At 8:26:38 pm CDT on Tuesday, Sept. 23, a 2 inch piece of an asteroid entered the atmosphere above the town of Lutts in southern Tennessee. Moving almost due west at a speed of 46,300 miles per hour, it traveled some 52 miles before burning up 25 miles above the Tennessee farmland. At its peak, the fireball was about twice as bright as the planet Venus, and was seen by many in north Alabama, Mississippi, and Tennessee.
The NASA Meteoroid Environment Office can confirm a bright fireball observed by several eyewitnesses in Alabama, Georgia and Tennessee on Mar. 7, 2012 at 10:19:11 p.m. EST. The fireball was observed by three NASA cameras located at Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Ala., Tullahoma Tenn., and Cartersville, Ga. The meteor was first recorded at an altitude of 52.7 miles (84.8 km) southeast of Tunnel Hill, Ga., moving slightly south of west at approximately 15 km/s (33,500 mph). It was last seen 14.4 miles (23.2 km) above State Road 95 south east of Rock Springs, Ga. A map of the trajectory is available here: http://www.billcooke.org/events/NGA_2012Mar08/GeorgiaTracks.jpg. The yellow line is the initial automatic meteor trajectory solution. The orange line is the manual (refined) meteor trajectory.
Below are video still images and a short video captured from the cameras at the Marshall Center in Huntsville, Ala. and Cartersville, Ga.
