{"id":574096,"date":"2026-04-09T15:27:13","date_gmt":"2026-04-09T15:27:13","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/574096\/"},"modified":"2026-04-09T15:27:13","modified_gmt":"2026-04-09T15:27:13","slug":"green-fireball-spotted-over-lower-bucks-county","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/574096\/","title":{"rendered":"Green Fireball Spotted Over Lower Bucks County"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a>The moon with a group of puffy clouds over the skies of Levittown. File photo.
Credit: Tom Sofield\/LevittownNow.com<\/p>\n

A bright green fireball that streaked across the sky Tuesday afternoon was a meteor traveling at 30,000 mph, NASA officials confirmed.<\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n

According to NASA\u2019s analysis of witness reports and footage<\/a>, the meteor first became visible 48 miles above the Atlantic Ocean, off the coast of New York.<\/p>\n

The object traveled 117 miles through the upper atmosphere before disintegrating 27 miles above Galloway, New Jersey.<\/p>\n

Witnesses in Falls Township, Middletown Township, and Doylestown Borough described a bright display from the fireball despite the daylight.<\/p>\n

\u201cI saw a bright flash and then what looked like two or three separate bright spots followed by a trail of sparks,\u201d a Newtown woman told the American Meteor Society<\/a>.<\/p>\n

In New Hope, another witness noted the daytime sighting.<\/p>\n

\u201cThought at first glance it was a plane, then realized it was going too fast,\u201d he reported, describing the meteor as having a \u201cblurry area\u201d following it against a cloudless blue sky.<\/p>\n

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<\/p>\n

Some social media users reported hearing a boom after witnessing the meteor.<\/p>\n

A meteor is when a meteoroid in space enters Earth\u2019s atmosphere at a high rate of speed, which creates a visible fireball and, at times, an explosion-like noise. <\/p>\n

NASA said scientists estimate 48.5 tons of meteoritic material falls to Earth every day.<\/p>\n

The Associated Press reported<\/a> 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.<\/p>\n

\u201cSeveral thousand meteors of fireball magnitude occur in the Earth\u2019s 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,\u201d according to the American Meteor Society.<\/p>\n

The American Meteor Society also stated, \u201cAdditionally, 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.\u201d<\/p>\n

The Lyrid meteor shower\u00a0is expected to be visible from the ground in the area starting April 15 and going until April 29.<\/p>\n

\"Tom<\/p>\n

Tom Sofield<\/a><\/p>\n

Tom Sofield has covered news in Bucks County for 16 years for both newspaper and online publications. Tom\u2019s reporting has appeared locally, nationally, and internationally across several mediums. He is proud to report on news in the county where he lives and to have created a reliable publication that the community deserves.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The moon with a group of puffy clouds over the skies of Levittown. File photo.Credit: Tom Sofield\/LevittownNow.com A…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":574097,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[32],"tags":[79],"class_list":{"0":"post-574096","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-science","8":"tag-science"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/574096","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=574096"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/574096\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/574097"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=574096"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=574096"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=574096"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}