Fireball Lights Up the Sky on July 26 2022

Credit Image from SOMN

Did you see a fireball on July 26, 2022 at approximately 9:27pm? Perhaps you unknowingly captured it on a security camera. Team member Liam M. from Hamilton was lucky enough to spot it.

About 100 reports (to date) of this fireball have been submitted to American Meteor Society from observers in Ontario and the US. Below is the current map of the observers from the American Meteor Society event page.

The Southern Ontario Meteor Network (SOMN) observed the fireball on 8 all sky cameras. This enabled SOMN to analyze the data that they collected and they determined that the meteor became visible at 77 kilometer above King City and it was moving south at 79,200 km per hour. It decended at a sharp angle of 70 degrees before it disintegrated 34 kilometers above the intersection of the 400 and 427 in Toronto. They esimate that this asteroidal fragment weighed 11 kg and had a diamter of 20 cm. It was as bright as a waxing crescent Moon. See NASA Meteor Watch post.

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A dashcam video of the fireball was also posted on reddit.

You can report fireball observations (and also send in videos and pictures if you have them) to the American Meteor Society (AMS) or it’s partner the International Meteor Organization (IMO). The reports not only alert them to potentially scientifically significant events, they also add to the database of knowledge about meteors.