Mark K.
Video shows a fireball streaking across Northford, Connecticut, during the day on Tuesday.
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A meteor bright enough to be seen during the day streaked across the sky Tuesday morning, drawing the attention of several people on the East Coast who recorded their sightings.
According to Bill Cooke, director of NASA’s Meteoroid Environment Office, the fireball, defined as a meteor brighter than the planet Venus, soared over New York City before traveling a short distance southwest and dissipating about 30 miles (50 kilometers) above Mountainside, New Jersey.
The meteor was likely about 1 foot (0.3 meters) in diameter, which would make the rock bright enough to see during the day, Cooke said. It’s rarer to see a meteor of this size than it is to see the smaller particles, a few millimeters (less than an inch) in size, that you normally see in the night sky.
The American Meteor Society received more than 40 reports of a fireball sighting around 11:15 a.m. ET over New York, New Jersey, Connecticut and several other states in the northeastern U.S. The society confirmed that two videos submitted to AMS contained footage of the fireball. One clip came from a home security camera in Wayne, New Jersey, and the other from a special meteor camera system in Northford, Connecticut.
At the same time that witnesses reported seeing the fireball, several other onlookers reported hearing a loud noise and shaking in the area. A meteor can make an explosive sound as the rock breaks into smaller pieces, creating a “pressure wave,” Cooke said.
This type of rupture could also have caused the ground to shake. But NASA could not confirm whether the meteor’s appearance was related to these two events, as infrasound detectors used to pick up low-frequency sound in the area were oversaturated by military activity taking place to the south at the same time, he added.
According to Robert Lunsford, coordinator of the American Meteor Society’s fireball report, a meteor can also travel fast enough to cause a sonic boom if fragments survive Earth’s atmosphere and reach the lower layers.
“When sounds of a fireball are heard, it indicates that some fragments have survived into the lower atmosphere and may have left small remnants of the original fireball on the ground. These remnants travel much faster than the speed of sound,” Lunsford said in an email.
However, according to Cooke, this fireball likely did not create meteorites (the term for a meteoroid that hits the ground), as the meteorite disintegrated in the sky due to its size and speed.
The last fireball seen over the area during the day was about a year and a half ago, Cooke said.
“You’re looking at an event that might only happen once a year,” but the timing of the fireball was ideal to attract a lot of attention, he added. “People were out walking, taking their lunch break, and all of a sudden this streak flashes across the sky — it was in the right place at the right time.”
If skywatchers are looking for more fireballs, there are several meteor showers that will peak in the coming weeks. The Southern Delta Aquariids could produce 20 meteors per hour in late July, and the Perseids could produce more than 100 meteors per hour in mid-August, according to the American Meteor Society.