We can't stop watching this fireball shoot over three states

By Fusion Staff  |  February 18, 2015 | 4:56pm
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NASA published a short video Tuesday showing a meteor shoot across the early morning sky above Pennsylvania, New York and Ohio. The mesmerizing film is only a few seconds long:


On its Facebook page, NASA Meteor Watch described the flaming object as “a space rock about 2 feet in diameter and weighing roughly 500 pounds,” explaining that it “entered Earth’s atmosphere above western Pennsylvania.” According to the agency, the object was filmed by 3 meteor cameras near Beaver Falls and was lost from view by Kittanning.

The American Meteor Society posted this heat map of reports from residents in Pennsylvania, New York and Ohio:

The group called for witness reports of the meteor, and made 96 of them public on its website. One viewer shared his own video:


Some described the incident as almost supernatural:

“It was a fast, beautiful, light blue light with a hue about it.”

“It was incredible…I have seen shooting stars but never anything like this I thought it was a plane going down, it was so big and so bright but burned out immediately about the earth’s surface.”

and terrifying:

“I’ve seen many meteor showers and this wasn’t anything like that. Instead of crossing the upper atmosphere, this feel almost directly down and brighter than any thing I’ve ever seen of this nature. It looked so big that my son and I expected to hear or see an impact.”

while others were more stoic:

“It was orange.”

Whatever it looked like in real time, we’re glad NASA caught it on tape.

Danielle Wiener-Bronner is a news reporter.

 
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