A bright-green fireball tore across the Arizona sky in the early hours of Tuesday, lighting up the Valley with a flash so vivid that a doorbell camera near Scottsdale caught it on video. The meteor was seen early that morning near Scottsdale, and multiple local stargazers captured footage of what appeared to be a falling meteor as it streaked overhead before vanishing near the horizon.
One of those recordings came from a Reddit user going by ResidentAnnual928, who posted doorbell-camera video showing a falling flash appear above a residential street near Scottsdale and McDowell roads. According to a Scottsdale subreddit thread, the flash was spotted a little after 1 a.m., a timeline that lines up closely with footage described by Axios, which reported on the Valley sighting. Farther south, a webcam in Dragoon, southeast of Tucson, independently captured the same meteor at about 1:03 a.m., according to azcentral.com. That footage showed the object racing across the sky before appearing to flare as it moved through Earth's atmosphere, then disintegrating near the horizon.
What Made the Fireball Glow Green
A livestream from Dragoon shows the object entering the frame at precisely 1:03:43 a.m., per space.com. Astrophotographer Andrew McCarthy described it as visibly green or turquoise, with pieces breaking off as it neared the horizon, the outlet reported. The vivid green color is likely tied to elements like magnesium heating up as the meteor entered the atmosphere, azcentral.com noted, and Space.com pointed to the National Park Service's assessment that such a vivid green hue can potentially indicate a relatively high magnesium content.
The timing isn't entirely coincidental. Two meteor showers, the Orionids and the Southern Taurids, were active over Arizona around the same period, with the Orionids peaking Oct. 21-22 and the Southern Taurids peaking Nov. 4-5, according to the same azcentral.com report. Some Reddit users speculated that the meteor fell somewhere in Tonto National Forest; meteor fragments can sometimes survive the trip through the atmosphere.
Arizona Has Seen Fireballs Like This Before
Fireballs streaking over Arizona skies aren't a new phenomenon. Back on June 2, 2016, several Valley of the Sun residents witnessed a bright fireball in the early morning hours, with reports describing a flash around 4 a.m. that woke some people with a loud bang, according to Arizona State University's Center for Meteorite Studies. Laurence Garvie, the center's meteorite curator, said at the time that the event could have been a single meteor burning up as it entered Earth's atmosphere, and radar footage suggested meteorites may have fallen near the community of Cibecue in eastern Arizona.
For now, the Dragoon webcam footage and the Scottsdale doorbell-camera video stand as the clearest public record of Tuesday's fireball.
