The Peekskill Fireball, 9 October 1992: The Meteor That Hit a Car
On a Friday evening in October 1992 a fireball crossed several eastern states while football crowds filmed it, then a 12 kg stone punched through the trunk of a parked Chevrolet in Peekskill, New York. It became the best-filmed meteorite fall of its time.
Sources Brown et al., Nature 367 (1994) 624–626, doi 10.1038/367624a0; Ceplecha et al., Meteoritics & Planetary Science 31 (1996), PubMed 11539206; Nature 367 (1994) 596, “Star of the small screen,” doi 10.1038/367596a0; Meteoritical Bulletin Database, entry “Peekskill”
Friday evening, 9 October 1992. Across the eastern United States, parents and boosters had camcorders pointed at high-school football fields. A greenish fireball crossed the sky above them, flaring and breaking apart as it went. Minutes later in Peekskill, New York, a stone of roughly 12 kilograms came down through the trunk of a parked 1980 Chevrolet Malibu and stopped beneath it, still warm enough to be noticed.
What the record shows
The fall is one of the best-documented in history because of those camcorders. In 1994 a team led by Peter Brown published fourteen independent video recordings in Nature and used them to triangulate the fireball’s path through the atmosphere and its orbit before it reached Earth. Nature ran a companion news piece under the fitting headline “Star of the small screen.” A longer 1996 paper by Ceplecha and colleagues in Meteoritics & Planetary Science worked through the fragmentation sequence frame by frame.
The rock itself is ordinary in the technical sense: an H6 chondrite, the most common family of stony meteorite. What made it famous was the combination of a recovered stone, a measured orbit, and a dented car.
What is not mysterious
Nothing here is anomalous. It’s an example of how a real fall looks when it is witnessed well: many observers in different places, a clear path, a delayed recovery, and lab classification. We include it in the October Ledger as a benchmark. When a modern “UFO over the stadium” clip turns up, Peekskill is what a genuine bright meteor on video looks like.
Ledger status
Marked cited. Multiple peer-reviewed sources agree on the date, the mass, the classification and the car. No map pin: the impact site was a private driveway, and this file gives no “go look” location for fragments.
Sources
- Brown, P., Ceplecha, Z., Hawkes, R. L., et al. (1994). “The orbit and atmospheric trajectory of the Peekskill meteorite from video records.” Nature 367, 624–626. doi:10.1038/367624a0 · ADS abstract
- “Star of the small screen.” Nature 367, 596 (1994). doi:10.1038/367596a0
- Ceplecha, Z., et al. (1996). “Video observations, atmospheric path, orbit and fragmentation record of the fall of the Peekskill meteorite.” Meteoritics & Planetary Science 31. PubMed 11539206
- Meteoritical Bulletin Database, entry “Peekskill.” lpi.usra.edu
Part of the October Ledger. Original text; no images are used.
Evidence ledger
Each claim in this file, the source it rests on, and how well it holds up: 5 corroborated. What the labels mean.
| Claim | Source | Type · date | Status |
|---|---|---|---|
| A bright fireball crossed the eastern United States on the evening of 9 Oct 1992 and dropped a meteorite at Peekskill, New York. | Brown et al., Nature 367 (1994); Meteoritical Bulletin Database, “Peekskill” | scholarly · 1994 | corroborated |
| The recovered stone weighed about 12.4 kg and struck a parked 1980 Chevrolet Malibu. | Ceplecha et al., MAPS 31 (1996), abstract (PubMed 11539206); Meteoritical Bulletin Database | scholarly · 1996 | corroborated |
| The meteorite is an H6 ordinary chondrite (monomict breccia). | Ceplecha et al., MAPS 31 (1996), abstract | scholarly · 1996 | corroborated |
| Fourteen independent amateur video recordings let researchers reconstruct the atmospheric path and the pre-impact orbit.Most of the footage came from people filming high-school football games. | Brown et al., Nature 367 (1994) 624 | scholarly · 1994 | corroborated |
| The meteoroid broke into many pieces in flight, but only one main mass was recovered.Fragmentation is seen in the video; other fragments' fate is unknown. This file gives no search location. | Ceplecha et al., MAPS 31 (1996) | scholarly · 1996 | corroborated |
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