NASA all sky meteor cameras and several eyewitnesses in the SouthEast detected a bright fireball (about 4 times brighter than the Full Moon) at 4:50 AM Central Standard Time on November 10 (2018 November 10 10:50 AM UTC). The fireball was caused by an asteroidal fragment between 3 and 6 feet in diameter, with a weight of about 2 to 3 tons, that began to ablate some 44 miles above the town of Steens, Mississippi. It proceeded slightly east of south at 27,000 miles per hour until it fragmented 16 miles above the Alabama town of Memphis, near the Mississippi state line. The pressure waves from the fragmentation created sonic booms and triggered seismometers in the area, and there are doppler radar signatures of small meteorites falling to the ground. The orbit of this object was very similar to that of Earth, indicating a great deal of orbital evolution, or - much less likely - a lunar orgin.
Event ID | 20181110-104951 |
Date (UTC) | Nov. 10, 2018 |
Time (UTC) | 10:49:51 |
AMS Event | 4773-2018 |
NASA Camera Start Lat/Lon | +33.632, -88.343 |
NASA Camera End Lat/Lon | +33.185, -88.201 |
NASA Camera Altitude | 76.4 km → 24.0 km ( 47.5 miles→ 14.9 miles) |
NASA Camera Speed | 12.2 km/s (27,300 mph) |