Event: 20240417-025932

Over eighty eyewitnesses in the states of Arizona, California and New Mexico have filed reports with the American Meteor Society regarding a bright fireball seen on the night of April 16 (Tuesday) at 7:59:31 PM Mountain Standard Time. The event was also detected by 3 NASA Fireball Network cameras in southern Arizona, and an analysis of the available data shows that the fireball became visible at an altitude of 49 miles over Big Horn Mountains Wilderness. Moving southwest at 32,300 miles per hour, the meteor passed over Interstate 10 before breaking apart 11 miles above the southern part of Eagletail Mountains Wilderness. The trajectory gives a typical asteroidal orbit and the relatively slow speed and final altitude suggest that this fireball may have produced meteorites in the area west of Gillespie.

The meteor was also detected by the Geostationary Lightning Mapper on the GOES-18 satellite. That data indicates that the object producing the fireball had a weight of about 150 pounds and unleashed an energy of roughly 2 tons of TNT when it broke apart.

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NASA Images and Videos

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Event Data