🌠A bright meteor streaked across the sky Sunday night

🌠 Hundreds, including those in NJ, reported it to the American Meteor Society

🌠 It disintegrated in Pennsylvania


It was indeed a fireball over the mid-Atlantic states Sunday night, NASA Meteor Watch confirmed on social media.

NASA confirmed that a bright meteor streaked across the sky around 9:20 p.m., prompting hundreds of reports to the American Meteor Society website.

According to the NASA Meteor Watch Facebook post, the event was captured by several publicly accessible cameras in the region and at extreme ranges by a few NASA Fireball Network and Southern Ontario Meteor Network cameras.

The fireball became visible 47 miles above Forest Hill, Maryland, moving to the northwest at 36,000 miles per hour.

It disintegrated at an altitude of 22 miles above the Gnatstown in Pennsylvania, “having achieved a brightness equal to that of a quarter moon and traveling just over 55 miles through the atmosphere,” NASA Meteor Watch reported.

An orbit calculated from the trajectory shows the object producing the meteor was 6 inches or so in diameter of an asteroid, probably originating in the asteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter.

Many people took to Facebook to comment about seeing the fireball including New Jerseyans from Avalon, Maurice River, Mickelton, Columbus, Cape May, Forked River, Seaside Heights, Trenton, and Wildwood.

“This was by far the brightest and longest lasting meteor/fireball I have ever seen,” a Neptune City man wrote.

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