Space rock rips through sky at 28,000 m.p.h.
A fireball exploded in the sky Tuesday night over southeast Michigan. Here’s what we’ve since learned:
Not long after the National Weather Service confirmed the phenomenon wasn’t weather-related, NASA confirmed that it was a meteor with a trajectory northwest of Detroit, from Brighton to Howell.
People reported seeing the fireball from across Michigan, and even from other states, including Illinois, Pennsylvania, Ohio, Indiana, Missouri and Ontario, Canada. Multiple images were posted of night skies being lit up, as social media exploded with people reporting what they saw or heard.
NASA estimates a 2-yard-diameter meteor traveled at about 28,000 m.p.h. as it arrived -– which is considered very slow. For comparison, Leonid meteors that arrive each November are much smaller and move at 160,000 m.p.h., said Bill Cooke, lead for NASA’s Meteoroid Environment Office in Huntsville, Ala.
“So this one was on the slow side, which is one reason why it made it so deep into the atmosphere,” he said.
Frequently, meteors can be observed in the night sky as shooting stars, burning farther up in the atmosphere. They tend to be about a millimeter in diameter and arrive at much higher speeds, attracting far less attention than Tuesday’s event.
“The faster you move, the more energy you dump in the atmosphere, which heats you up more and the less you survive,” Cooke said.
The meteor was a super bolide, meaning its brightness was between the full moon and the sun. Events such as this occur one to two times per month on this planet.
“Not so rare for Earth,” Cooke said. “Very rare for Michigan, because it’s only a small area.”
It was a piece of an asteroid, and NASA is investigating where in space it came from. If meteorites are found on the ground, cosmic-ray exposure can be used to determine their age.
The meteor caused a 2.0 magnitude earthquake, the United States Geological Survey reported on its website. People reported their windows and houses shaking as the meteor arrived.
The meteor broke up about 20 miles over the Earth, causing a shower of space rocks perhaps 1-2 ounces in size.
“Material falling was picked up by a doppler weather radar,” Cook said, adding that meteorites could be spread over 2½ miles a bit west of the Hamburg Township area, Cooke said.
If they land on your property, they’re yours to keep. Meteorites are safe to touch, radioactivity isn’t a big concern, and they cool off on their way down.
“You can pick up a meteorite right after it lands,” Cooke said. “Meteorites are not smoking hunks of rock.”
They may look like Earth’s rocks, but with signs of burning. If you think you’ve found one, you can use this self-test checklist and perhaps submit it for testing at one of these locations.
According to hundreds of eyewitness reports and as evidenced by surveillance cams, a massive, blue-green fireball shot through the Midwestern night sky Feb. 5,2017 and was projected to have landed in northern Lake Michigan.
The American Meteor Society at the time received more than 200 reports from witnesses in Wisconsin, Illinois, Michigan, Indiana, Minnesota, Iowa, Ohio and even New York.
Free Press staff writer Hasan Dudar and the Associated Press contributed to this report. Contact Robert Allen on Twitter @rallenMI or rallen@freepress.com.
