LONDON: A bright meteor lit up skies over the American states of New York, Ohio, and Pennsylvania this week, burning up in the atmosphere in a flare was brighter than the full moon.
A space rock about 60cm in diameter and weighing over 200kg entered Earth’s atmosphere above western Pennsylvania near Pittsburgh, where NASA cameras detected it early Tuesday morning local time at an altitude of 100km.
The meteor moved due east at a speed of almost 73,000kph, before cameras lost track of it at an altitude of 20km above the town of Kittanning, NASA said.
NASA said there might be fragments of the meteor, or meteorites, scattered on the ground east of the town.
The agency said the fireball likely had an orbit that took it out to the main asteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter.
The American Meteor Society (AMS), a non-profit scientific organisation, has so far received over 100 eyewitness reports from people who said they saw the fireball over Pennsylvania.
The AMS said three witnesses from around Pittsburgh reported hearing a delayed boom shortly after seeing the fireball.
According to NASA, meteors are relatively common, and several per hour can be seen on any given night.
But the AMS website said sightings of meteors like the one seen over Pennsylvania, of fireball magnitude – about the same magnitude of the planet Venus – are far less common, and experienced observers can expect to see only about one meteor of fireball magnitude for every 20 hours of meteor observing.
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