INQUISITR.COM / News & Politics

NASA Cameras Capture Bright Fireball Lighting Up Pre-Dawn Sky Over Arizona [Video]

By JohnThomas Didymus
Published on: 02:08 PST, Jun 3, 2016

A bright light lit up the sky over Arizona early on Thursday, June 2, 2016, as an object streaked across the skies turning night into day momentarily.

Following the incident, thousands of baffled eyewitnesses from across Arizona took to social media to share photos and videos, with hundreds debating what the object might have been.

The American Meteor Society (AMS), which received more than 340 reports and inquiries, said it was likely a fireball, a common term for a very bright meteor.

NASA later confirmed that the bright flash of light seen over much of Arizona was caused by an asteroid about five feet (one to two meters) across that entered the Earth’s atmosphere at about 3:57 a.m. MST (10:57 UT). It burned brilliantly as it streaked across the sky at a speed of about 40,200 miles per hour (64,700 kilometers per hour).

Experts estimated that it had a mass of about “a few tons” and kinetic energy of about half a kiloton.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o-KED81DO5c

According to NASA, eyewitness reports indicated that the object appeared over the Tonto National Forest east of Payson at an estimated altitude of 57 miles and was last seen at an altitude of about 22 miles over the same forest. But the flash of its explosion was witnessed in Utah, California, Texas, as far as Las Vegas in Nevada and New Mexico.

Bill Cooke, with NASA’s Meteoroid Environment Office (MEO) in Huntsville, Alabama, said, “There are no reports of any damage or injuries — just a lot of light and few sonic booms.”

“If Doppler radar is any indication, there are almost certainly meteorites scattered on the ground north of Tucson,” he added.

The Arizona Geological Survey’s seismic network confirmed that the meteor broke up into small fragments before it hit the ground.

NASA released footage of the meteor captured by the agency’s MEO cameras in Arizona, part of the All-Sky Fireball Network set up to monitor fireballs brighter than the planet Venus and small space rocks that pose a risk to spacecraft.

Footage obtained from the Sedona Red Rock Cam shows the powerful flash of the fireball (see video below).

The fireball left smoke trails over Phoenix, Arizona.

Experts explained that the twisting of the smoke trails was caused by the winds of the upper atmosphere (see images below).

Cooke said the latest fireball over Arizona was the brightest ever detected in the history of the All-Sky Fireball Network. He also said that experts were having difficulty obtaining relevant data from videos because the meteor was so bright that it’s light saturated the cameras almost completely.

With about 80 to 100 tons of space rock entering the Earth’s atmosphere every day, impacts are occurring constantly.

Although most of the material entering the Earth’s atmosphere is dust and small meteorites that pose no risk to humans because they burn up completely in the atmosphere before they hit the ground, larger space rocks that are potentially risky to human populations at ground level enter the Earth’s atmosphere occasionally.

The superbolide that exploded over Chelyabinsk, Russia, in February 2013, was about 65 feet across and released more than 800 times the energy of the fireball that exploded over Arizona on Thursday.

NASA estimates that impacts involving space rocks the size of the Chelyabinsk meteor occur only a few times in a century. Impacts by larger bodies are even rarer and potentially catastrophic.

Growing awareness of the risk posed by meteors informed the move in January 2016 to establish under NASA’s Planetary Science Division the Planetary Defense Coordination Office, which searches for, catalogs, and tracks potentially hazardous objects (PHOs) larger than 30 to 50 meters across.

The organization also coordinates overall efforts to develop effective responses to impact threats.

NASA has cataloged more than 14,000 near-Earth asteroids (NEAs) since 1998.

[Photo by TheCrimsonMonkey/Getty Images]

Share this article: NASA Cameras Capture Bright Fireball Lighting Up Pre-Dawn Sky Over Arizona [Video]
nasa Arizona
More from Inquisitr