Back in time
Open the live mapFireballs since 1988
Bright meteors that broke up in the atmosphere, as NASA’s Center for Near Earth Object Studies lists them from 1988, each placed where it was seen to explode.
What you see
- Each fireball as a natural-hazard mark where it burst, all at one size.
- Click one for its impact energy in kilotons, the energy it radiated, its altitude and its speed.
- Opened from this page, the map plays 1988 to today.
Where the data comes from
- CNEOSNASA JPL’s Center for Near Earth Object Studies: fireball and bolide reports from US government sensors.
CNEOS adds fireballs as they are reported, often weeks later; TAKIP takes them when the set is imported again.
Good to know
- Only fireballs the sensors caught and CNEOS lists with a place; most meteors are far smaller.
- About half burst over the sea or far from any town.
- The largest by far is Chelyabinsk’s, in February 2013, at about 440 kilotons; about one in eight reaches a kiloton.
Goes well with
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The world through historyAn interactive historical atlas: the world’s borders year by year from 3400 BCE, with wars, battles and other events from 7500 BCE, on a 3D globe.
The Sun, Moon and planetsThe Sun, Moon, planets and brightest stars in their true places around a live 3D globe, from NASA JPL Horizons and the Yale Bright Star Catalogue.The world through historyAn interactive historical atlas: the world’s borders year by year from 3400 BCE, with wars, battles and other events from 7500 BCE, on a 3D globe.