Here are a few news items regarding Tuesday’s fireball.
A story from The Herald of Sierra Vista where the fireball passed nearly overhead.
The MMT sky cam caught the first few seconds of the fireball which was used to estimate the trajectory of the fireball. The folks at the MMT (Multiple Mirror Telescope) posted a movie and some more images on their blog. The images show the inside of the MMT dome a minute before the fireball and during the fireball when the dome was illuminated by it. Also they posted a movie made from the sky cam. The movie spans a few minutes centered on the time of the fireball which is only visible on 2 frames.
From KOLD, Tucson’s local CBS affiliate, a video of the fireball taken by a security camera in Marana (just north of Tucson). The video shows what appears to be 2 fainter pieces below and to the right of the main fireball. I believe those 2 fainter objects are just reflections caused by the optics of the camera and are not actually real. What is real is the main fireball appearing in 3 or more pieces right before it faded from view. [Note, if anyone else has picture or videos of the fireball, or even just of the ground being lit up by the fireball, we’d like to see them. This is not just for their cool factor, but they are also very useful for mapping where this fireball originally came from and where it finally came down.]
We’ll be out in the morning in our Jeeps, GPS stuffed with waypoints, maps, metal detectors, and high hopes..