American Meteor Society
Over 185 reports from 3 countries
The AMS and its international partner the International Meteor Organization (IMO) received more than 185 reports so far about a fireball event that occurred over Cyprus on January 21st, 2020 around 20:06 UT (22:06 Eastern European Time). The AMS #2020-485 event was mainly seen from the island of Cyprus in the Eastern Mediterranean but we also received reports from Lebanon (from Beirut) and Israel (from Rakefet and I’billin).
Submit an Official Fireball Report
If you want to learn more about Fireballs: read our Fireball FAQ.
Trajectory, Velocity and Energy
The preliminary trajectory computed based on all the reports submitted to the AMS and the IMO so far shows that the fireball was travelling from North East to South West and ended its flight somewhere over the Mediterranean Sea (South of Cyprus). NASA’s CNEOS (Center for Near Earth Object Studies) later confirmed the location of the event and was able to calculate a source energy of about 100t of TNT as well as a velocity of 27.4 km/s.
Many witnesses sent us videos of the event. All of them are visible on the corresponding event page.
Fireball, Meteorite…?
Several thousand meteors of fireball magnitude occur in the Earth’s atmosphere each day. The vast majority of these, however, occur over the oceans and uninhabited regions, and a good many are masked by daylight. Those that occur at night also stand little chance of being detected due to the relatively low numbers of persons out to notice them.
Additionally, the brighter the fireball, the more rare is the event. As a general thumb rule, there are only about 1/3 as many fireballs present for each successively brighter magnitude class, following an exponential decrease. Experienced observers can expect to see only about 1 fireball of magnitude -6 or better for every 200 hours of meteor observing, while a fireball of magnitude -4 can be expected about once every 20 hours or so.
Last night I was sitting on the couch and noticed a bright light out of the corner of my eye. We live on a lake and occasionally see a meteorite, this was different, It appeared for maybe 3 seconds as it completed it’s trajectory. It was a very bright white light and when it finished it seemed to explode and I saw light green light being emitted and then it was gone. Also, the width of the meteorite was much larger than other ones I have seen. Pretty cool. It was January 6, 2021 and approx 9:30 at night. I believe it was a fireball.
I reported a fire ball that was for about 4-5 seconds in sight on 1-22-2020 and I guessed the time and never was able to report I could of guessed wrong by a couple hours maybe so I wanted to update my report if that’s important ok. My name is Thomas Cawley and it was I am sure after it was dark outside and I was living in Hammonton N.J. On NewYork Ave was my location if that helps with location of my report and I called the next day after googling meteor sightings