Analysis of the April 13, 2021 bolide off the coast of Florida and Grand Bahama Island

Hughes, A. L. C.; Sankar, Ramanakumar; Davis, Kathryn E.; Palotai, Csaba; Free, Dwayne

doi:10.1111/maps.13781

Cited by 6 publications

(3 citation statements)

References 19 publications

(23 reference statements)

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“…Studies on meteoroids primarily rely on initial visual and/or audible human observations Brown et al, 2003Brown et al, , 2011D'Auria et al, 2006;Hughes et al, 2022;Ishihara et al, 2003;Kumar et al, 2017;Langston, 2004;Llorca et al, 2005;Pujol et al, 2005;Stich et al, 2022;Vera Rodriguez et al, 2022;Walker et al, 2010;Yamada, 2021;Yamada & Mori, 2012), leading to an observational bias toward populated areas, such as on the continents. Observations over oceans and islands are notably scarce, particularly without all-sky cameras (Silber & Brown, 2014).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Exclusive Seismoacoustic Detection and Characterization of an Unseen and Unheard Fireball Over the North Atlantic

Hicks¹,

Matos²,

Pimentel³

et al. 2023

Preprint

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Small meteoroids that enter Earth’s atmosphere often go unnoticed; their detection and characterisation rely on human observations, introducing observational biases in space and time. Acoustic shockwaves from meteoroid ablation convert to infrasound and seismic energy, enabling fireball detection using seismoacoustic methods. We analysed an unreported fireball in 2022 near the Azores, recorded by 26 seismometers and two infrasound arrays. Through polarisation analyses, array methods, and 3-D ray-tracing, we determined that the terminal blast occurred at 40 km altitude, ~60 km NE of São Miguel Island. This location matches an unidentified flash captured by a lightning detector aboard the GOES-16 satellite. The estimated kinetic energy is ~10-3 kT TNT equivalent, suggesting a 10-1 m object diameter, thousands of which enter the atmosphere annually. Our results demonstrate how geophysical methods, in tandem with satellite data, can significantly improve the observational completeness of meteoroids, advancing our understanding of their sources and entry processes.

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Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Exclusive Seismoacoustic Detection and Characterization of an Unseen and Unheard Fireball Over the North Atlantic

Hicks¹,

Matos²,

Pimentel³

et al. 2023

Preprint

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

show abstract

“…The Grand Bahama bolide was the subject of in‐depth analysis by a team at the Florida Institute of Technology (Hughes et al., 2022 ). They derived their light curve primarily from GLM L2 data.…”

Section: Resultsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Correction and calibration of atmospheric impact observations in GOES GLM data

Morris

Smith

Dotson

et al. 2022

Meteorit & Planetary Scien

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The Earth's atmosphere is impacted daily by both meteoroids and artificial objects. Calibrated observations of the emitted light at sufficiently high sampling rates can enable or improve the estimation of impactor attributes such as size, cohesion, trajectory, and composition, but are difficult to obtain owing to the unpredictability, brevity, and high dynamic (brightness) range of impacts. Ground‐based camera systems have successfully monitored small regions of the atmosphere at video frame rates and with limited radiometric capabilities, but most impacts occur over the 70% of the Earth's surface covered by water and are therefore missed by these networks. The Geostationary Lightning Mapper (GLM) instruments aboard Geostationary Operational Environmental Satellites 16 and 17 provide near‐hemispherical coverage at 500 frames per second. These data have been shown to contain the signatures of many independently confirmed impacts, often from both viewing angles simultaneously, and constitute an observational resource that is currently unparalleled in the public domain. NASA's Asteroid Threat Assessment Project has implemented an automated impact detection pipeline that processes data from GLM daily. Given a detected impact, the GLM data contain a wealth of information for use in quantitative follow‐up analyses. However, impact events differ from lightning in ways that violate key assumptions built into GLM's design. The result is that GLM's onboard processing introduces errors into pixel observations of impact events and the calibrated energies near the periphery of the detector may be substantially overestimated. We present methods for mitigating these and other issues to produce a data product more suitable for impact analyses than the existing GLM lightning product.

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“…Studies on meteoroids primarily rely on initial visual and/or audible human observations (Brown, ReVelle, et al., 2002; Brown et al., 2003, 2011; D’Auria et al., 2006; Hughes et al., 2022; Ishihara et al., 2003; Kumar et al., 2017; Langston, 2004; Llorca et al., 2005; Pujol et al., 2005; Stich et al., 2022; Vera Rodriguez et al., 2022; Walker et al., 2010; Yamada, 2021; Yamada & Mori, 2012), leading to an observational bias toward populated areas, such as on the continents. Observations over oceans and islands are notably scarce, particularly without all‐sky cameras (Silber & Brown, 2014).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Exclusive Seismoacoustic Detection and Characterization of an Unseen and Unheard Fireball Over the North Atlantic

Hicks,

Matos,

Pimentel

et al. 2023

Geophysical Research Letters

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

Small meteoroids that enter Earth's atmosphere often go unnoticed because their detection and characterization rely on human observations, introducing observational biases in space and time. Acoustic shockwaves from meteoroid ablation convert to infrasound and seismic energy, enabling fireball detection using seismoacoustic methods. We analyzed an unreported fireball in 2022 near the Azores, recorded by 26 seismometers and two infrasound arrays. Through polarization analyses, array methods, and 3‐D ray‐tracing, we determined that the terminal blast occurred at 40 km altitude, ∼60 km NE of São Miguel Island. This location matches an unidentified flash captured by a lightning detector aboard the GOES‐16 satellite. The estimated kinetic energy is ∼10−3 kT TNT equivalent, suggesting a 10−1 m object diameter, thousands of which enter the atmosphere annually. Our results demonstrate how geophysical methods, in tandem with satellite data, can significantly improve the observational completeness of meteoroids, advancing our understanding of their sources and entry processes.

show abstract

Analysis of the April 13, 2021 bolide off the coast of Florida and Grand Bahama Island

Cited by 6 publications

References 19 publications

Exclusive Seismoacoustic Detection and Characterization of an Unseen and Unheard Fireball Over the North Atlantic

Exclusive Seismoacoustic Detection and Characterization of an Unseen and Unheard Fireball Over the North Atlantic

Correction and calibration of atmospheric impact observations in GOES GLM data

Exclusive Seismoacoustic Detection and Characterization of an Unseen and Unheard Fireball Over the North Atlantic

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