Finally - a meteor passed just over our village!

RBOOM & Infrasound
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Finally - a meteor passed just over our village in southern Norway at UTC time 23:08:52 yesterday July 24. 2021, and probably landet 40 kilometers away. My camera detected the fantastic light, not directly, it lasted for about 2-3 sec., it was just like daylight and people heard boom/sound. Almost impossible to be closer than this.
I checked my R S&B, (station AM.R25D6), by using swarm, and it seems to have detected “something”, but the time does not fit compared to the time 23:08:52, It shows that something happened 23:11:29, i.e. 2,5 minutes later. I feel there is something wrong with the whole setup, but I’m may be a little lost here. Need more experience, even the system has been running 389 days without any reset or stop. May be an update will be good for the R S&B?

RSH.R25D6.2021-07-25T15_33_41.logs.tar (3.1 MB)
qqqq.pdf (529.1 KB)

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Hello ts20.no, great to hear from you again, and with such exciting news too!

I was following this interesting event and just this morning, before the garden work took me off my pc, I was sorting through the BOOMs and RSBOOMs that our network has in Norway. The trace that you have recorded is indeed impressive, to say the least!

Such a fireball would definitely have produced intense sonic booms during its atmospheric reentry phase and quite the lighting, as your camera has observed.

Regarding your trace, from AM.R25D6, which I took the liberty of plotting here below,

R25D6_2021-07-24_22-30-00_HDFDailyPlot
R25D6_2021-07-24_22-30-00_HDFDailyPlot2160×1440 382 KB

it was recorded as you said at 23:11:29, so 157 seconds after the timestamp of the bright light on the video you attached.

Since sound travels way slower than light, especially through the air, if we assume that the air displacement (sound) wave was travelling at the standard speed of sound of 343 m/s, it means that the originating point of the soundwave was 50.42 km from your location, which, considering the fact that the trajectory of sound is inside a three-dimensional volume, is perfectly in line with your 40 km away estimation. If we then use these two measurements to calculate the height of the explosion, we obtain a value of 30.69 km, which again, is in line with most documented meteor re-entry data, just a bit on the lower part of the average.

So, again, congratulations on recording this very fascinating event and thank you for having shared your experience with us!

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Hi Stormchaser!
Thanks for the explanation, as I said: I was lost, and did not think of the diff of travel time…
Here is another video from another camera I have. It is pointed towards the ground/south.
May be I will set up another one covering the East direction, so I can catch the next meteor!

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Wow, that’s cool. Congratulations.

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It is no problem at all, glad that I could have helped!

Your message prompted me to check my BOOM sensor too, and by adjusting the calculations for the extended distance, it seems that both infrasound sensors in Scotland have caught the propagating wave from the blast around 30-45 minutes later.

So it was my first clear meteor detection via infrasound too!

Good idea with the cameras, especially now that we near the peak of the Perseids swarm.

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It made the news. Good catch.

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Hi, what software are you using for your skycam please?
Graham

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Hi Graham,
I’m using a surveillance camera system from https://community.ui.com/
One camera just pointed to the sky instead of to the ground :slightly_smiling_face:
Acceptable, not so very expensive.

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