International Comet Quarterly

Information on atmospheric fireballs (bright meteors)

The Smithsonian Institution's Scientific Event Alert Network (SEAN) in Washington, DC, stopped collecting reports of fireballs a few years ago. There are several places that you can now report such events, but reports are generally useless without complete information such as date and Universal Time of the even, duration in seconds of the visible fireball, altitude and azimuth (in degrees) of beginning and end of observed fireball trail, your latitude and longitude (and elevation above sea level) at time of observation, and full contact information. If this information is available from two or more observers in accurate form, it might be possible to recover a surviving meteorite (especially if the object were brighter than the full moon and if the fireball preceded definite sonic booms). Links to sites with useful information regarding meteoric fireballs in the earth's atmosphere (and reporting such events) are provided below:

• Fireball Data Center (International Meteor Organization, Germany)
• American Meteor Society (but generally does not have the resources to deal with fireball reports)
• Meteorite and Impacts Advisory Committee, Canadian Space Agency
• In-coming fireballs detected with Defense Department satellites
• Links to other websites regarding meteors, comets, and near-earth objects