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Largest fireball since Chelyabinsk falls over Atlantic

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February 24, 2016

An object entered the atmosphere over the Urals early in the morning of 15 February 2013. The fireball exploded above Chelyabinsk city, and the resulting overpressure caused damage to buildings and injuries to hundreds of people. This photo was taken by Alex Alishevskikh from about a minute after noticing the blast. Photo credit: Alex Alishevskikh/Flickr — So far, there haven’t been any photos of the fireball over the Atlantic on February 6, 2016. This is a photo of the Chelyabinsk fireball, over the Urals early in the morning of February, 15 2013. The meteor exploded above Chelyabinsk city. This photo was taken by Alex Alishevskikh from about a minute after noticing the blast. Photo credit: Alex Alishevskikh/Flickr

The largest fireball since the Chelyabinsk blast in February 2013 was detected on February 6, 2015 at about 14:00 UTC over the southern Atlantic Ocean.

NASA listed the event on its Fireball and Bolide Reports webpage.

Because the event happened in the middle of the ocean, the fireball probably went unnoticed and not caught on camera. It burned up about 31 kilometers (19 miles) above the ocean surface, about 1,850 kilometers (1,150 miles) off of the Brazilian coast.

Location of the February 9, 2016 fireball. Image: Google Maps

Data released by NASA shows that the meteor released an energy equivalent to 12,000 tonnes (13,000 tons) of TNT, and it was moving at over 15.5 kilometers per second (9.6 miles per second). It had a diameter of about 7 meters (23 feet), calculated based on its kinetic energy.

Chelyabinsk meteor mystery 3 years later

The February 2013 Chelyabinsk impact was 40 times more energetic and released 450,000 tonnes (500,000 tons) of TNT. That event injured more than 1,000 people, mostly due to windows breaking. If this recent event had happened over a populated area, it would have at most rattled some windows and scared a few people, according to Phil Plait at Slate.

Bottom line: The largest fireball since the Chelyabinsk blast in February 2013 was detected on February 6, 2015 at about 14:00 UTC over the southern Atlantic Ocean.

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Posted

February 24, 2016

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Eleanor Imster

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About the Author:

Eleanor Imster has helped write and edit EarthSky since 1995. She was an integral part of the award-winning EarthSky radio series almost since it began until it ended in 2013. She and her husband live in Tennessee, where they enjoy guitar playing and singing. They have 2 grown sons.