Near-Earth objects and close calls

[Gawan]

Looks like a meteorite from the Houston event crashed into someone's house.

View attachment 117286

That's then a second event in a fairly short time when a meteor hit a roof. At the beginning of March in Germany and now in the US. Recently when I was out at night in Germany last week, I also suddenly saw a considerable flash, but no sonic boom was heard. The sky was almost cloudless, and no thunderstorm was near.

 

[unkl brws]

I just saw this on the American Meteor Society FB page today about a large fireball over California.

Over 200 eye-witnesses reported a large fireball with booms over central California. All signs point to another meteorite fall. That's the 3rd one in 6 days counting Houston TX and Ohio last week.
https://fireball.amsmeteors.org/.../imo_view/event/2026/2016
The fireball was captured on an AllSky7 station hosted by Peter Jenniskens and Jim Albers in Mountain View CA.

 

[Olivierlejardinier]

It sure looks busy up there.

Here is our second reported meteor of the evening which fell around 9:31 pm EDT here on 3/23/26. This meteor fell from south to north towards central Michigan, as captured looking north from both our Jan's Professional Dry Cleaners, Inc camera in Frankenmuth, and our A & S Garage Llc camera in Dundee.

https://twitter.com/x/status/2036280061121179986

In the post description, Grok reports a link between recent fireballs and the dust trail of comet 3I/ATLAS:

This sighting aligns with elevated meteor activity in March 2026, driven by Earth passing through the dust trail of interstellar comet 3I/ATLAS, which peaked near Earth in December 2025 and has produced fireballs across the US, including Ohio (March 17, 7-ton event with sonic booms) and Texas.

Upon asking more about this:

We don't have a definitive, peer-reviewed confirmation yet specifically tying this March 23, 2026, Michigan fireball.
.../...
Earth is currently crossing that exact path: In March 2026, Earth's position in its orbit places it where models predict we should encounter lingering dust from 3I/ATLAS's 2025 passage (roughly 4–6 months after the comet's perihelion and close approach). This is the same principle behind annual meteor showers (e.g., Perseids from comet Swift-Tuttle), except this is a one-time, non-repeating "stream" from a hyperbolic interstellar visitor. Multiple observers and amateur analysts have noted the timing coincidence with the recent uptick in bright fireballs across the U.S.

 

[Gaby]

In the post description, Grok reports a link between recent fireballs and the dust trail of comet 3I/ATLAS:

If you see where comet 3IAtlas is right now and the size of it, nobody with two neurons firing will claim the above. It's IDIOTIC. It doesn't have the gravitational pull to put up this show, and it's so far away it may as well be on the other side of the Universe. Obviously, since people don't even know basics nor the distances involved, they can be lead to believe anything.

That is the kind of nonsense the Stephan Burns was saying. In Spanish we call this "verguenza ajena". That is, I feel the shame that he should have felt in making that claim. You just have to avoid thinking with a hammer and you're a candidate for cointelpro. Like I said here about the above claim: That just makes him look very dumb, discrediting his work. He should be more discerning! Comet 3I/Atlas is way out there in Jupiter. You can check out this database, adjusting for distance and orbit.

I see the self- calming narrative though. A cluster of comets can be explained away easily by "this comet 3I Atlas who is a rare thing and will never come back in our lifetime". Comet 3I Atlas is just a sign, or a part of a larger group.

3IAtlas is 8 km according to the Cs, 4 to 6 km according to mainstream sources. Some of the new moons detected in Jupiter and Saturn are even bigger.

 

[dennis]

Report from American Meteorological Society just recently released. More reports with sonic booms collected recently.

The first quarter of 2026 has produced what appears to be a significant surge in large fireball events. The data, drawn from the AMS database going back to 2011, shows a pattern that warrants serious investigation. Here is what the numbers say, what they don’t say, and what we need to find out.
...
Anthelion concentration. The Anthelion sporadic source—the region of the sky opposite the Sun, centered near RA 150–200°, Dec -5° to +20° during Q1—is the dominant source of sporadic fireballs in every year. But in 2026, activity from this region has approximately doubled. Fourteen events fall in this tight zone in 2026, compared to 1–6 in prior years. The density of 9.6 events per 1,000 square degrees is twice the previous maximum. This cluster includes several of the quarter’s largest events, including the March 11 France fireball (236 reports), the March 9 East Coast event (282 reports), and the March 10 France event (145 reports).
...
This is not evidence of an impact threat. The objects involved range from pebble-sized to a few meters across and are part of the normal continuum of material that Earth encounters. None posed a danger beyond localized effects (sonic booms, the rare roof strike in Houston).

What this is, is a measurable change in the AMS fireball data that we do not yet fully understand. After years of stable baseline activity, something appears to have shifted in Q1 2026, and the signal is consistent across multiple metrics: witness counts, sonic boom rates, long-duration sighting volume, and the distribution of event sizes. Whether this reflects a genuine change in the near-Earth meteoroid environment, an amplification of reporting through AI and social media, or some combination of both—we cannot yet say definitively. What we can say is that the question deserves both public awareness and scientific attention.

Q1 2026: Has Something Changed in the Near-Earth Fireball Environment? — American Meteor Society

 

[dennis]

Correction to my above post, American Meteor Society is the organization mentioned
Sorry

 

[Vulcan59]

Report from American Meteorological Society just recently released. More reports with sonic booms collected recently.

SOTT has a similar article.

Earth is facing an unexplained surge of massive, booming daytime fireballs in early 2026

 

[Gaby]

I'm not making this stuff up, it actually comes from mainstream news:

Early data from Vera C. Rubin Observatory reveals over 11,000 new asteroids

A model of the inner solar system showing the asteroids discovered by Rubin in light teal. Known asteroids are dark blue. Credit: NSF–DOE Vera C. Rubin Observatory / NOIRLab / SLAC / AURA/ R. Proctor. Acknowledgements: Star map: NASA / Goddard Space Flight Center Scientific Visualization Studio. Gaia DR2: ESA/Gaia/DPAC. Image Processing: M. Zamani (NSF NOIRLab)

Using preliminary data from the Vera C. Rubin Observatory, scientists have discovered over 11,000 new asteroids. The data were confirmed by the International Astronomical Union's Minor Planet Center (MPC), making this the largest single batch of asteroid discoveries submitted in the past year. The discoveries were made using data from Rubin's early optimization surveys and offer a powerful preview of the observatory's transformative impact on solar system science.

The submission to MPC comprises approximately one million observations, taken over the span of a month and a half, of over 11,000 new asteroids and more than 80,000 already-known asteroids, including some that had previously been observed but were later "lost" because their orbits were too uncertain to predict their future locations. You can interact with all of Rubin's asteroid discoveries in the Rubin Orbitviewer, which uses real data to provide an intuitive way to explore the structure of our cosmic backyard in three dimensions and in real time.

"This first large submission after Rubin First Look is just the tip of the iceberg and shows that the observatory is ready," says Mario Juric, faculty at the University of Washington and Rubin Solar System Lead Scientist. "What used to take years or decades to discover, Rubin will unearth in months. We are beginning to deliver on Rubin's promise to fundamentally reshape our inventory of the solar system and open the door to discoveries we haven't yet imagined."

Among the newly identified objects are 33 previously unknown near-Earth objects (NEOs), which are small asteroids and comets whose closest approach to the sun is less than 1.3 times the distance between Earth and the sun. None of the newly discovered NEOs pose a threat to Earth, and the largest is about 500 meters wide. Objects larger than 140 meters are closely tracked as they could cause significant regional damage if they impact, yet scientists estimate that only about 40% of these mid-sized NEOs have been identified so far.

Once operating fully in survey mode, Rubin is expected to reveal an additional nearly 90,000 new NEOs, some of which may be potentially hazardous, and to nearly double the number of known NEOs larger than 140 meters to around 70%. By enabling early detection and continuous monitoring of these objects, Rubin will be a powerful tool for planetary defense.

The dataset also contains roughly 380 trans-Neptunian objects (TNOs)—icy bodies orbiting beyond Neptune. Two of the newly discovered TNOs—provisionally named 2025 LS2 and 2025 MX348—have been found to be in extremely large and elongated (stretched out) orbits. At their most distant points, these two objects reach roughly 1,000 times farther away from the sun than the Earth is, placing them among the 30 most distant minor planets known.

Here they are again, those super elongated orbits, a signature of their origin out of the solar system.

The discoveries were enabled by Rubin Observatory's unique combination of a large mirror, the world's most powerful astronomical digital camera, and highly sophisticated, software-driven pipelines designed to detect faint, fast-moving objects against a crowded sky. Rubin can survey the southern sky at roughly six times the sensitivity of most current asteroid searches, allowing it to detect smaller and more distant objects than ever before. These capabilities will allow Rubin to build the most detailed census of our solar system ever, and all of the discoveries will help scientists work out the story of the solar system's history.

"Rubin's unique observing cadence required a whole new software architecture for asteroid discovery," says Ari Heinze, University of Washington, who, together with Jacob Kurlander, a graduate student at the University of Washington, built the software that detected them.

"We built it, and it works. Even with just early, engineering-quality data, Rubin discovered 11,000 asteroids and measured more precise orbits for tens of thousands more. It seems pretty clear this observatory will revolutionize our knowledge of the asteroid belt."

Particularly striking is the rapid growth of the TNO population. The 380 candidates discovered by Rubin in less than two months add to the 5000 discovered over the past three decades. As with less distant asteroids, finding the TNOs depended critically on developing new sophisticated algorithms.

"Searching for a TNO is like searching for a needle in a field of haystacks—out of millions of flickering sources in the sky, teaching a computer to sift through billions of combinations and identify those that are likely to be distant worlds in our solar system required novel algorithmic approaches," says Matthew Holman, a Senior Astrophysicist at the Center for Astrophysics | Harvard & Smithsonian and former Director of the Minor Planet Center, who spearheaded the work on the TNO discovery pipeline.

"Objects like these offer a tantalizing probe of the solar system's outermost reaches, from telling us how the planets moved early on in the solar system's history, to whether a hitherto undiscovered ninth large planet may still be out there," says Kevin Napier, a research scientist at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics, who—with Holman—developed the algorithms to detect distant solar system objects with Rubin data.

Don't worry, the so called "ninth large planet" is on its way out already. Technology arrived too late to the party.

The MPC's verification of this large group of discoveries enables the entire global community to access the data, refine orbits, and begin analysis immediately. These 11,000 asteroids are just the start. Once the decade-long Legacy Survey of Space and Time (LSST) begins later this year, scientists expect Rubin to discover this many asteroids every two to three nights during the early years of the survey. This will ultimately triple the number of known asteroids and increase the number of known TNOs by nearly an order of magnitude.

Famous last words. You ain't seen nothing yet!

Distribution of new asteroids discovered by NSF–DOE Rubin Observatory. Credit: NSF–DOE Vera C. Rubin Observatory / NOIRLab / SLAC / AURA. Acknowledgement: PI: Mario Juric (University of Washington)

Asteroids discovered by NSF–DOE Rubin Observatory infographic. Credit: NSF–DOE Vera C. Rubin Observatory/NOIRLab/SLAC/AURA/R. Proctor. Acknowledgements: Star map: NASA / Goddard Space Flight Center Scientific Visualization Studio. Gaia DR2: ESA / Gaia / DPAC. Image Processing: M. Zamani (NSF NOIRLab)