American Meteor Society
The American Meteor Society received over 300 reports so far reporting 2 fireballs over the far western USA on Friday, October 23th 2015. The first dimmer and less reported fireball was seen near 10:14pm PDT (5:14 UT on Oct 24). The brighter and more reported fireball occurred near 10:37 PDT (5:37 UT on Oct 24). Observers from as far as Tucson, AZ and southwestern Utah reported seeing a bright light in the sky. The event has also been seen from Sacramento, CA to San Diego, CA.
If you witnessed this fireball please fill out an official fireball report.
Below is a heat map of the witness reports for event 2635 (the brighter and more reported event). The earlier fireball was assigned event 2697.
AMS Event #2635-2015 – Heatmap of the witnesses
Below is a video of the event caught on dash camera by a Youtube user (RG):
Below is the witness map of the event:
AMS Event #2635-2015 – Witnesses
If you witnessed this fireball please fill out an official fireball report.
Learn more about Fireballs.
I saw it in riverside last night!!!!
We were driving down Irvine Blvd (Irvine, CA) last night and witnessed this fireball. It was so bright, at first we thought it was a small
plane that had caught fire but then it just vanished.
I was driving southeast on a hilly drive called Callon Drive, in Topanga, CA. It seemed to fly across my field of vision, possibly headed toward the ocean. It was bright green and it seemed to be metallic. It seemed to be very small and very quick, but slow enough for me to see the trajectory. I know that I saw a crowd of LA County Sheriffs Dept. helicopters fill the sky immediately (within a couple of minutes is very immediate for LA County) afterwards. They usually monitor traffic on the 27, which connects Malibu to the San Fernando Valley-so I know that they saw it. I know that the time on the clock, in my car, said 10:31.
I saw a large fireball/shooting star/meteor at approximately 10:30pm. I was in San Dimas, CA. It was a bright blue with a golden tail. It was shooting north east to south east. It lasted about 2-3 seconds.
@ 10:48 pm last night, driving north on the 405, in Venice City Caliornia, we saw a bright light falling almost straight down. This was about about 20-30 degrees to our left. It took a good half second, and was very bright, with some chunks seeming to burn off. 🙂
If you can see a meteor on the 405 freeway in Los Angeles you know it is bright indeed.
Fireball seen October 23, 2015 at about 10:01 pm in Valencia California. It was seen Northeast with a blue green bright large tail. We were watching the Hart High School vs Golden Valley at College of the Canyons. The entire stadium saw it and shouting “wow” “did you see that?”.
I caught a glimpse of this fireball from my dash camera while driving in Irvine,CA – I have it occurring at 10:17PM per my timestamp.
Youtube link: https://youtu.be/By1YJxp-mUY
Thank you RG!
Hi RG and AMS Admin,
Just FYI: the reason for all the confusion is that there were *2* meteors Friday night. The one RG captured from Irvine, CA, is the earlier (dimmer) one. The one recorded by the all-sky camera in Riverside, CA, and also captured by Christian in Goleta occurred later at 10:47:46 pm. It is the later one that very likely produced meteorites and generated sonic booms. –Rob
I friend of mine heard sonic booms just north of Creston, also said his metal barn had what sounded like rocks hitting it, around 10:40 at night, as he was awoken to it. He lives about 13 miles north of Creston, Ca.
I was wondering if you could tell me your friends phone # or have him call me if could.I’d love to look around with my Garrett ATX it’s a pulse induction metal detector and If I find anything we can split it 50/50.I’m recently retired and looking for my next adventure.Thanks Ty pasofam5@aol.com
My friend and I were sitting on her back patio and suddenly she makes a startled sound and says what is that. I caught a brief view of a giant fireball looking light going from top left to bottom right of my vision and then it was gone. While the light was bright white, my friend said it had a green afterglow or tail. It was bigger than any light I have ever seen in the night sky. This was late evening in solvang, california.
I saw a bright light flash across the sky smiliar to lightening, then heard loud booming for a least a minute off and on. I am located in Creston California. The cross roads are la panza and highway 58. Our neighbors also saw this event.
I saw a ball of fire last night (Oct 23, 2015) at about 10:30. It came in at about 70 degrees angle. Had a tail ,bright white, yellow ball. I live in Castaic,CA.
9:45pm Redlands Ca heading east
Last night at 10:23pm I witnessed a fireball. It was so bright, at first I thought it was a small
metallic plane that had caught fire, with a large orange and white glow followed by a steamy dark green-gray trail, but then it just vanished before I could see it hit anything. Helicopters then filled the sky…
I sent in a photo to our local online source called Edhat. They published it after someone else said they had seen a meteorite. You can view my photo at the above website. http://www.edhat.com/site/tidbit.cfm?id=1215&tid=1394&art=160583&srt=desc
Hi Christian,
First off, thank you for posting your image so quickly. Other than an all-sky camera video taken from Riverside, CA (where the fireball was very low on the northwest horizon), it is the only image I’d seen as of Sunday, October 25. (Today I see there is now a dashcam video from Irvine, CA.)
I’ve spent about 10 hours working on this fireball so far, mostly concentrating on seismographs that recorded it, but also folding your picture into the equation. You (or was it your father?) slowed me down a bit by misreporting where the picture was taken from:
http://www.edhat.com/site/tidbit.cfm?nid=160583
I knew right away there was no way this picture was taken from the Hidden Oaks golf course, since that course has no water on it! I briefly considered nearby La Cumbre Country Club, but the palms near Laguna Blanca are too short to match your image. I concluded the water had to be the ocean, and therefore you were on one of Santa Barbara’s piers. It didn’t take long for colleague Eric Bowker to figure out it was the pier in Goleta by the Beachside Bar, and based on the angles to the various palms I determined you were standing somewhere a little north of the bend in the pier.
When I head north to go searching for meteorites from this fall, I will pay a visit to the pier to get an accurate camera position and line-of-sight measurement. (I’ve actually been to the Beachside Bar many times, so it will be a nice side trip. 😉
Me and my friend caleb saw a bright white light and a trail that was green and blue me and caleb got a sudden shock of energy that we ran inside located Atascadero CA
Wow! So quick, but we saw it clearly right in front of us. My daughter and I had just left the “Ghost Tours” in Simi Valley (a must see, may I add), sitting at a stoplight, then…Swoosh! Shooting Star? Metiorite? Fireball? We didn’t know, but we said “we need to make a wish”, then we agreed how cool it was, did a high-five, then drove home as we talked a bit about meteorites. We later spoke with some friends who it also seen it. Interesting how people see things differently I saw Green and Orange she saw Orange and Blue. But the interesting thing is no matter how cool it was to see that, the best part of it was sharing it with my daughter.
Located in Santa Ana, CA. Saw the 23 October event. I already filled out a sighting report but I got my compass position wrong. When I broke out my actual compass, I saw I had seen the event more along 280 degrees west, rather than 312 or whatever I said.
My sighting almost exactly matches what user Garret Stevens posted, including the chunks coming off. Green center with an orange tail, pretty much headed straight down. I saw it for approximately three seconds (one-one-thousand, two-one-thousand, three-one-thou…)
Thanks, Universe, that was cool!
Friday night October 23, 2015 at about 10:30 PM I live high on a hill in South Pasadena, CA and we have a lot of windows facing North West when all of the sudden this bright super fast big ball flew over our heads heading North West and then about over Glendale in our view it started to slow an wobble and then exploded with a light trail fading off to the ground. It was only seconds and we knew right away it could not be a plane it was way too fast. Really cool never seen anything like it before WAY bigger and brighter than a shooting star.
I saw this same event while driving home on the 134 toward Pasadena. I thought shooting star but it was too large to be a shooting star. My husband was in the car behind me and saw the same thing. I came home and googled it but I couldn’t find any reports of this. I’m glad to know that others saw the same thing.
I saw it in Peoria, AZ October 23, 2015 around 10:30 PM.
I saw it right as I got out from a long and stressful work week. Best thing to start the weekend.
I was outside of my house on October 23rd Friday night it was about 10:30 pm and when I looked up and saw a bright blue light hurtling towards the ground. The light apperared to hit the ground somewhere west of my house
My daughter and I saw a large fireball last night, oct 24, around 9:30 heading westWe live. We live in Grover Beach Ca.
At around 10 pm PST from Stockton CA, I was walking (westward) across the street and saw the meteorite thingy coming down to my left from the south. At first I though it was a firework, but it was too big, had no sound, and lasted too long. I saw on the news days prior, that there was to be a meteor shower but heard that it was to end the night before. I’m sure it was a meteorite, noting at that instant, that I made a wish:) See my spiritual poetry-art and planet photo’s at http://www.outsideinsight.buzz and become just as awed as I was that night.
I saw it driving home from a restaurant in Whittier last Friday night. Large and ominous as it appeared to be going straight down from my vantage point.
I saw it Friday night all the way from Jacksonville, FL! I have been wondering what it was and finally came upon this website. It has to be the same thing!
Larissa and All,
The meteor you witnessed was a different object. The distances are way too far apart to be the same meteor. We receive numerous reports of fireballs each day so to have another one occur of Florida is certainly not out of the question.
Robert Lunsford
Yes it was the same object, and probably took 3 minutes to pass over so. Cal.
This was no meteor, I saw the propulsion system Electrical or Plasmatic in nature.
There is some thing some one is not telling us.
Friday Oct. 23ed, 2015 around 10:30 PM I was sitting in my living room in front of a large Picture Window talking to my husband who was sitting with his back to the Window when I saw this large bright blue green ball with a long flaming tail it was traveling from North to South, my Window is east facing. It was amazing I’ve never seen anything like this. At first I thought it was fireworks but it had no noise. My Husband kept saying “what is it, what is it” while I was staring. We know the difference between aircraft and fireworks, but this was truly different. I was so excited to find out that I’ve seen a Meteor. This was really cool! It lasted only about 3 seconds or so and I did not see it expolode because it fanashed behind the trees.
I saw it later, around 10:48, so it clearly must have been a different one.
It was very bright (yellow/white with a little orange) and it broke up after getting brighter – with three or four distinct pieces (one bigger than the rest). Lasted about 5 seconds or so. I had the windows up in my car with the music playing while driving on the highway so I couldn’t hear any sonic booms (nor did I even think to try to listen for them). I was heading east on the 118 in Los Angeles, in the Mission Hills area, and I saw it south east of my location. Its trajectory was almost straight downward with a slight southwest bias, and it looked close.
I mistakenly offered an incorrect timestamp (10:32pm) in my official fireball report, but all other details are correct.
We were camping in the hills 20 minutes East of Pismo Beach behind Lake Lopez on 10/23/15. We saw both, first one was North of us, it was green but not nearly as bright as second one. Second one was was directly West of us and it lit up the whole valley we were camping in, bright, bright green with red trails, and about 1 minute after was the huge rumble. It was one of the coolest things we have ever seen in our lives. Truly amazing.
Wow !! I’m In Valley Center and was heading north .towards the 76 freeway and I saw a huge bright red orange and yellow fireball heading east !! Was Very close to us !! The size of the sun at least !! Totally in awe .It had two tails that I believe were bluish purple .my daughter and I could actually see the flames !! Must have been an asteroid . The thing was massive .& we actually thought the mountain in front of us was going to get hit with it. Totally shocking and blew our minds . Pretty scary actually . I’m Surprised nobody has reported it hitting their farm . But we’re in a pretty remote area.we were driving down lilac rd about to turn left on lilac extension rd .
Ps , at 10 :30 pm on 23rd of October
Marc Fries data has this falling near Shandon, CA.
Fall location is actually closer to Creston, CA.
I saw an orange, slim, oval light this morning at 6:05am 11/06/2015
in Irvine California. It was moving south towards San Diego, CA
It was moving quick because if I ran to get my Iphone it would be gone.
It was the first time ever to see that shape and color moving without
a trail of smoke. Awesome!!!
I was walking the dog late evening on Falcon St in Long Beach, towards Ocean Bl. when a very brigh light was in front of me it startled me for it is something unexpected, it was going north above the ocean, not more than 5 seconds and then veered left and disspeared but left a green haze of considerable volume which took very long to dissipate…all kinds of ideas come to mind, like: are ¨they¨ spraying us? so far… there is no official explanation for this, for whatever is gonna be said? has to match to the many comments I´ve been able to read here…the time and the description
Update! The Creston meteorite recovered!
This is copied from the expeditions page for this event on my website, more to the story soon to follow.
On October 23rd 2015 at 0547 UTC a large fireball lit up the rolling hills of wine country east of Paso Robles.
The bolide stunned onlookers with a multitude of colors as it broke up into many pieces. The magnitude of the fall was so great that the spectacle was even observed several states away. Dozens of witnesses close to the ground path heard sonic booms shortly after the fireball terminated.
By the next day, the American Meteor Society had received over 120 reports. At first I was confused by what I was seeing in the data in the various AMS reports. As I sorted through a number of eye witness descriptions it was soon clear that there were two events near to one another in distance, and in time. I began to go through the reports from the larger event individually, narrowing down the area to San Luis Obispo County. Focusing on eye witness reports in this area I found one report in particular that caught my attention. The eye witness reported what sounded “like bombs falling” and the meteor had passed directly overhead. I contacted Marc Fries with the location, and suggested the fall was probably within a few miles of the eye witnesses location.
Within minutes Marc found radar returns in the area that corresponded with the time of the event.
On October 27th, my wife Anne Marie, and I arrived in the area under the returns Marc Fries had discovered. Within twenty minutes we found a stone that had hit in the middle of the road and shattered. We recovered 395.7 grams of material from the site.
The meteorite has the provisional name Creston, it is an L6 chondrite.
About 10:30 pm in late October, I was driving home on the 134 Freeway East toward Pasadena from my son’s house in Highland Park and saw this same large ball of fire falling from the sky with a tail- it disappeared within seconds. I thought I was imagining it or that it might be a test flight from JPL…My husband was driving behind me in his car and saw this too. His confirmation was comforting because I have never seen anything like this before and thought I was losing my mind.
What I seen was a very large white round light with a round ball moving around in it, it reminded me of molten metal like the color of gold when melting. from the top of the mountain in pacific palisades, i saw this coming from the south heading north about 10.000 feet up, as it passed over head i saw a blueish purple haze behind it ,and with in the haze 4 or 5 lines of what looked like electrical zig zag lines, or plasma waves,these were evenly spaced and constant not flashing or blinking. when i first saw this object coming out of the south i thought a shooting star, then i thought a meteor, then i realized i was observing a man made object flying at very fast speed, It only took 5 seconds to cover as far south as i could see to as far north as i could see. i also noticed one small red light under and behind the white light and it blinked, the round white light was huge bigger the a house even at that distance.