Fireball over Tucson, AZ
© NASA Meteor Watch
Our all sky cameras at Kitt Peak National Observatory, Mount Lemmon Observatory, and the MMT Observatory captured footage of a brilliant fireball that occurred over southern Arizona at 8:32 PM Mountain Daylight Time on September 23rd (2017 September 24 03:27 UTC).

The meteor originated 49 miles above the desert southwest of Tucson, Arizona. It travelled at about 29,300 miles per hour for 12 seconds, passing almost directly over the Tortolita suburb of Tucson, before disrupting 20 miles above the desert approximately 8 miles north of the town of Oracle, Arizona.


The disruption produced a sonic boom that was picked up by a seismometer near Tucson. This indicates that the fireball may have produced meteorites that dropped somewhere over the desert.

Analysis of our video data indicates that the object that produced the fireball was likely an asteroid fragment that weighed approximately 100 pounds and had a diameter of roughly 1 foot.