We haven’t heard any updates of people finding any pieces of the meteorite on the ground. If we do hear of something, we’ll be sure to let people know.

Super-bright meteors are amazing and memorable things to see. One of the most common things that happen when people watch a fireball is that they underestimate the distance and elevation of the meteor.

For example, there was a daytime fireball visible in 2001 that was widely reported to us as having landed in the foothills above Bountiful, when in fact the meteor was reported from Idaho Falls to Lake Powell, and probably came down somewhere near the Utah-Colorado border.

The point I’m making is that our brains are easily tricked.

Most meteors (”shooting stars”) are created by bits of rock in space that are generally smaller than a grain of rice entering our atmosphere and vaporizing in a flash of light from the extreme heat generated by the encounter. These events typically occur 30-40 miles above the ground.

The fireball seen at 12:07 AM on November 18th was probably bigger than a kitchen stove. The intense light it created as it vaporized was reported from as far east as Rifle, Colorado, as far north as Malad, Idaho, as far west as Reno, Nevada, and as far south as Prescott, Arizona.

Check out a recent news story by KSL-TV, an in it you’ll see some amazing video from a dashboard camera mounted on a police car in Grand Junction, Colorado. Here’s the link:

http://www.ksl.com/?nid=148&sid=8858815

For this fireball to be seen from a police cruiser in Colorado, more than 200 miles to the east of Salt Lake City, and Frisco Peak near Milford, and cast the shadows that were recorded by security video cameras along the Wasatch Front, it had to be at least 30 miles above the ground.

We triangulated using multiple location reports and back-tracing shadow information obtained from security camera videos. From this we are fairly confident that the meteor entered Earth’s atmosphere 80 – 120 miles to the west of Salt Lake City, probably in the vicinity of the Deep Creek Mountains.

I hope this helps.

Keep your eyes on the skies & all the best,

Seth

This was near the weave in Farmington.

I would certainly like to talk to someone about it and see if it is possible to find it.

The video from the Frisco Peak Observatory operated by the University of Utah was a view to the NORTH. That’s 180 degrees from where I’d first thought it was!

I stand corrected!

For the Frisco Peak camera to be showing a south-to-north motion, while in Salt Lake City and points nearby there were reports of a north-to-south motion, that means that the meteor itself must have been coming it at quite a steep angle from somewhere more-or-less midway between the Wasatch Front and Milford.

This also makes sense of the three second duration of the event. Shallow angles generally mean longer periods of visibility. Three seconds is pretty quick for a fireball of this brightness.

We’ll be out and about in the Salt Lake Valley for a little while tomorrow taking measurements to understand what security cameras were seeing and try to get a better fix.

When we know anything interesting we’ll share it here.

Pretty cool stuff!

The Walmart in Cody WY has cameras in their parking lot may have footage of the fireball.

Here’s what we know right now (morning of the 19th), based on the eyewitness accounts and security cam videos we’ve been able to review:

The fireball appeared to the northwest of SLC at a few seconds past 12:07 AM on 11/18. The total duration was just over three seconds. The fireball was traveling in a generally “from the northwest, to the southwest” line as seen from the Wasatch Front region.

The meteor appeared to be between 20 and 30 degrees above the western horizon, which puts its probable “straight overhead” location about 50-150 miles to the west of the Wasatch Front. This is a very preliminary estimate. The fireball was also seen still traveling south from locations in southern Utah, which makes me skeptical of claims that it might have landed near Dugway.

What we need, desperately, is information from folks about >where< their security cams are located and precisely which direction they are aimed. We especially need footage from cams that show shadows moving across the ground. We’ll be able to use this information to create a series of motion paths that can be triangulated into an accurate ground track for the fireball.

So please – if you know people who have security cam footage of the fireball, get them to share it with us, and don’t forget to ask for precise locations (street addresses are fine) and the exact direction their camera faces.

We’ve got some sleuthing to do!