A bright green fireball was spotted in the nighttime sky on Tuesday by hundreds of people in southern Pennsylvania and 8 other states.
According to the American Meteor Society, the fireball raced north to south at 10:57 p.m. and ended its flight in the Atlantic Ocean east of Bethany Beach, Delaware.
The AMS defines a fireball as “a meteor which is brighter than any planet or star, i.e. brighter than magnitude -4.”
“It was really bright and looked very close,” an observer in Willow Street described the fireball in one of the more than 400 reports that have been filed with the AMS.
A report from New Holland, noted, “How beautiful! I had a big open sky for the fireball to show off its tricks right in front of me.”
In addition to Pennsylvania, the fireball was reported from Delaware, Maryland, New Jersey, North Carolina, South Carolina, Virginia, Washington D.C. and West Virginia.
“Several thousand meteors of fireball magnitude occur in the Earth’s atmosphere each day,” explained the AMS. “The vast majority of these, however, occur over the oceans and uninhabited regions, and a good many are masked by daylight. Those that occur at night also stand little chance of being detected due to the relatively low numbers of persons out to notice them.
“Additionally, the brighter the fireball, the more rare is the event. As a general thumb rule, there are only about (a third) as many fireballs present for each successively brighter magnitude class, following an exponential decrease. Experienced observers can expect to see only about 1 fireball of magnitude -6 or better for every 200 hours of meteor observing, while a fireball of magnitude -4 can be expected about once every 20 hours or so.”
Another fireball was sighted over Germany just before midnight Tuesday. That one was traveling southeast to northwest, ending its flight above Hamburg.
