A fireball was spotted by hundreds of people while streaking through the Northeast sky Saturday evening, at about 6:16 p.m.
According to the American Meteor Society (AMS), the "fireball meteor" was visible primarily in Pennsylvania and New Jersey. There were also witnesses in Washington DC, New York, Virginia, West Virginia, North Carolina, Maryland, Ohio, Delaware and Kentucky. According to the Washington Post, the meteor was seen also in Ontario and other several parts of southeastern Canada.
Many witnesses across the Northeast U.S. observed the very bright meteor flying through the Northeast sky Saturday evening. Alex Salvador spotted the fireball while he was driving in Falls Church, Virginia. He was able capture the fireball on his dashcam, according to the website mycentraloregon.com. Salvador told ABC News that the sighting was startling.
The meteor had a tail and was on fire. It was big and seemed close. Salvador also described his sighting on Twitter as "something burning up, falling around the DC". Another witness, Adrian Burns, was able to get video footage of the meteor while driving in Lancaster, Ohio.
Many other witnesses at the sky event flooded the American Meteor Society website with reports of their observations. Some of the observers declared that the fireball was having colorful fragments. They also pointed out that the meteor "fell apart or exploded."
According to the AMS, a "fireball meteor" is brighter than the planet Venus, so it is not surprising that so many observers were able to clearly see it. A "fireball" is not a rare astronomic event as a few thousand meteors burn up in Earth's atmosphere on a daily basis.
However, most of them are invisible because the event is happening during the day or because they fall over uninhabited areas or over the oceans. "Fireball meteors" as bright as the one crossing in the Northeast sky on Saturday are rarely seen.
