Fire in the Sky
Many people across Dallas-Fort Worth noted they saw a brilliant fireball about 8:57 p.m. Sunday. In fact, it was seen as far south as Austin, as far north as Oklahoma and as far east as Louisiana.
It streaked from the southwest to the northeast and exploded, evidently over Northeast Texas. One resident in Bonham said it "shook his house."
This bright meteor was recorded in the framework of the SMART project, operated by the Southwestern Europe Meteor Network (SWEMN), from the meteor-observing stations located at Sevilla, La Hita (Toledo), La Sagra (Granada), Calar Alto (Almería), Cerro Negro (Sevilla), Sierra Nevada (Granada), and Madrid (Jaime Izquierdo, Complutense University of Madrid). The event has been analyzed by the principal investigator of the SMART project: Dr. Jose M. Madiedo, from the Institute of Astrophysics of Andalusia (IAA-CSIC).
"Although most meteors are only visible for a few seconds, this event was significant since images that we managed to capture show that it was visible for 27 seconds, that is almost half a minute," said Eddie Irizarry, vice president of the SAC.
"It looked bigger and bigger, it didn't look like a common meteor," said Idaly Correa, who witnessed the spectacular sighting from the municipality of Guayanilla.
The SAC director clarified that despite the long duration of the meteor, it was not space debris, but a natural meteor, that is, a space rock disintegrating through the atmosphere.
Shortly after 12:02 a.m. on Wednesday, the Lulin Observatory, located at the summit of Lulin Mountain in Nantou County's Xinyi Township, recorded a meteor erupting into a ball of fire as it burst through the atmosphere. Within a span of 50 seconds, the meteor could be seen streaking across the sky as it ignited into a series of explosions.
It flashed four times during its descent, with each ignition causing the fireball to grow bigger and brighter. After the fourth explosion, the extraterrestrial orb went dark and disappeared below the horizon.
Soon, residents of Taipei as well as Yilan, Hualien, and Taitung counties posted videos of the unusual atmospheric phenomenon. Some people reported hearing a sonic boom following each flash of light.
This video was uploaded to the AMS website.
Credit: Korri Anderson.
It began over that province at an altitude of about 91 km, and ended at a height of around 41 km. This bright meteor was recorded in the framework of the SMART project, operated by the Southwestern Europe Meteor Network (SWEMN), from the meteor-observing stations located at Sevilla, La Hita (Toledo), La Sagra (Granada), Calar Alto (Almería) ), Cerro Negro (Seville), Sierra Nevada (Granada), and Madrid (Jaime Izquierdo, Complutense University of Madrid).
The event has been analyzed by the principal investigator of the SMART project: Dr. Jose M. Madiedo, from the Institute of Astrophysics of Andalusia (IAA-CSIC).














