690 Reports

The AMS has received nearly 700 reports so far about a fireball event over Northeastern US on May 17th 2016 around 12:50am EDT (4:50 UT). The fireball was seen primarily from Maine but witnesses from Vermont, New Hampshire, New Jersey, Massachusetts, New York, Rhode Island, Pennsylvania, Connecticut, Ontario (Canada) and Québec (Canada) also reported the event.

If you witnessed this event please fill an official fireball report.

If you have a video or a photo of this event please contact us.

If you want to learn more about Fireballs: read our Fireball FAQ.

Trajectory

Below is the heatmap of the witnesses location and an estimation of the ground trajectory. The trajectory is calculated by triangulation based on the reports we received.

Based on the 690 reports received so far, we were able to estimate the 3D trajectory of the object:

2 Objects entered the Earth’s atmosphere

As it appears clearly in the two screenshots below (from 2 videos ©Burlington International Airport) – there were two objects. It means the original object (the meteoroid) broke before entering the Earth’s atmosphere.

Below is one of the two videos from the Burlington International Airport (©Burlington International Airport)

Videos

Below is a video of the event caught by a police officer of the Plattsburgh Police Department

Below is compilation of multiple videos of the event:

Below is a video of the event caught on Dash Cam by the Portland Maine Police Department

It was an amazing experience for the witnesses:

Flash of light drew attention, large ball of fire that appeared to burn up just above treeline. Absolutely amazing!!

Jennifer M. – Concoert, NH

The giant ball of fire was (seamed) extremely close going down below the treed horizon. I waited a minute because I thought I’ll see fire erupting beyond the end of the lake but nothing…

Julian K – Ontario, Canada

There was a 3-5 min delay from the time I saw it to the boom I heard and felt , very loud and shook the home , unlike anything I have ever experienced before.

Craig C. – Canton, ME

Vincent Perlerin Vincent Perlerin, PhD used to be a researcher in Computational Linguistics. He is now a software developer, a web designer, a community manager, an illustrator and many other things. He is working on the American Meteor Society under the supervision of Mike Hankey. Vincent is the lead developer of all the AMS projects. He's also the lead developer of the International Meteor Organization Website and the IMO online Databases management system.