Story at a glance
- Dozens of people across three states reported seeing an amazing blue fireball light up the night sky Sunday morning.
- Several people reported hearing a boom that coincided with their meteor sighting.
- Thousands of fireballs occur in Earth’s atmosphere daily, but most are unnoticed as they occur over uninhabited areas.
Dozens of people across three states reported seeing an amazing blue fireball light up the night sky Sunday morning — a little more than a week after fireballs were spotted along the East Coast.
The American Meteor Society has received 67 reports from people in Colorado, Wyoming and New Mexico who witnessed the blue fireball, and 12 were caught on video.
Several people reported hearing a boom that coincided with their meteor sighting.
“So, this means this was actually descending very deep,” Chris Peterson, who works at the Cloudbait Observatory, told CBS 4. “10 or 20 miles may not seem very close to the ground, but when we think about typical burning stars, we’re seeing things that are burning up 60 to 70 miles high.”
Thousands of fireballs occur in Earth’s atmosphere daily, according to the American Meteor Society. But most occur over oceans and uninhabited regions while others are “masked by daylight.”
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NASA Meteor Watch wrote in a Facebook post last week that there were “many reports” related to fireball sightings Sept. 24. The largest number of eyewitness accounts — more than 80 — stemmed from an event that occurred around 7:40 p.m. ET on the North Carolina coast.
“An analysis of these accounts shows that the meteor skimmed the coast of North Carolina, becoming visible 48 miles above the ocean off Camp Lejeune, moving northeast at 32,000 miles per hour,” the post read.
The American Meteor Society received 173 reports of a fireball viewed the same evening over Maryland, North Carolina, South Carolina, Virginia and West Virginia.
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