Fireball seen in the skies over New Jersey and mid-Atlantic: details of the meteor
A blazing fireball flew Sunday night across the mid-Atlantic region of the United States, startling hundreds of eyewitnesses who reported sightings to the American Meteor Society.
The meteor likely first became visible around 9:20 p.m. local time 47 miles above Forest Hill, Maryland, as it headed northwest across the sky at 36,000 miles per hour, according to the NASA Meteor Facebook page.
The meteor, which was bright enough for NASA to refer to as a fireball, eventually disintegrated 22 miles above Pennsylvania in Gnatstown, a town south of Harrisburg.
Hundreds have reported seeing them
During its short journey, the space rock attained a quarter-moon brightness, captivating people around the region who pulled out their phones to snap pictures of the object as it traveled just over 55 miles through the atmosphere.
According to NASA, hundreds have reported sightings of the object to the American Meteorite Society, which encourages witnesses to post reports of meteorites on its website.
“This was the most impressive fireball I have ever seen in my entire life,” a 62-year-old man from Pennsylvania wrote in his report.
A fireball that captivates people on social media
Many others expressed similar amazement on social media.
Videos from cellphones and doorbell surveillance cameras shared online showed a fireball lighting up the night sky with a green glow and what appeared to be a tail.
Justin Burke, a Baltimore-based meteorologist, shared a set of videos to X, formerly Twitter. In one of the videos, a woman can be heard shouting, “What is this?!”, to which a man replies, “I don’t know, but I get it!”
What are fireballs?
Fireballs are larger and brighter than regular meteors, which is why they can be easily spotted from Earth, according to NASA.
For example, one such object was spotted last week zipping across the Colorado night sky, surprising many people who reported seeing it.
Objects that cause fireballs are not usually large enough to survive passing through Earth’s atmosphere, although fragments or meteorites are sometimes found on Earth. In this case, NASA said the data indicated that the object that produced the meteorite was a small fragment of an asteroid 6 inches or so in diameter, likely originating in the asteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter.
Eric Lagata covers breaking and trending news for USA TODAY. Contact him at elagatta@gannett.com.
