View at EarthSky Community Photos. | Eliot Herman captured this image on June 9, 2020. The bright streak is a fireball, or particularly bright meteor: a bit of space debris entering Earth’s atmosphere and vaporizing as it falls. The “clouds” are smoke from the Bighorn fire, which is still raging.
Eliot Herman wrote:
The fire and the fireball! Bright Earth-grazing fireball in Tucson, Arizona during Bighorn forest fire.
The ‘clouds’ to the north are really smoke form the Bighorn fire that was lit by lightning on June 5 and is still underway. The gap in the middle is the click of the camera which is under 0.5 seconds; a calculation of line flight makes this at least a 6-second transit across the field of view. This is a stack of 2 images. 2:11 a.m. A bright moon lights the smoke.
Thank you, Eliot!
See more about this meteor via the American Meteor Society
Check out Eliot Herman’s Bighorn fire images.
Read about the Bighorn fire on Inciweb.
Botton line: A bright meteor – also known as a fireball – captured in Tucson, Arizona on June 5. The “clouds” are smoke from the Bighorn fire.
Source:
https://earthsky.org/todays-image/photo-fireball-bighorn-fire-tuscon-june-2020