Fireballs detected by EPSO's all-sky camera

Every so often an especially bright meteor falls and is captured by EPSO's all-sky video camera.  This instrument is configured to take a snap of the sky once a minute, and it also generates another image which integrates all the changes observed within the previous minute.  These one-minute integrated images are handy for spotting distant lightning strikes, aeroplane trails, cloud motion, and meteors.  Especially bright meteors are known fireballs, and this page logs some of the more noteworthy detected at EPSO.

2017-03-15   09:45:04→09 (UTC)
This fireball was captured beautifully by a car dashcam which was driving around 270km distant from the event, and shows the duration time of the fireball of around 5 seconds, reaching peak brightness at around 09:45:08UTC.  By analysing this video and from other sighting reports, Ray Pickard of Bathurst Observatory was able to determine a terminal location of the fireball of around -33.36968, 145.94774, with an uncertainty of around 10km.  This location is 387km distant from EPSO, on a bearing of 232º, which corresponds with the direction of the flash shown in the adjacent EPSO all-sky camera image (click on image to view full size).  It is interesting to note that this flash illuminated the thin overhead cloud and looks very similar to a typical nearby lightning flash, so given the distance it was a very bright flash indeed.

At a range of 387km, any P-wave seismic signal caused by the fireball would have taken around a minute to arrive at EPSO, with the S-wave arriving around 47 seconds after that.  No such waves appear in EPSO seismic data, and likewise from the possible acoustic wave which would have taken around 19.5 minutes to arrive.