Watch: Fireball Meteor Illuminates Night Skies Over Colorado
On Sunday, Colorado citizens spotted a fireball meteor in the sky.
Residents of Colorado were treated to a rare and beautiful celestial spectacle on the early Sunday morning of August 27, 2023, when a fireball meteor sped through the night sky. This spectacular meteor shower attracted observers, stirring conversations and leaving an indelible effect on those fortunate enough to witness it.
Several viewers posted videos of the brilliant light flashing across the sky at about 3:33 a.m. from their home security cameras and weather stations.
The American Meteor Society (AMS) lists over 80 pending fireball reports on its website. The reports are pending from Wyoming to New Mexico. Many were from Colorado.
Heavenly Surprise: Fireball Meteor Lights Up Skies Over Colorado
Several people shared videos of a #meteor that streaked across the night sky over #Colorado around 3 a.m.
¡ª RRN (@RRNmedia) August 28, 2023
The meteor was captured on video from several areas along the Front Range. One viewer said the fireball lit up the entire neighborhood pic.twitter.com/H2HWNfUuIl
"The interesting thing and the excitement for this one was that so many people observed it," said the University of Colorado research scientist Margaret Landis.
"So it wasn't exactly a small one." She claims that most shooting stars in a meteor shower are the size of a grain of sand, up to the size of a pebble, but a fireball can be 3 feet in diameter or greater.
Landis researches meteor impact craters at CU Boulder and has visited several of the world's largest. She says the fireball from Sunday morning may have been large enough to reach the earth, but she's not organizing a search team.
Credit: RRN News
"I wouldn't go out with my metal detector looking for something," she explained. "It might be fun to try for 20 minutes, but I don't think there's going to be a large steam field, which is the technical term for the stuff that comes out of one of these explosions."
She believes the fireball was a fragment of the comet 109P/Swift-Tuttle, responsible for the Perseid meteor shower. That rain occurs every August and usually peaks around the middle of the month.
Perseid Meteor Shower That Produces More Fireballs
According to NASA, the Perseid meteor shower produces more fireball meteors than any other shower. However, they only sometimes occur during the peak period. The Perseids usually expire on September 1.
Credit: RRN News
Landis also stated that the fireball could have come from something else, such as an asteroid, a moon, or even another planet. "The best way to determine the origin of a meteor is to recover a piece that makes it to Earth," she said.
Credit: RRN News
"However, other types of analysis can also provide you with that information. If you can determine the meteor's velocity, you can determine the angle at which it entered the atmosphere and then follow it back to its source."
She stated that this type of measurement is not often performed, and she was still determining if it would be done in the case of this particular fireball.
What do you think about it? Do let us know in the comments.
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