More than 30 individuals witnessed a fireball “10 times brighter than the moon” across three southern states of the US.
People in Arkansas, Louisiana, and Mississippi reported hearing a loud boom and seeing a fireball on Wednesday.
The Vicksburg Post reported that a witness in the downtown area saw an “orange fireball the size of a basketball” traveling west on a downhill track toward the Mississippi River, trailed by a whitetail.
Bill Cooke of NASA’s Meteoroid Environments Office says, no injuries or damage were reported. But several people felt their houses shake.
The fireball, according to Cooke, was too small to cause any damage. None of its parts made it to the ground.
At a speed of 55,000 miles per hour, the fireball traveled towards Earth, splitting up as it sank deeper into the atmosphere.
It was more than 10 times brighter than the full moon at its peak, according to NASA. It dissipated 34 miles above swampy terrain north of Minorca, Louisiana.
“The fragmentation of this fireball generated an energy equivalent of 3 tons of TNT (trinitrotoluene), which created shock waves that propagated to the ground, producing the booms and vibrations felt by people in the area,” said NASA in its statement.
Fireballs, also known as Bolides, are extremely bright meteors that can be visible across a large region.
The American Meteor Society tracks a growing number of bolides each year. There are probably over 500,000 bolides per year. But the majority of them go unnoticed since they occur over water, and half of them occur during the day.