‘Super Bright’ Meteor Sightings Reported From Florida To Massachusetts, Reports Of Crash Near Delaware-Maryland Border

By Melanie Eversley, USA Today – “A possible meteor has been spotted streaking through the sky over the East Coast, The American Meteor Society and Twitter users are reporting.

‘It basically looked like a super bright shooting star,’ said Robert Lunsford, fireball coordinator for the society, based on the reports coming in to the organization’s website. ‘I saw some people mentioning fragments and naturally every color of the rainbow.’

The society, based in Geneseo, N.Y., was researching about 400 reports received as of about 10 p.m. ET Friday from nine East Coast States and Canada of sightings that took place somewhere shortly before 8 p.m. ET through shortly after 8 p.m. ET, Lunsford said. The number of reports marked a possible record over the number of reports the group received about a fireball that streaked over Baltimore on Halloween several years ago, Lunsford said.

Late Friday, NASA said the incident was consistent with a ‘single meteor event.’

‘Judging from the brightness, we’re dealing with something as bright as the full moon,’ Bill Cooke of NASA’s Meteoroid Environmental Office said Friday. ‘We basically have (had) a boulder enter the atmosphere over the northeast.’

Twitter exploded Friday evening with reports of meteor sightings from the South to New England.

Some Twitter users also reported that the meteor crashed somewhere near the Delaware-Maryland border, but the society had no information on that, Lunsford said.

AccuWeather.com (@breakingweather) tweeted that there have been several unconfirmed reports of a large meteor being spotted from Florida to Massachusetts between 7:55 p.m. and 8:03 p.m. ET.

Reports of a fireball that streaked over the Albany, N.Y., area shortly before 8 p.m. headed south or southeast was reported by Examiner.com.” Read more.

NASA: Large Asteroid Heading To Earth? Pray … – “NASA chief Charles Bolden has advice on how to handle a large asteroid headed toward New York City: Pray. That’s about all the United States – or anyone for that matter – could do at this point about unknown asteroids and meteors that may be on a collision course with Earth, Bolden told lawmakers at a U.S. House of Representatives Science Committee hearing on Tuesday.” Read more.