A fireball meteor cut across the night sky over North Carolina and Tennessee on Thursday night, flashing into view above Robbinsville, North Carolina, before burning out near Chattanooga, Tennessee. NASA said the object raced through the atmosphere at 47,000 mph and lasted about 10 seconds from first sighting to final fade.
The bright streak was not just a casual sky watch. NASA said sky cameras across the region caught the object as it moved westward into southern Tennessee, giving scientists a tracked path from about 50 miles above Robbinsville to about 25 miles above East Ridge near Chattanooga. Footage from Tellus Science Museum in Cartersville, Georgia, along with cameras in Huntsville, Alabama, Tullahoma, Tennessee, and another site near the Tennessee-North Carolina border, helped NASA piece together the event.
NASA said the object was a small piece of an asteroid, measuring about two inches across and weighing six ounces. That is far smaller than some fireballs, which NASA said can be three feet or bigger. The agency also said meteors are the visible paths of asteroid fragments that enter Earth's atmosphere, and that astronomers use the word fireball for an especially bright meteor.
What makes this sighting stand out is that it was widely visible while also being ruled out as part of the Taurid meteor shower, even though that shower is currently active. NASA did not say what set the object on that exact path through the atmosphere, only that it was a small asteroid fragment that flashed briefly and then disintegrated. For people who saw it, the answer was over almost as soon as it began.
