A meteor appears to have been captured on film crossing the skies above New Jersey and Connecticut on Tuesday morning.
NASA’s Meteor Watch is[d]A fireball of light was spotted “over New York City,”[l]Local media reported seeing a fireball, hearing explosions and shaking between 10am and noon EDT today.” (Related: Incredible video shows blue meteor lighting up sky over Portugal)
Videos of the meteor spotted in Connecticut and New Jersey were uploaded to YouTube.
The footage showed a bright fireball streaking across the morning sky.
“I saw a fireball shooting across the sky,” New Jersey resident Judah Bergman told NBC 4. report.
“The meteor is currently over New York City and moving toward western New Jersey. Its speed has increased slightly to 38,000 mph,” NASA’s Meteor Watch wrote in a Facebook post.
NASA said in the post that it does not and cannot track “the small rock causing this fireball,” estimating its size to be “approximately one foot in diameter” and that it “cannot continue falling to the ground.” NASA added that it tracks such dangerous space objects because it is more concerned about “asteroids that may pose a danger to Earth’s inhabitants.” NASA used “eyewitness reports” to calculate the meteor’s trajectory.
NASA estimated online that “the meteorite descended at an extreme angle of just 18 degrees from vertical, passing over the Statue of Liberty before breaking up 29 miles above midtown Manhattan.”
“A fireball bright enough would have to fly directly over New York to attract attention. Daytime fireballs are fairly rare, and New Yorkers witnessed one this morning,” Bill Cook of NASA’s Meteoroid Environment Office said, NBC4 reported.
NASA added online that sounds and shaking “reported in the media” could have been caused by “military activity in the vicinity around the time of the fireball.”
The agency attributed the “sighting” testimony to the American Meteor Society.
