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

The Halloween fireball recorded by the Perenjori video station of the Desert Fireball Network. Credit: Desert Fireball Network, Curtin University

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
Part of the fresh recovered meteorite. Credit: Desert Fireball Network, Curtin University

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!!

    Reply to David Wigtil
    • Karl Antier

      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

      Reply to Karl Antier
      • 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.

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