The American Meteor Society is collecting photos and video of a fireball over parts of the Tri-State Thursday night. Most eyewitness reports have come from Kentucky and Ohio, but it was seen from Georgia, North Carolina, and Missouri.
Cincinnati Observatory Astronomer Wes Ryle says scientists want as many videos and photos as possible.
“What that allows scientists to do is be able to triangulate the location of where the meteor was coming down through the atmosphere,” he says. “Also from the brightness that the meteor appeared as it was coming down, they can start to gauge how much energy was associated with the explosion, the break up of the meteor, which gives them an estimate of the size.”
Ryle says what we call shooting stars are generally the size of a grain of sand, while fireballs can be the size of a basketball. He says the fireball could have been a part of the Perseids, an annual meteor shower, which peaked earlier this month.
“There’s always that possibility but to be perfectly honest, there’s things bombarding the Earth pretty much all the time,” he says. “Meteor showers are definitely times where we have a concentration of debris hitting the Earth, coming from the leftover debris of a comet.”
Ryle adds, “They haven’t done enough analysis to actually see if the trajectory of this matches the trajectory of what the Perseids would be.”
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The American Meteor Society tentatively estimated the meteor was between Danville and Bowling Green, and moving to the southwest.
Ryle says fireballs typically happen somewhere around the world every week. He says whether they are noticed depends on if they’re over a populated area, and if anyone’s watching.
“With people having their cellphones out all the time — but actually more importantly, people having doorbell cameras allowing pictures to be taken, videos to be taken, even when folks aren’t actively paying attention to a meteor coming down.”
Ryle says there’s always a chance something survived the re-entry burn-up and landed, becoming a meteorite. Video can help narrow down where it may have landed. “They’re much easier to find when they come down over a desert or over a snow-covered plain,” he says. “That’s where most meteorites are actually found.”
There were more than 200 eyewitness reports. The fireball was seen around 9:45 p.m.
