(Reuters) – (This February 6th story has been refiled to correct location of Lisle to west of Chicago in paragraph three.)
A meteor plummeted in a fireball over Lake Michigan early on Monday, lighting up the night sky in bright blue just before scattering over the lake in many pieces, according to a police video and an expert’s description.
Lisle, Illinois, police officer Jim Dexter recorded the meteor’s descent on the dash camera of his patrol car at 1:25 a.m.
Aside from Lisle, which is less than 30 miles (48 km) west of Chicago, and other parts of Illinois; witnesses reported seeing the meteor from Wisconsin, Michigan and as far away as New York state and the Canadian province of Ontario, according to a description on the website of the American Meteor Society.
The meteor’s fiery descent is likely to rank as one of the most spectacular events of its kind anywhere in the world this year, Mike Hankey, operations manager for the society, said by telephone.
The meteor broke apart into pieces of rock and metallic dust that descended in a cloud onto Lake Michigan, Hankey said. No one is reported to have been injured by debris, he said.
(Reporting by Alex Dobuzinskis in Los Angeles; Editing by Sandra Maler)
Tonight, tiny sand sized bits of debris and dust from the Temple-Tuttle comet will pass the earth, fall through it’s atmosphere and ignite. This show, called the Leonid Meteor Shower fills the sky every November and features up to a dozen meteors seen an hour.
The Leonids appear to be coming from the constellation Leo the Lion (hence their name) in the east, but they should be visible all the way across the sky. Leonids strike the Earth’s atmosphere at a zipping 158,000 mph, the fastest of any meteor shower.
Skywatching experts say that the best time to see the annual mid-November show will be between midnight and dawn.
As always, the best place to watch is said to be away from city light, preferably in a rural location with little light pollution. Since the eye can take up to 45 minutes to adapt to the dark, USA Today advises skywatchers to be patient so that the falling stars become brighter to them as the night wears on.
According to NASA, the waning crescent moon should leave skies dark enough for a decent show.
A meteor that NASA estimates hit the atmosphere at 45,000 miles per hour lit up the Pennsylvania sky Tuesday morning.
The meteor broke up over Kittanning and Brendan Mullen of the Carnegie Science Center said the rock was close to 500 pounds when it blew apart.
“Usually, the whole thing burns up, and that’s what causes shooting stars and things like that. But it’s possible that pieces of this meteor fragmented off, and shattered and scattered all across Kittanning,” he said.
Mullen speculated the asteroid came from the belt that circles the solar system.
“A lot of chunks of space rocks and debris are gravitationally tugged out of their orbit within that ring up there, and find their way into the atmospheres of planets,” Mullen said.
“There’s a lot of meteoroids out there, a lot of space garbage,” Mullen told CBS Pittsburgh. “And a lot of it gets tugged around gravitationally by the planets. And sometimes they get tugged into orbits that intersect the orbits of the planets, like earth.”
Witnesses across the eastern part of the U.S. and in western Japan both reported seeing fireballs in the sky on Monday night.
NASA says reports of the meteor have been registered from South Carolina to Chicago.
Most of the reports describe the meteor as “greenish to white” colored as it crossed the sky. The reports covered over an hour between the initial reports on the east coast and the times the fireball was spotted in the Chicago area sky.
The American Meteor Society said they are investigating over 200 reports connected to the meteor and that no one has reported any impact from the sight.
Meanwhile, in western Japan, witnesses say a “fireball” roared across the sky Monday night. Various security cameras were able to capture what appears to be a strong green light or a faint orange light tracking across the sky.
Scientists say any fragments from that meteor would have ended up in the sea.
A fireball was spotted flying across the skies of western New York and Ontario, Canada.
The object was caught on dashboard cameras of drivers throughout the region. A streaking object as bright as the sun is seen flying around 4:16 p.m. Sunday afternoon.
The American Meteor Society is looking into the available footage.
Witnesses say that a large boom accompanied the object. There has been no impact zone found so if it was a meteor it did not make it to the planet’s surface.
The Eta Aquarid meteor shower happened on Monday. The meteor shower happens around the same time every year according to NASA.
A fireball raced across the sky over the Midwest with reports of sightings coming in from at least four states.
The National Weather Service is investigating the more than 700 reports of the meteor and multiple videos of a bright object roaring across the sky. The city of North Liberty, Iowa caught the object on a traffic camera clearly showing its path across the horizon.
Witnesses described the light as a green ball that was as bright as the sun along with sonic booms and other sounds attributed to meteors.
The American Meteor Society said this event was the 3rd most reported cosmic event in the history of the AMS online reporting system.
Some scientists, however, are launching their own investigation, claiming that because of the size, brightness and color of the object, that it was not a meteor but a piece of space debris that entered the atmosphere.
The National Weather Service said because it’s not a weather related item, they may not issue a formal report.
The large object flying through the sky in Tucson Arizona on Tuesday night wasn’t a bird, a plane or Superman.
A large meteor raced across the evening sky causing a sonic boom that shook up residents during dinner. Residents said the boom caused items on shelves to shake and NASA scientists said the meteor was an example of the “sporadic background” meteors that fly through the atmosphere daily.
Scientists did hail the timing of the large meteor because the annual Geminid meteor showers were scheduled to begin tonight. The meteor Tuesday night was identified as not being part of the Geminid meteors because it only moved at 45,000 miles per hour compared to a Geminid’s 78,000 miles per hour.
NASA estimates the meteor was at least 100 pounds and about 16 inches thick to cause the bright flash as it burned up in the atmosphere.
A homeowner who thought that a rafter in his roof had broken was shocked to discover a meteorite had smashed into his home.
“It sounded like a gunshot but it was a louder bang,” Larry Beck told local TV reporters. “We looked up and saw the ceiling coming down and it broke away the sheet rock in the dining room.” Continue reading →
What appears to be a meteor flash turned the nighttime skies over Argentina as bright as day on Sunday. Amateur video shows the green streak and flash in the background of a concert setting.
