A fireball flashed through the night sky in New England on Sunday, releasing the energy of about 440 pounds of TNT.
NASA Meteor Watch reported Monday that while residents saw the meteor that swept over Vermont and Massachusetts, the space rock ‘fragmented violently’ and produced a pressure wave that rattled buildings and generated the sound heard by those near the trajectory. . ‘
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Although the agency initially believed that the meteor – which was probably a fragment of an asteroid – was moving at a speed of 47,000 miles per hour when it appeared around 17:38 ET, further analysis slowed the pace to 42,000 miles per hour.
NASA Meteor Watch first reported that the meteor was visible at an altitude of 52 miles above Green Mountain State’s Mount Mansfield State Forest and moving northeast as it traveled 33 miles through the upper atmosphere until it burned 33 miles above Beach Hill. has.
“As the object … penetrated deeper into the atmosphere, the pressure built up at the front, while a partial vacuum formed behind it. About 30 miles above, the pressure difference between front and rear exceeded its structural strength,” NASA writes. Meteor Watch.
Furthermore, the pressure wave experienced after fragmentation can cause slight tremors and be detected by infraction sound stations.
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“In the case of last night, infrasound measurements were obtained from three nearby stations – the amplitude and duration of the signals set the energy of the fireball fragmentation at 200 kilograms of TNT,” the government organization wrote. “We can combine this energy with the speed to get a mass and size of the object – 4.5 kilograms and a diameter of 15 centimeters.”
According to WMUR, more than 100 reports have been made to the American Meteor Society of New Hampshire, Vermont, Massachusetts and Canada.
In a video of the incident posted by Twitter user Jeremy LaClair, the fireball was captured on a webcam at Burlington International Airport, with other witnesses peeking in with their own accounts.
Even more people commented on NASA’s message on Facebook and user Shannon Lemley-Willis wrote that she had heard the ‘tree’ in Johnson, Vermont.
“Children were playing outside and described it as ‘big crashing trucks’,” she wrote.
“I did not get a video, but I definitely saw it in Watertown, MA. It was dusk, and the sky disappeared to a deeper blue, and I see a bright red, orange and yellow stripe north of me. , “wrote Dan Nystedt. “I thought it must have been something much bigger than a standard ‘shooting star’ to be so visible when it wasn’t completely dark yet.”
A fireball is a meteor with a brightness greater than -4, or the brightness of the planet Venus in the morning or night sky, according to the American Meteor Society.
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While a meteor is the streak of light seen as an asteroid or meteoroid penetrating the Earth’s atmosphere, according to NASA. If an asteroid or meteoroid does not burn up before impact, it is called a meteorite.