Blue-green meteor streaks across the sky over North Florida: ‘Absolutely incredible’
Jania Kadar and her friend were cleaning up in the backyard after a gathering of friends in eastern Tallahassee when the night sky lit up.
“It was like someone turned on the stadium lights,” the Tallahassee resident said. “I look up and there is this bluish green flash. It almost looks like daylight.”
“It lasted it felt like seconds,” she said of the sighting near midnight. “The second my brain wanted me to say ‘what is that?’, it was over…”
…more than 200 reports of a mysterious “fireball”
There have been more than 200 reports of a mysterious “fireball” crossing the night sky over Scotland and Northern Ireland. The UK Meteor Network said it had received reports of the fireball from across both countries, with witnesses describing it as “very bright” and “moving very fast”.
One witness in Belfast said the fireball was “like a shooting star on steroids”, while another in Edinburgh said it was “the brightest thing I’ve ever seen in the sky”.
Astronomers say the fireball was most likely a meteor, possibly a piece of space debris that burned up as it entered the Earth’s atmosphere.
While such sightings are relatively rare, they are not unheard of – in January 2015, more than 100 people reported seeing a bright light streaking across the sky in the US state of Colorado. So far, there have been no reports of any damage or injuries from the latest sighting.
While tracking rain over Mississippi and Alabama, a trace of a meteor streaking across the sky was picked up by the National Weather Service’s GOES satellite.
NWS Tallahassee
The National Weather Service Tallahassee picked up the chunk of space rock streaking across the sky on its GOES satellite system.
“It basically has a global lightning mapper and picks out bright cloud flashes from lightning when we have thunderstorms,” said Kelly Godsey, an NWS meteorologist.
They also tracked social media reports from Valdosta, Ga., Tallahassee, Wakulla County, Gainesville, and Jacksonville.
Geminid Meteor shower stop: When to see fireballs in Florida
Even with an almost full moon, Florida’s residents can see about 30 Geminid meteors per hour, weather permitting
A meteor produced a brilliant green streak of light in the sky over northern Florida Saturday night, lighting up the region and delighting sky gazers.
The streak of light was spotted around 11:52 p.m. local time, according to satellite imagery provided by the National Weather Service in Tallahassee. A dashboard camera in Gainesville caught a glimpse of the meteor, which appeared as a bright blue-green orb of light descending rapidly toward the horizon.