More than 280 reports from 12 states
The AMS received more than 280 reports so far about a fireball event that occurred over Connecticut and New York on November 8th, 2020 around 19:22 EST (November 9th, 02:22 Universal Time). The AMS #2020-5441 event was mainly seen from the Connecticut and New York but we also received reports from Massachusetts, Delaware, Maryland, New Hampshire, New Jersey, Rhode Island, Vermont, West Virginia and Québec.
If you witnessed this event and/or if you have a video or a photo of this event, please
Submit an Official Fireball Report
If you want to learn more about Fireballs: read our Fireball FAQ.
Trajectory & Video
While this event is still under investigation, the preliminary trajectory computed based on all the reports submitted to the AMS so far shows that the fireball was travelling from East to West and ended its visible flight somewhere sought of Poughkeepsie, NY.
The event has been by AllSky6 camera operator Peter Deterline from Douglassville, PA:
The event has been also caught on a dashcam and share on twitter by @LakewoodScoop:
Fireball?
Several thousand meteors of fireball magnitude occur in the Earth’s atmosphere each day. The vast majority of these, however, occur over the oceans and uninhabited regions, and a good many are masked by daylight. Those that occur at night also stand little chance of being detected due to the relatively low numbers of persons out to notice them.
Additionally, the brighter the fireball, the more rare is the event. As a general thumb rule, there are only about 1/3 as many fireballs present for each successively brighter magnitude class, following an exponential decrease. Experienced observers can expect to see only about 1 fireball of magnitude -6 or better for every 200 hours of meteor observing, while a fireball of magnitude -4 can be expected about once every 20 hours or so.
