Event: 20201208-003040

Well over one hundred and fifty eyewitness reports have been submitted of a bright fireball seen 2020 December 7 by members of the public in the mid-Atlantic and Northeastern states and Canada at 7:31 PM Eastern Standard Time (2020 December 8 00:31 UTC). The event was detected by meteor cameras belonging to The University of Western Ontario's Southern Ontario Meteor Network (SOMN), and an analysis of the provided video data shows that the object began to ablate at an altitude of 55 miles (89 km) above the New York town of Rossie. Moving west of north at 30,000 miles per hour (13.4 kilometers per second), the meteor traversed 36 miles (58 kilometers) through the upper atmosphere, crossing the U.S./Canada border before disintegrating 24 miles above the town of Lyn, near Brockville.

At its peak, the fireball rivaled the 1st Quarter Moon in brightness. Combining this information with the speed gives a mass of the object around 7 pounds (3 kilograms) and diameter of 5 inches (13 centimeters). The orbit suggests that this was a small asteroidal fragment, having a very low inclination and an apogee in the Asteroid Belt between Mars and Jupiter. It was not a member of the Geminid meteor shower.

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Images and Video from Western University's Southern Ontario Meteor Network

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Meteoroid Orbit

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Other Videos

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Event Data