What Was In The Sky Friday Night?

The American Meteor Society received more than 500 reports of people seeing a bright meteor around 8 p.m. Friday, all along the Atlantic coast from Maine to North Carolina:  

For those not familiar with meteors and fireballs, a fireball is a meteor that is larger than normal. Most meteors are only the size of small pebbles. A meteor the size of a softball can produce light equivalent to the full moon for a short instant. The reason for this is the extreme velocity at which these objects strike the atmosphere. Even the slowest meteors are still traveling at 10 miles per SECOND, which is much faster than a speeding bullet. Fireballs occur every day over all parts of the Earth. It is rare though for an individual to see more than one or two per lifetime as they also occur during the day, on a cloudy night, or over a remote area where no one sees it. Observing during one of the major annual meteor showers can increase your chance of seeing another one of these bright meteors.

Read more on the American Meteor Society website.

The AMS provides a heatmap of the sightings on their website, along with an estimated trajectory. Included on the sightings map are dozens of reports from Connecticut in Cheshire, East Windsor, Roxbury, Watertown, Fairfield, Meriden, Shelton, Rocky Hill, Harwinton, Winchester, New Canaan, Greenwich, Collinsville, Uncasville, Southington, New Milford, Brookfield, Naugatuck, Stratford, and Newtown. In some towns, there were multiple reports. 

Social media lit up

"Brightest meteor I have seen in the last 40 years...." said the person reporting from New Milford.

Twitter was abuzz Friday night with reports of a large, bright meteor streaking across the night sky over the Eastern Seaboard.

Twitter user Brenton Laverty characterized it as a huge, green meteor burning up over DC just before 8 p.m.

Similar accounts from all over Connecticut

There were similar accounts in Connecticut, from Greenwich to Stonington, up to Naugatuck and out to Bethel and every where in between — and beyond.

"Very bizarre sighting in the sky near Deans Mill. Appeared to be a trail of a meteorite. We literally saw the sparks and fire trailing from behind it, very bright, coming downwards!" wroe Brandy Lynn Lewis on the Stonington Patch Facebook page.

"my grand daughter saw it on route 8 at 8 pm and said it was amazing," Roberta Poynton wrote on the Naugatuck Patch Facebook page.

On the Orange Patch Facebook page, Michele Prezioso Mehan wrote, "Scout Troop camping in Greenwich spotted it at 755pm. It was visible for about 20 seconds. Approached West to South."

According to several outlets, the object may have qualified as a fireball, defined by the American Meteor Society as a "very bright meteor, generally brighter than magnitude -4, which is about the same magnitude of the planet Venus in the morning or evening sky."

Did you spot the bright object in the sky Friday night? What did it look like? Let us know in the comments.