On Friday, Social media was abuzz with reports about a flash of light in the skies over the East Coast in United States.
U.S. space agency, NASA, has announced that the flash light appeared to be a "single meteor event." Bill Cooke of NASA's Meteoroid Environmental Office said it "looks to be a fireball that moved roughly toward the southeast, going on visual reports," reported Associated Press.
"Judging from the brightness, we're dealing with something as bright as the full moon," Cooke said. "The thing is probably a yard across. We basically have (had) a boulder enter the atmosphere over the northeast."
The American Meteor Society received more than 500 reports of seeing a fireball from various places ranging from North Carolina to New York to New England and Canada. The flash light is said to have streaked across the skies around 8 p.m. on Friday.
Meteor (or shooting star) is a small particle from a comet or an asteroid. When meteor enters the Earth's atmosphere, it appears as a streak of light. According to the American Meteor Society, meteors that are bright enough to be classified as fireballs streak past the Earth's sky every day. But they mostly appear over the oceans or hidden by daylight, reported Reuters.
But the fireball on Friday was witnessed by many people, who saw flashes of green, red and blue as the space object moved past the skies over the East Coast. Social media was abuzz with several people commenting about the fireball.
One of the commentators posted a message on the AMS website saying, "Saw it around 7:50 PM driving south on Interstate 91 a few miles before the exit to interstate 90 in Mass. The duration was several seconds - very unusual. It streaked horizontally from west to east. Thought it was a plane landing. It started out white the glowed green with pieces falling off that appeared white or golden. I haven't seen a fireball like this in decades."
Another significant instance of meteor streaking past the skies happend last month in Russia. Tiny fragments of a meteor exploded in the Chelyabinsk Region in Russia, injuring more than 1,000 people and causing damage to property.
Click here, to look at the footage of meteor blazing across the night sky in United States.
