Blazing Fireball Flashes Through The Sky Over Milwaukee

First Posted: Feb 08, 2017 05:23 AM EST
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A blazing bright-green meteor fell through the sky in the north of Milwaukee, leaving witnesses from different cities in awe.

Space.com reported that a brilliant meteor flashed through the sky about 10 to 20 miles north of Milwaukee on Feb. 6 and has possibly scattered space rocks into Lake Michigan. The American Meteorological Society (AMS) received reports from over 220 people claiming that the meteor was seen at 1:25 a.m. CST (2:25 a.m. EST or 7:25 a.m. GMT).

According to the AMS website, people from Milwaukee, Chicago, Michigan, Ohio, Indiana, Iowa, Kentucky, Ontario and New York reported having witnessed the falling fireball. Videos of the occurrence have been sent to the agency and were uploaded online with several links posted by NASA Meteor Watch on its Facebook page.

"It disrupted about 21 miles above Lake Michigan, approximately 9 miles east of the town of Newton," the post read. "Doppler weather radar picked up fragments (meteorites) falling into Lake Michigan near the end point of the trajectory."

These fragments, however, would not be qualified for study since they have fallen into the lake, according to AMS operations manager Mike Hankey.

The brightness of the meteor captured by a camera on top of the roof of the University of Wisconsin-Madison's atmospheric, oceanic and space sciences building indicated that it could be considered as a "fireball." The blazing space rock also created a sonic boom, which happens when the object moves quicker than the sound waves in the Earth's atmosphere.

"The explosive force of this disruption was recorded on an infrasound station in Manitoba, some 600 miles away," NASA Meteor Watch added.

According to the data, the space rock's orbit indicated that it was an asteroid fragment or a meteoroid weighing at least 600 pounds (272 kg) and measuring 2 feet (0.6 meters) in diameter.

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