A deafening sound and an enormous flash of light don’t represent an experience that you get to have everyday. That’s what the American people from southern Ontario to Virginia got to witness several days ago. Whether they were lucky or not, we can’t be sure.
The best bet is that a disintegrating meteor caused both the huge flash of light and the sonic boom. An organization from western New York that keeps track of meteors was the one responsible for such a claim.
Fireball seen in seven American states
According to the American Meteor Society, American residents from New York, Ontario, Maryland, Michigan, Ohio, Pennsylvania, and Virginia had been reporting a fireball seen in the sky on Thursday, December 3.
A massive #fireball lit up the sky over parts of the United States and Canada earlier today. Check out this footage that was caught from our #EarthCam's in Toronto. Could it be a meteor?? ?☄️ @TourCNTower pic.twitter.com/Qxdz168p0I
— EarthCam (@EarthCam) December 2, 2020
Robert Lunsford from the American Meteor Society declared that the fireball was likely the size of a car, and it was hurtling through the atmosphere at about 10 miles per second. When the object disintegrated at around 22 miles above the surface of New York, a bright light occurred.
Margaret Campbell-Brown, who is a member of the Meteor Physics Group from the Western University in London, Ontario, declared:
We tend to notice fireballs more at night because they stand out better, but it’s not terribly unusual for very bright ones to be noticed during the day. It happens several times a year over populated areas.
A fireball is an astronomical term that refers to exceptionally bright meteors, and they can be seen over very wide areas.
When seen at the observer’s zenith, a fireball has a visual magnitude of -3 or even brighter, and it can look as big on the sky as a full Moon.
The news about the fireball from New York comes only several days after such a cosmic object was seen falling from Japan’s skies.
