A bright fireball was sighted across the sky in the interior of the state of São Paulo, Brazil, last Tuesday, December 15th night. The space rock entered the Earth’s atmosphere at 21h35min BRT (00h35min UTC), when it was recorded by the cameras of the BRAMON stations RCP3, RCP4 and CRP1, located in the cities of Nhandeara and Indiaporã, both in SP, and by 5 other cameras of Clima ao Vivo in São Paulo and Paraná . Check out the video:

Bramon has other cameras that could have captured the phenomenon, but because of the storm cells located close to the meteor’s site at that moment, many of them were turned off for safety. However, thanks to the excellent coverage of BRAMON and Clima ao Vivo in that region, it was possible to register the meteor from the cities where there were not so many clouds.

At the right time, shooting the right place

280 km away, the photographer and amateur astronomer André Casagrande made a beautiful record of the passage of this meteor. André was in Primeiro de Maio, in the North of Paraná state, and at the moment the fireball crossed the sky of São Paulo, he was just photographing the sky, exactly in the direction where the meteor occurred. And the result of this coincidence could not be better: a fantastic record of the moment when the meteor lit up the starry sky, with a beautiful landscape of the interior of Paraná in the foreground.

Meteor passage shooted from Primeiro de Maio, North of Paraná State – Credits: André Casagrande

Trajectory

Preliminary analyzes indicate that the space rock reached the Earth’s atmosphere at an angle of 18.6 ° to the ground, at a speed of 13.52 km/s (34400 km/h). It became visible 60.8 km height, close to the border between Minas Gerais, São Paulo and Mato Grosso do Sul. It went east for 11.6 seconds, until it disappeared at 25.3 km height southwest from the municipality of Votuporanga, in SP.

Meteor trajectory through atmosphere – Credits: BRAMON

At its peak of brightness, the meteor still reached -9.5 on the magnitude scale, used in astronomy to measure the brightness of celestial objects. The number itself indicates that it was very luminous, about 100 times brighter than the planet Venus. Meteors brighter than Venus are also called “fireballs”.

Bramon will continue the work to further refine the data and make it more accurate. If you saw this or another meteor, keep your report to bramon.imo.net. 

by: Alexsandro Mota