Mark K.
Video still captures a rare daytime fireball that moved over Northford, Connecticut on Tuesday.
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A meteor bright enough to be seen in broad daylight streaked across the sky Tuesday morning, catching the attention of several East Coasters who documented their sightings.
The fireball, defined as a meteor brighter than the planet Venus, is estimated to have soared over New York City before taking a short path to the southwest and disintegrating about 50 kilometers above Mountainside, New Jersey, NASA chief Bill Cooke said. Office of the Meteoroid Environment.
The meteor was probably about 1 foot (0.3 meters) in diameter, which would have made the rock bright enough to be seen during the day, Cooke said. Observing a meteor of this size is rarer than observing the smaller particles of a few millimeters (less than one inch) in size that are typically seen in the night sky.
The American Meteor Society received over 40 reports of fireball sightings around 11:15 a.m. ET over New York, New Jersey, Connecticut and several other states in the northeastern US. The company confirmed that two videos posted by AMS contained footage of the fireball. One clip came from a home security camera in Wayne, New Jersey, and the other from a special weather camera system located in Northford, Connecticut.
During the same time, eyewitnesses reported seeing a fireball, several other viewers reported a loud noise as well as tremors in the area. A meteor can make an explosive sound when the rock breaks into smaller pieces, creating a “pressure wave,” Cooke said.
This type of fission could also cause earthquakes. However, NASA cannot confirm whether the meteor sighting was related to the two events because the infrasound detectors used to pick up low-frequency sound in the area were overwhelmed by military activity taking place in the south at the same time, he added.
It’s also possible for the meteor to be moving fast enough to produce a sonic boom if the fragments survive entry into Earth’s atmosphere and reach the lower layers, said Robert Lunsford, fireball news coordinator for the American Meteor Society.
“When the sounds from the fireball are heard, it means that some fragments survived into the lower atmosphere and may have left small remnants of the original fireball on the ground. These debris are moving much faster than the speed of sound,” Lunsford said in an email.
However, this fireball probably did not produce any meteorites, which is the term for a meteoroid that reaches the ground because it broke up in the sky due to its size and speed, Cooke said.
The last fireball reported in daylight over the area was about a year and a half ago, Cooke said.
“You’re looking at maybe a once-a-year event,” but the timing of the fireball was perfect to generate a lot of attention, he added. “People were out walking, doing their daily lunchtime things, and all of a sudden this streak flashed across the sky – it was in the right place at the right time.”
If sky watchers want to catch more flashes of fireballs, several meteor showers will peak over the next few weeks. The Aquarids in the South Delta could offer sightings of 20 meteors per hour in late July, and the Perseids could bring up to 100 meteors per hour in mid-August, according to the American Meteor Society.