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- A meteor, going northeast at 32,000 mph was spotted and filmed flying over the North Carolina coast.
- The American Meteor Society said it received 148 reports from Maryland, North Carolina, South Carolina, West Virginia and Virginia.
- More space-related news here.
More than 80 people in North Carolina reported seeing a massive fireball in the night sky over the weekend. The fireball, caused by a meteor that traveled “26 miles through Earth’s upper atmosphere,” according to NASA, was also seen in several other eastern coastal states.
Witnesses in Maryland, South Carolina, West Virginia and Virginia accounted for 148 total reports to the American Meteor Society (AMS).
NASA Meteor Watch, which called this particular meteor, “exceptionally bright,” said it was one of five fireballs reportedly seen over the United States that night.
“The largest grouping of eyewitness accounts – over 80 – is associated with an event that occurred at 7:40 p.m. Eastern Daylight Time,” NASA Meteor Watch wrote on Facebook. “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. It disintegrated 28 miles above Morehead City, after traveling 26 miles through Earth’s upper atmosphere.”
NASA also added there was “more than the usual amount of uncertainty in the trajectory solution due to all the observers being located to the west of the fireball.”
The brightest of the shooting stars was caught on video from the porch of a home in Rowland Pond, about 15 miles south of Raleigh, North Carolina.
Fireballs such as this one are meteors that appear brighter than the planet Venus, according to the AMS.
In 2013, a meteor disintegrated over the city of Chelyabinsk, Russia and caused tremendous damage to property as well as injuries to several hundred people.
In 2020, a glass dome covering a 500-kilogram fragment of that meteor spontaneously, and inexplicably, levitated on its own while on display at the Chelyabinsk Museum of South Ural history.
“We have no explanation as to who gave the command and how it happened,” said museum director Vladimir Bogdanovsky.
Fox