The moon with a group of puffy clouds over the skies of Levittown. File photo.
Credit: Tom Sofield/LevittownNow.com
A bright green fireball that streaked across the sky Tuesday afternoon was a meteor traveling at 30,000 mph, NASA officials confirmed.
The sightings happened just after 2:30 p.m. and led to more than 200 reports to the American Meteor Society from witnesses in Pennsylvania, New Jersey, Delaware, Connecticut, and New York.
According to NASA’s analysis of witness reports and footage, the meteor first became visible 48 miles above the Atlantic Ocean, off the coast of New York.
The object traveled 117 miles through the upper atmosphere before disintegrating 27 miles above Galloway, New Jersey.
Witnesses in Falls Township, Middletown Township, and Doylestown Borough described a bright display from the fireball despite the daylight.
“I saw a bright flash and then what looked like two or three separate bright spots followed by a trail of sparks,” a Newtown woman told the American Meteor Society.
In New Hope, another witness noted the daytime sighting.
“Thought at first glance it was a plane, then realized it was going too fast,” he reported, describing the meteor as having a “blurry area” following it against a cloudless blue sky.
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Some social media users reported hearing a boom after witnessing the meteor.
A meteor is when a meteoroid in space enters Earth’s atmosphere at a high rate of speed, which creates a visible fireball and, at times, an explosion-like noise.
NASA said scientists estimate 48.5 tons of meteoritic material falls to Earth every day.
The Associated Press reported last month that a 7-ton meteor broke up over Ohio and led to a large ground search to recover parts of the space rock.
“Several thousand meteors of fireball magnitude occur in the Earth’s atmosphere each day. The vast majority of these, however, occur over the oceans and uninhabited regions, and a good many are masked by daylight. Those that occur at night also stand little chance of being detected due to the relatively low numbers of persons out to notice them,” according to the American Meteor Society.
The American Meteor Society also stated, “Additionally, the brighter the fireball, the more rare is the event. As a general thumb rule, there are only about 1/3 as many fireballs present for each successively brighter magnitude class, following an exponential decrease. Experienced observers can expect to see only about 1 fireball of magnitude -6 or better for every 200 hours of meteor observing, while a fireball of magnitude -4 can be expected about once every 20 hours or so.”
The Lyrid meteor shower is expected to be visible from the ground in the area starting April 15 and going until April 29.
