Fireball caught on camera, turns night to day in Florida
The night sky briefly shone as bright as day over northern Florida on Saturday night, as a meteor streaked overhead.
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Just before midnight, a bright blue-green light cut through the sky near Perry, Florida, southeast of Tallahassee, though sightings were reported to the American Meteor Society from as far away as Atlanta, Charleston, and Tampa. Some 220 reports had been received by the AMS by Sunday afternoon.
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The local National Weather Service office spotted the meteor as well but from a slightly different perspective. The Tallahassee NWS office tweeted an image of the meteor as seen from the GOES 16 satellite Lightning Mapper (GLM), where it appeared as a momentary bluish blip.
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Other views of the strike were reported to the AMS by observers from around the area; the society has posted several of the captured videos on Youtube, as shown below.
Thus far, no evidence of a meteorite striking the ground has been reported.
METEOR QUICK FACTS
Rocks in space are known meteoroids (larger ones are usually called asteroids)
When a meteoroid enters the atmosphere, it produces a streak of light across the sky, called a meteor
Larger meteoroids produce a bright fireball, or can even explode as a bolide
Any piece of a meteoroid or asteroid that hits the ground is called a meteorite
There are three basic kinds of meteorites - iron, stony, and stony-iron
Most meteorites contain some of the earliest minerals to form in our solar system, over 4.5 billion years ago
Some meteorites are even from Mars or the Moon!