Residents across nearly a dozen states and Canada reported seeing a fireball in Wednesday night’s sky that some described as an event they’d never seen before.
The American Meteor Society started receiving reports shortly after 6:45 p.m. of a glowing object that quickly transversed the sky.
Based on the number of reports, the society said what was spotted is believed to be a fireball and triangulated its possible path as being over the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania.
Video provided to FOX Weather from a security camera in Linden, Virginia, showed the bright meteor that was only visible for a few seconds.
“It seemed very large in the sky with a long trail,” an Ohio observer noted.
A State College, Pennsylvania resident stated, “It was the most amazing thing I’ve ever seen.”
NASA says meteoroids that enter Earth’s atmosphere are called meteors, and if they strike the ground, they earn the designation of meteorite.
The space agency estimates that 48.5 tons of space matter strikes Earth daily, but much of the material burns up and is not visible.
Less than 5% of meteors survive the friction and speeds of greater than 25,000 miles per hour to strike Earth’s surface.
So far, the American Meteor Society has not received any reports that Wednesday’s space matter struck the ground, but if it did, southwestern areas of the Northeast appeared to be in its trajectory.
