citizen scientist applications to easily and quickly send a fireball report, let’s hope this story will be more and more common in the near future!
3 comments
I would suggest altering the date shown within the article to show “October 31, 2016, shortly…” I’m unsure whether there are any calendars that display 31 days in November. 🙂
All the best!!
And a fireball and meteorite recovery that would have happened AFTER the article was published 😉
Thanks a lot for your useful comment David! We just corrected the post.
Clear skies, and bright fireballs!
Karl
Many thanks, Karl. I appreciate the quick response! I like this site a lot (I’m a total amateur in astronomy), and you and your team have all my thanks for your efforts.