Light green fireball recorded over Florida

A bright fireball was recorded over Florida at 02:20 UTC on October 7, 2018 (22:20 EDT, October 6). The event lasted 3 – 4 seconds.

Over the next 8 hours, the American Meteor Society (AMS) received 72 reports from Florida, South Carolina and Georgia. 5 of the reports mention sound associated with the event (2 delayed, 3 concurrent).

Heatmap credit: AMS, Google

"The leading edge of this, I believe bollard, was white, following that was a somewhat of a green irregularly shaped conic tail, about 5 to 7 degrees in length, and for 2 or 3 degrees after this was an orange, roundish almost burning-fire looking area. Behind that was a whitish almost vapor trail formation. As our view was watching an object that came from behind and right, and was traveling away from our perspective and slightly left, I would argue that this trail was more noticeable due to being backlight the fireball," one Ormond Beach resident told AMS.

Another interesting-looking event took place on October 7. This one came from the ground up (and down), on the other side of the country.

According to SpaceX, the company successfully launched the SAOCOM 1A satellite from Space Launch Complex 4E (SLC-4E) at Vandenberg Air Force Base in California at 02:21 UTC on October 8 (October 7 at 19:21 PDT).

"The satellite was deployed about 12 minutes after liftoff. Following stage separation, Falcon 9’s first stage returned to land at SpaceX’s Landing Zone 4 (LZ-4) at Vandenberg Air Force Base. This was SpaceX’s first land landing on the West Coast. LZ-4 is built on the former site of Space Launch Complex 4W, from which Titan rockets were previously launched."

Launch webcast 
(video/flight starts 16:55)

Featured image credit: Florida fireball October 7, 2018. Credit: Aleksandr Superczynski