Event: 20190404-105150


Close to 500 eyewitnesses in the southeastern United States have reported seeing a long duration fireball at 6:52 AM Eastern Daylight Time (2019 April 4 10:52 UTC). An analysis of their accounts shows that this meteor is best characterized as an "earth grazer", which are denoted by a slow entry speed and a long shallow trajectory through Earth's atmosphere. In this case, the meteor became visible at an altitude of 60 miles above the South Carolina town of Blair and proceeded slightly north of east at a relatively leisurely pace of 31,000 miles per hour. Traversing over 100 miles through the atmosphere in 11 seconds, it finally ablated 45 miles above the North/South Carolina border south of the city of Rockingham.


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Event Data

Event ID 20190404-105150
Date (UTC) April 4, 2019
Time (UTC) 10:51:50
AMS Event 1561-2019
Chicken Little Start Lat/Lon +34.420, -81.406
Chicken Little End Lat/Lon +34.848, -79.834
Chicken Little Altitude 97.7 km → 72.8 km ( 60.7 miles→ 45.3 miles)
Chicken Little Speed 14.2 km/s (31,800 mph)
Notes Earth Grazer