On Dec. 18,2018, a large "fireball" - the term used forexceptionally bright meteors that are visible over a wide area -exploded about 16 miles (26 kilometers) above the Bering Sea. The explosionunleashed an estimated 173 kilotons of energy, or more than 10 times the energyof the atomic bomb blast over Hiroshima during World War II.

Two NASAinstruments aboard the Terra satellite captured images of the remnants of the largemeteor. The image sequence shows views from five of nine cameras on the Multi-angle Imaging SpectroRadiometer (MISR) instrumenttaken at 23:55 Coordinated Universal Time (UTC), a few minutes after theevent. The shadow of the meteor's trail throughEarth's atmosphere, cast on the cloud tops and elongated by the low sun angle,is to the northwest. The orange-tinted cloud that the fireball left behind bysuper-heating the air it passed through can be seen below and to the right ofthe GIF's center.

Thestill image, captured by the Moderate Resolution Imaging SpectroRadiometer(MODIS) instrument, is a true-color image showing the remnants of the meteor's passage,seen as a dark shadow cast on thick, white clouds. MODIS captured the image at23:50 UTC.

TheDec. 18 fireball was the most powerful meteor to be observed since 2013;however, given its altitude and the remote area over which it occurred, theobject posed no threat to anyone on the ground. Fireball events are actually fairlycommon and are recorded in the NASA Center for Near Earth ObjectStudies database.

TheTerra spacecraft was launched in 1999 and is managed by NASA's Goddard SpaceFlight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland. The MISR instrument was built and ismanaged by NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California, for NASA'sScience Mission Directorate in Washington. JPL is a division of Caltech. TheMISR data were obtained from the NASA Langley Research Center AtmosphericScience Data Center in Hampton, Virginia. The MODIS instrument is managed by NASA's GoddardSpace Flight Center.

More information about MISR and MODIS is available at thefollowing site(s):

https://www-misr.jpl.nasa.gov/

MODIS

News Media Contact

Patrick Lynch NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center301-286-2102 patrick.lynch@nasa.gov

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News | NASA Instruments Image Fireball over Bering Sea