BALTIMORE, MD—Many mid-Atlantic residents were startled by a large meteor that created a fireball in the sky on Sunday night.
Hundreds of eyewitnesses have filed reports of a bright meteor observed at 9:23 p.m. on September 3, according to NASA Meteor Watch.
The event was also captured by several publicly accessible cameras in the region and at extreme range by a few NASA Fireball Network and Southern Ontario Meteor Network cameras.
Analysis of all the available data indicates that the fireball became visible 47 miles above the Maryland town of Forest Hill, moving to the northwest at 36,000 miles per hour. It disintegrated at an altitude of 22 miles above the Gnatstown in Pennsylvania, having achieved a brightness equal to that of a quarter Moon and traveling just over 55 miles through the atmosphere.
An orbit calculated from the trajectory shows that the object producing the meteor was a small fragment (six inches or so in diameter) of an asteroid, probably originating in the Asteroid Belt between Mars and Jupiter.
More in the video below from Justin Berk on YouTube…
Photo via Pixabay
