A bright meteor lit up the sky over New York City before breaking up over neighboring New Jersey, as reported by NASA. The head of NASA’s Meteoroid Environments Office, William Cooke, stated that the meteor was first spotted at an altitude of 51 miles (82 kilometers) above Manhattan around 11:17 a.m. on Tuesday. It traveled over the southern part of Newark, New Jersey, before disintegrating 31 miles (50 kilometers) above the town of Mountainside. Fortunately, no meteorites or fragments of space debris made it to the Earth’s surface.
The space rock was moving at a speed of approximately 41,000 mph (66,000 kph) and descended at a steep angle of 44 degrees from vertical, Cooke explained. Due to the lack of camera or satellite data, the exact trajectory of the meteor is uncertain, relying solely on eyewitness reports. About 40 eyewitness reports have been submitted on the American Meteor Society website as of Wednesday morning, assisting in NASA’s estimates.
Cooke clarified that the fireball did not belong to the Perseid meteor shower, and any reports of loud noises and tremors may have been due to military aircraft in the area at the same time. He mentioned that the New York City area witnesses a daylight fireball event about once every year or two. NASA’s Meteoroid Environments Office conveyed on Facebook that small rocks like the one causing Tuesday’s fireball are typically around a foot (a third of a meter) in diameter and are unable to survive all the way to the ground.
