” This is among the nicer events I have seen in the GLM information,” said Bill Cooke, lead of NASAs Meteoroid Environments Office at Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Alabama.
Fireball ground track from eyewitness accounts. Credit: NASA/American Meteor Society
The object– believed to be a piece of an asteroid about a foot (~ 30 centimeters) in diameter with a weight of 90 pounds (~ 40 kg)– moved southwest at a speed of 55,000 miles per hour (~ 90,000 kilometers per hour), getting into pieces as it came down deeper into Earths environment. It broke down about 34 miles (55 kilometers) above the swampy location north of Minorca in Louisiana.
The fragmentation of this fireball created an energy equivalent of 3 heaps of TNT (trinitrotoluene), which developed shock waves that propagated to the ground, producing the vibrations and booms felt by people in the area.
At its peak, the fireball was over 10 times brighter than the Full Moon.
” What struck me as uncommon was how few eyewitness reports we had actually given the skies were so clear,” stated Cooke. “More people heard it than saw it.”
Geostationary Lightning Mappers (GLM) image from the GOES 16 satellite. Credit: NOAA
Loud fireball identified over southern Mississippi mostly heard, barely seen.
An intense meteor spotted across the morning skies in southern Mississippi the other day, April 27, 2022.
More than 30 eyewitnesses in the states of Arkansas, Louisiana, and Mississippi reported seeing a brilliant fireball at 8:03 a.m. CDT. The sighting was quickly followed by numerous reports of loud booms heard in Claiborne County, Mississippi, and surrounding counties.
Approximately 22,000 miles out in space, NOAAs Geostationary Lightning Mappers (GLM) onboard the Geostationary Operational Environmental Satellites (GOES) 16 and 17 identified several intense flashes connected with the fragmentation of this bolide, or remarkably brilliant meteor, which was first spotted 54 miles above the Mississippi River near the town of Alcorn, Mississippi.
By Lance D. Davis, NASA
April 28, 2022
