On the night of 17 September, the StAnD all-sky camera toolkit installed at a school in Nice, in the south of France, detected a fireball!
The StAnD camera produced this series of images clearly showing this great ball of fire:
So what is the difference between a fireball and a meteor? A fireball is in fact a particularly bright meteor, shining brighter than anything else in the sky, apart from the moon, for its brief passage. Fireballs, often called bolides, have a visual magnitude of -3* or brighter when seen at the observer’s zenith. Objects that cause a fireball event may be larger than one meter in size.
Watch out for more of these sightings in the future, and stay tuned to access the data from these cameras very soon.
*The International Astronomical Union defines visual (or apparent) magnitude as how bright a celestial body appears to an observer. The full Moon has a magnitude of -12.7, while Venus’ magnitude ranges from -3.0 to -4.6 depending on its phase and distance from Earth.