A bright fireball spotted streaking across the sky over southeastern Texas on Saturday has been confirmed as a meteor, NASA announced, releasing a new strewn-field map showing where fragments may have landed after the object broke apart.<\/p>\n
The event, which occurred<\/a> at 4:40 p.m. local time, was widely reported, with eyewitnesses spotting<\/a> it from as far away as Dallas-Fort Worth, Austin, and Rockport. The event was also caught on video<\/a>. Multiple weather radars captured signatures of falling meteorites for about eight minutes after the meteor fragmented.<\/p>\n According to NASA, the meteoroid weighed about a ton and measured roughly three feet across before entering the atmosphere. <\/p>\n It first became visible<\/a> at 49 miles above Stagecoach, northwest of Houston, then moved southeast at 35,000 mph before breaking apart 29 miles above Bammel, just west of Cypress Station.<\/p>\n \u201cThe resulting fireball released an amount of energy equivalent to 26 tons of TNT into the atmosphere,\u201d NASA stated<\/a> in its entry. \u201cMost of the mass of an object like this is reduced to atoms and fine droplets during the fireball, and only a few percent of the total mass survives to reach the ground, scattered across a range of meteorite sizes.\u201d<\/p>\n The agency\u2019s map<\/a> illustrates a simplified estimate of where meteorites might have landed, covering<\/a> parts of Montgomery County and north Harris County. Dark red areas indicate possible locations for 10-kilogram meteorites, if produced, followed by red for 1-kilogram pieces, dark orange for 100-gram fragments, light orange for 10-gram pieces, and yellow for 1-gram specks. Doppler weather radar from KHGX and TIAH showed the meteorites dropping between Willowbrook and Northgate Crossing.<\/p>\n NASA advised the public to respect private property and avoid trespassing while searching for any meteorites.<\/p>\n