video: Huestis: Fireball Over New England Tuesday Morning Was “Bright One”
Wednesday, May 18, 2016
A fireball was spotted in the sky over New England early Tuesday morning, with video of it captured over Portland, Maine, and reports that it could be seen by most New England states.
"Very bright fireball over Northeastern US, ground shaking reported," wrote The Watchers, who noted that a "very bright fireball was observed over the Northeastern US at around 04:50 UTC on May 17, 2016. The event lasted between 3 and 8 seconds and was accompanied by fragmentation and sonic boom, and the American Meteor Society received 144 reports by 09:30 UTC."
"The fireball was seen primarily from Maine, but witnesses from Vermont, New Hampshire, New Jersey, Massachusetts, New York, Rhode Island, Pennsylvania, Connecticut, Ontario, Canada and Québec, Canada also reported the event," they added.
GET THE LATEST BREAKING NEWS HERE -- SIGN UP FOR GOLOCAL FREE DAILY EBLASTBELOW PICTURE: Read Dave Huestis, GoLocal's Astronomy Expert, weigh in on the fireball.
Huestis offered the following commentary on Tuesday:
I only heard about this fireball around 10:00am or so from my brother Glen. He had seen it on the Internet. Strange I did not see anything reported on the local news stations, nor on the first half hour of The Today Show."
Unless it was a re-entry of some man-made space junk, it was most likely a meteor that hit the atmosphere and annihilated itself well above the ground. I have seen several green fireballs in my years of meteor observing. Not uncommon.
I've seen a preliminary trajectory path, and it is possible some fragments may have reached the ground. I'm sure they'll be teams searching once scientists get a better fix on a potential area to search.
From the three or four videos I've seen, it was indeed a bright one. Wish I could have been somewhere outside to have witnessed it. With all the dash board cams these days a lot more of these events are captured.
All I can say is the cop who is overheard saying "Oh my God" on one of the videos was quite cool about the matter.
There is a Fireball Network and they should be able to tell if this was a meteor or man made space debris.
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