An extremely bright fireball was seen streaking across the night sky recently, lighting up Appalachia before vanishing into thin air over North Carolina, according to NASA.
The dazzling ball of fire was first spotted 45 miles above Piney Flats, Tennessee, at about 1:15 a.m. on Aug. 30 and was moving eastward at 31,300 mph, the space agency mentioned in a Facebook post.
“The fireball was also detected by several cameras in the region, as well as the Geostationary Lightning Mapper aboard the GOES-16 spacecraft,” NASA said.
A great deal of witnesses on the ground took notice of the object glaring fireball overhead, according to reports submitted to the American Meteor Society. The AMS received 175 witness reports from 10 states, includingGeorgia, Alabama, Maryland, Kentucky, North Carolina, South Carolina, Virginia,Tennessee, and West Virginia, even though most of the sightings occurred within the Appalachian states.
“We had just gotten home and before I even stepped out of the vehicle I saw blue and our skin started to glow,” a Tennessee resident said.“It quickly turned to green and was right with the tree line on our property and then it passed where we were standing in observation and I saw the most beautiful orange sparkling tail.”
Another witness in Tennessee mentioned that they were asleep at the time when the sudden light from outside woke them up and couldn’t believe what they were seeing.
“It was just there, a brilliant green with a well defined white tail. Like a celestial emerald,” they mentioned. “I froze and waited for it to explode like a huge firework but it just continued through the horizon. Incredibly bright and well defined. Completely surreal.”
Other videos shared with AMS captured how bright the homes were lit up along the fireball’s path.
According to NASA, the phenomenon turned out to be an asteroid fragment that was small but extremely dense. It estimated to be just 2 feet in diameter but weighed 1,000 pounds.
The fragment traveled a distance of roughly 60 miles, making its way across Tennessee into North Carolina, to then disintegrate overhead, above the town of Altapass, where almost 50 people reported hearing similar to an explosion after the fireball blazed by.
It was a sound made as the fragment crumbled.
It was “loud enough (that) dogs got scared,” a witness reported, while another added the pressure wave produced a sound and sensation that reminded them of an earthquake.
“It is likely there are meteorites on the ground in theSpruce Pine, Ingalls, Altapass area,” NASA said.
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