An exceptionally bright meteor, formally defined as outshining the planet Venus in the night sky, produced when a larger-than-usual fragment of interplanetary debris burns through the atmosphere. The brightest fireballs, called bolides, can be visible even in daylight and are sometimes accompanied by a sonic boom or visible fragmentation; a fireball that survives its fiery passage to reach the ground is recovered afterward as a meteorite.
Facts
ScaleAn especially bright fireball is called a superbolide, defined as reaching an apparent magnitude of -17 or brighter, about 51 times brighter than the full moon 1 First DescribedThe term traces back to the Roman writer Pliny the Elder, whose Natural History described two kinds of luminous sky phenomena he called lampades and bolides; the modern understanding that such objects fall to Earth from space was established by Ernst Chladni in his 1794 book 1 Identification
Distinguishing AppearanceA fireball is defined by the International Astronomical Union as a meteor that reaches an apparent magnitude of -4 or brighter, roughly as bright as the planet Venus 1 Sources
1. Wikipedia - Bolide
IAU definition section
apparent magnitude of -4 or brighter
Superbolide section
an apparent magnitude of -17 or brighter, which is about 51 times brighter than the full moon
Definitions section
An early usage occurs in Natural History, where Pliny the Elder describes two types of prodigies, "those which are called lampades and those which are called bolides".
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