Blazing Fireball 40 Times Brighter Than A Full Moon Streaks Across Alabama Sky [Video]
On Friday morning, a bright meteor came tumbling down from the heavens in Alabama and disintegrated right above the small town of Grove Oak, in DeKalb County, reports the Alabama Newscenter.
According to Bill Cooke of NASA’s Meteoroid Environment Office (MEO), the fireball was “at least 40 times as bright as the full moon” and caused quite the commotion, “triggering every camera and sensor” that MEO operates in the region.
The falling meteor lit up the Alabama sky and was bright enough to be spotted “through partly cloudy skies,” notes Cooke. Several witnesses reported the “extremely bright event,” which occurred right after midnight.
The fireball was also caught on camera both by the space agency, which has six meteor cameras installed in the area, and by private security cameras belonging to residents.
The video above shows the bright meteor streaking down the sky as captured by security and doorbell cameras in Alabama and Georgia, reports the local media outlet.
The first official sighting of the flaming meteor took place at 12:19 a.m. CT some 58 miles (93 kilometers) above Turkeytown, northeast of Gadsden. From there, the fireball zipped across the Alabama sky at dizzying speeds of 53,700 miles per hour (86.4 kilometers per hour), moving west of north, showed the MEO report.
Its journey ended in the sky over Grove Oak, where the meteor broke apart some 18 miles (29 kilometers) above the town.
Alabama fireball in the midnight sky captured by multiple cameras https://t.co/rmUR8JJC72 @spann @alabamawxblog @NASA @NASAMeteorWatch @ring @nest pic.twitter.com/sWAj0bXWzN
— Alabama News Center (@alnewscenter) August 17, 2018
For now, it remains unknown whether the Alabama meteor left behind meteorites scattered on the ground, Cooke mentioned in his report. What we do know is that the space rock is believed to have come from a small asteroid no more than 6 feet (2 meters) wide.
As reported by AL.com, NASA released a video of the Alabama meteor as well, uploaded on YouTube by the media outlet.
Footage of the fireball falling from the skies was posted on Facebook and Twitter by meteorologist James Spann, courtesy of four camera owners whose equipment recorded the Alabama meteor. One video, shared by Spann on Twitter several hours before the rest of the footage, was captured at 12:22 a.m. CT in Kennesaw, Georgia.
News of the Alabama meteor comes after another space rock penetrated Earth’s atmosphere on July 25, detonating over U.S.’s Thule Air Base in Greenland, per a previous Inquisitr report. That particular meteor almost sparked a war after exploding with 2.1 kilotons of force, since it could have been mistaken for an incoming missile, the media reported at the time.
