Park Forest Meteor Estimated Entry Path

 

 

Below, I’ve created some images showing what I estimate the entry path of the March 26, 2003 Park Forest meteor was.  I determined this path based on my own personal observation, as well as that of my wife who was at home at  the time the meteor appeared, as well as from a video of the meteor from a Michigan city called South Haven.  I used some mapping software to correlate the 3 locations and that along with the angle of the meteor had when I saw it led me to conclude that the entry path was as shown below.  The images below were obtained from Earth and Moon Viewer, for the date and time that the meteor appeared, and I inserted the red lines to indicate the path I believe the object took.

 

There are 2 views:

 

 

 

And:

 

 

 

Disclaimer:  I’m not well versed in meteor physics or orbital mechanics, so my estimation of the entry path might be completely wrong.  However, based upon the above information and the fact that the meteor reports came from the local Midwest area and not over a larger expanse of the country, I believe the path above will be a reasonable approximation of the actual entry path. Thanks for viewing.