Bolide Fireball meteor recorded by UKMON on 30 June 2014

By Richard Kacerek

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By far the brightest meteor recorded by our cameras was also spotted and reported by large number of public witnesses and quickly gained coverage in media.

The meteor probably exceeds definition of “fireball” and it is bordering on definition of “bolide”. Bolides are extremely rare and very large fireballs which reach brightness of the Moon or exceed it. The coverage has been spectacular and at the time of writing the 2 videos have had 25,000 combined views on Youtube alone, let alone how many views they have had on the other news sites.

This was by far the brightest meteor we have detected and it was nice to see we also had positive detections from our Exeter (John Maclean), Sidmouth Town (Steve Boyce), Norman Lockyer Observatory in Sidmouth, Clanfield observatory in Hampshire and Wilcot (Richard Fleet) cameras to add to the data.

Fireball seen through the thick clouds from N.Lockyer observatory in Sidmouth

Second N.Lockyer camera had the same luck capturing the fireball

Richard Fleet from Wilcot had a bit more favourable weather

And from another camera in Wilcot

Two more UKMON cameras caught a glimpse of the same fireball

Exeter camera with fireball in the top right corner

Bottom left corner shows start of the meteor detected at Clanfield

Preliminary results show the meteor on the ground map, terminal altitude is estimated at around 26km!

Orbit reaches between Mars and Jupiter, possibly very dense asteroidal material.