Advertisement

Fireball meteor, as bright as the full moon, spotted over New England

Nearly 200 reports flooded the American Meteor Society website on Sunday evening, after witnesses spotted a huge fireball streaking through the sky over southern Vermont.

It was right around 5:20 p.m., just shortly after sundown, that this chunk of space rock entered Earth's atmosphere and burned up in a spectacular way — apparently glowing as bright as the full moon to many who spotted it. According to the AMS report on the fireball, by examining all of the eyewitness reports submitted, they were able to figure out that the meteor was travelling in a line roughly south-to-north over southwest Vermont, for about 200 kilometres, before it burned out.

The picture above isn't of this particular fireball, though. It's actually from one that burned across the skies over the Netherlands in 2009, which does tends to make the rounds as a fake whenever these events make the news. However, since it's still a great example of what fireballs look like, it's a great 'stand in' picture for when these events happen.

The unfortunate thing about fireballs is, while they're spectacular for those that witness them, it's extremely difficult to catch them in photos and on video. Typically, the 'action' is over far too quickly. People have to be either very quick on the draw with their cameras or cellphones, or they need to be very lucky. Most are caught by coincidence, like the one spotted last month over Iowa on December 26th. It was actually captured by a camera from the City of North Liberty Streets Department that happened to be pointing in the right direction.

[ More Geekquinox: Giant squid hoax prompts another rash of concern about Fukushima radiation ]

Is this fireball part anything to worry about? No, not really. Dozens of fireballs burn through our skies on a daily basis. Most go unseen because they happen over the oceans, over remote areas of land, or they happen when viewing conditions aren't the best — like when the sun is up, or the skies are filled with clouds. There's extreme examples, to be sure, like the Chelyabinsk meteor from last February, but those events are very rare.

This particular fireball was very likely a 'sporadic' — a meteor not associated with any particular meteor shower. However, there is some small potential for the debris from Comet ISON to encounter our atmosphere right around now. The grains of dust blasting off the comet as it passed Earth's orbit were figured to be extremely tiny, so if we encounter them at all, we probably won't see much out of it (maybe some 'noctilucent clouds'). However, ISON gave us some nice surprises before it burned up, so who knows, it may surprise us again. According to the AMS, the place to look for any possible ISON meteor shower is towards the constellation Leo, which rises about 8 p.m. (local time) and sets well after sunrise.

Geek out with the latest in science and weather.
Follow @ygeekquinox on Twitter!