West Virginia fireball caught on camera
Blink and you might miss the fireball.
About 9:30 p.m. on Tuesday, a meteor streaked across the night sky over the East Coast. NASA says it appeared at an altitude of 29 miles above Tucker County, West Virginia. It could also be seen across Ohio, Pennsylvania, Maryland, Virginia and North Carolina.
It was caught on video by the EarthCam located on the Washington Monument. In this video clip, the flash of the meteor appears briefly in the upper part of the frame, around the two-second mark. Below that are the bright lights of the nation's capital and an airplane moving across the sky.
Because of the meteor's relatively small size, NASA said it most likely burned up in the atmosphere. A review of doppler weather radar showed no fragments falling to the ground, it said.
Bill Cooke, head of the Meteoroid Environment Office at NASA's Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Alabama, said such fireballs aren't that uncommon. There are eyewitness reports from Virginia about three to four times per month and five events reported from the Washington, D.C. area so far this year.
It has been a good week for meteor watchers, with one crossing the sky in broad daylight in the Thai capital, Bangkok, on Monday. Earlier this year, a meteor flying over Pittsburgh grabbed the headlines.