No it wasn’t your eyes playing tricks on you, that was a real fireball in the sky Wednesday night – and Saturday evening too, over New Jersey.
Close to 500 people saw the bright object streaking across the skies and reported it to the American Meteorological Society (AMS) on Wednesday, Nov. 10.
The fireball was also seen by the crew of Space X as it lifted off on Nov. 10 to the International Space Station, reported Space.com.
The American Meteorological Society issued a statement that that fireball reported at 9:12 p.m. this past Wednesday was not the launch of the SpaceX rocket but an “incredibly bright Taurid fireball” that sped through the skies.
Some people who were out to see the SpaceX launch were lucky enough to see both, the fiery Falcon 9 rocket soaring spaceward and the streaking fireball.
Commenter Antonio G on the AMS website was among those who saw both.
“I was out in a field north of Philadelphia, PA, I (could) see the Falcon / Space X rocket trail fly by after launch. Staring, waiting looking toward the South, SouthEast….and out of nowhere this super bright green streak dropped,” he wrote. “But the fireball made up for this! Brief 1-2 seconds, but so so cool!”
That fireball was mainly seen in North Carolina, but reported in 13 other states including New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Washington DC, Delaware, Georgia, Maryland, South Carolina, Tennessee, Virginia and West Virginia.
AMS experts analyzed eyewitness accounts from its website, data from a NASA camera located in western North Carolina and other public videos that showed the meteor first became visible 48 miles (above Greenville, North Carolina and moved northwest at 33,000 miles per hour.
Its life was brilliant, but short.
But there was an encore performance.
On Saturday, Nov. 13, 58 observers reported seeing a fireball between 4:30 p.m. and 4:50 p.m, from locations all over the state. Reports came in from people in Atlantic City to Red Bank to Fort Lee and Newton, according to the AMS site.
That fireball was also seen on in New York’s Hudson River Valley and in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania and Philadelphia, according to the AMS.
The fireball lasted only 3.5 seconds before disintegrating 28 miles above the ground. At its brightest, the fireball rivaled the full moon, which AMS experts said indicates it was caused by an object about 45 pounds and 10 inches in diameter. The low speed could imply it was part of an asteroid.
Those who observed the fireball saw a rare sight, experts say. The brighter the fireball is, the more rare the event is. That’s because several thousand meteors of fireball magnitude occur in the Earth’s atmosphere daily. Most of those happen over the oceans and uninhabited regions and during daylight hours.
Those that occur at night also stand little chance of being detected due to the relatively low numbers of persons outdoors to see them, AMS experts said.
The last fireball seen blazing across the Jersey skies was seen a little more than a year ago on Nov, 10, 2020.
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Larry Higgs may be reached at lhiggs@njadvancemedia.com.