Calibration of CNEOS Fireball Velocities and the Robustness of Nominally Hyperbolic Events
Abstract
The NASA/JPL CNEOS Fireball Data catalogue provides a near-global record of bright atmospheric entries but does not report per-event velocity covariance. We calibrate its kinematic accuracy using 19 events with independent reference trajectories and use optical, satellite, radar, and infrasound catalogues as source-specific controls. For nine modern high-quality comparisons, the CNEOS-minus-reference speed residual has mean -1.00 km s−1 and standard deviation 0.86 km s−1; variance decomposition assigns 0.77 km s−1 to the CNEOS component. The radiant residuals have a 0.74 degree per-axis core plus one 16.3 degree outlier, so the extreme tail remains poorly determined. Seven of 354 complete CNEOS states are nominally hyperbolic without correction. A +0.9935 km s−1 atmospheric-stage shift produces five additional crossings, but these are treated only as sensitivity cases. Polar-IM (2026 April 1) is the strongest post-2018 CNEOS anomaly, whereas independent GLM-LI stereo solutions yield 57.3 +/- 2.0 and 56.7 +/- 3.0 km s−1, close to their direction-specific parabolic thresholds. We conclude that CNEOS can identify priority candidates, but secure interstellar classification requires an independent, uncertainty-bearing three-dimensional trajectory for the same event.
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BibTeX
@misc{duran2026calibration,
title = {{Calibration of CNEOS Fireball Velocities and the Robustness of Nominally Hyperbolic Events}},
author = {Volkan Duran and Abraham Loeb},
howpublished = {arXiv},
year = {2026},
month = sep,
doi = {10.48550/arxiv.2609.06745},
eprint = {2609.06745},
archivePrefix = {arXiv},
url = {https://arxiv.org/abs/2609.06745},
note = {CC BY-SA 4.0},
}
RIS
TY - UNPB
TI - Calibration of CNEOS Fireball Velocities and the Robustness of Nominally Hyperbolic Events
AU - Volkan Duran
AU - Abraham Loeb
PY - 2026
DA - 2026/09/06
PB - arXiv
DO - 10.48550/arxiv.2609.06745
UR - https://arxiv.org/abs/2609.06745
AB - The NASA/JPL CNEOS Fireball Data catalogue provides a near-global record of bright atmospheric entries but does not report per-event velocity covariance. We calibrate its kinematic accuracy using 19 events with independent reference trajectories and use optical, satellite, radar, and infrasound catalogues as source-specific controls. For nine modern high-quality comparisons, the CNEOS-minus-reference speed residual has mean -1.00 km s^−1 and standard deviation 0.86 km s^−1; variance decomposition assigns 0.77 km s^−1 to the CNEOS component. The radiant residuals have a 0.74 degree per-axis core plus one 16.3 degree outlier, so the extreme tail remains poorly determined. Seven of 354 complete CNEOS states are nominally hyperbolic without correction. A +0.9935 km s^−1 atmospheric-stage shift produces five additional crossings, but these are treated only as sensitivity cases. Polar-IM (2026 April 1) is the strongest post-2018 CNEOS anomaly, whereas independent GLM-LI stereo solutions yield 57.3 +/- 2.0 and 56.7 +/- 3.0 km s^−1, close to their direction-specific parabolic thresholds. We conclude that CNEOS can identify priority candidates, but secure interstellar classification requires an independent, uncertainty-bearing three-dimensional trajectory for the same event.
ER -