Detection of meteoroid impacts by the Geostationary Lightning Mapper on the GOES‐16 satellite

Abstract

Bolides are detected by the Geostationary Lightning Mapper onboard the GOES‐16 weather satellite, which takes images of Earth at a rate of 500 Hz in a 1.1 nm wide pass band centered on 777.4 nm wavelength. Ten case studies are discussed. These initial results were obtained using the Level 0 data received during the nonoperational in‐orbit postlaunch test period. GLM positions and timings are sufficiently accurate to assist in trajectory and orbit reconstruction. GLM samples the light curve nearly completely, unaffected by onboard and downlink processes tailored to lightning data. Sufficient data on the instantaneous background scene are provided to reconstruct the baseline drift in the brightest pixels. The agreement to within a factor of 2–3 between measured total radiated energy from GLM and that derived from other space‐borne observations implies that during the bolide's peak brightness the GLM pass band is dominated by continuum emission, rather than O I line emission. The reported flux is corrected for angle‐from‐nadir shifts in the central wavelength of the pass band, which overestimates continuum flux by only up to 20% for most of the GLM field of view, but more so if the bolide is observed far from nadir. Assuming a 6000 K blackbody spectrum, GLM is able to detect bolides with peak visual magnitude (at a normalized 100 km distance) brighter than about −14 in nighttime, and slightly brighter in daytime.

Meteorological Imagery for the Geostationary Lightning Mapper

“…As with many geophysical measurements, signals produced by one phenomenon (here, lightning) can be produced by other physical phenomena. For example, GLM has also detected meteorite bolides (Jenniskens et al, 2018;Rumpf et al, 2019), and these are preserved by the processing method in this study.…”

The Sariçiçek howardite fall in Turkey: Source crater of HED meteorites on Vesta and impact risk of Vestoids

“…Large errors in USG‐detected fireball directions were recently reported (Jenniskens et al. ). The pre‐entry velocity vector of Sariçiçek in ECF coordinates was given initially as VX = 5.1 km s −1 , VY = −6.3 km s −1 , VZ = −16.0 km s −1 , corresponding to a 17.9 km s −1 entry speed (Fig.…”

Initial Geostationary Lightning Mapper Observations

“…The GLM presents exciting new possibilities, with countless new applications likely over the coming decades. An unforeseen application showed that the GLM also detects bolides (or fireballs) as they enter the Earth atmosphere (Jenniskens et al, ). These observations motivated the authors to envision GLM use for automated bolide detection.…”