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Very bright fireball seen over Pennsylvania, US

very-bright-fireball-seen-over-pennsylvania-us

A very bright fireball was seen and recorded by NASA's cameras over Pennsylvania, US at 09:45 UTC (04:45 EST) on February 17, 2015.

NASA's Meteoroid Environment Office (MEO) said the space rock was about 60 cm (2 feet) in diameter, weighing roughly 226 kg (500 pounds). It entered Earth’s atmosphere above western Pennsylvania and was first detected by 3 NASA meteor cameras at an altitude of 96.5 km (60 miles) above Beaver Falls.

The fireball moved almost due east at a speed of 72 420 km/h (45 000 mph).

It flared brighter than the Full Moon before the cameras lost track of it at an altitude of 20.9 km (13 miles) above the town of Kittanning.

There may be fragments (meteorites) scattered on the ground east of that location, MEO said.

This celestial visitor had an orbit that took it out to the main asteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter – it came a mightly long way to a fiery end in the predawn Pennsylvania sky.

YouTube video

The video came from a NASA camera located at Allegheny Observatory near Pittsburg, PA. The other two cameras are located at Hiram College and Oberlin College, both in northern Ohio.

Featured image credit: MEO/Allegheny Observatory

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One Comment

  1. I expect as we have seen in the Northeast and Eastern states the kind of season it generally goes thru(in this case winter) to go extreme…..the South and the Southeast known for heavy storms and hurricanes also to face their extremes. The Midwest and West theirs(tornadoes and high heat…. The Midwest to face an extreme shaking of the ground and tornadoes no long in rurual landscapes now to heavily populated areas. In california its first rushing of waters onto the mainland in serious mode. The rumbling of the land for a protracted length of time will test many ; but she is not ; the surprise will be in the Midwest even to the tennessse valley…. this will be the dry run; the testing of the waters of even bigger events 2016. At that point we will find space has a surprise fo us.

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