Fireball Viewed Across South: Shortly after 8pm last night I started receiving multiple reports of a green, comet-like object that fell from the sky.
I speculated on what this could be, then I soon learned that several people across the south reported seeing what appeared to be some sort of meteor that streaked across the nighttime sky.
Reports ranging from Morgantown to Columbia in KY. Most describing what appeared to be a falling green, meteor-like object. @NWSLouisville
— Landon Hampton (@WxOrNotBG) November 21, 2014
@WxOrNotBG @NWSLouisville I SAW IT!! Looked like this pic I found but more red/green–was a LOT brighter & closer. pic.twitter.com/9cg0JSDvPv
— Kim Cunningham (@KBC224) November 21, 2014
@WxOrNotBG saw it N/NW over DFW around 830p tonight. Gorgeous. — steve wallace (@smwallace) November 21, 2014
@WxOrNotBG multiple reports here in AL, too! — Nadia Wilder (@nadia_wilder) November 21, 2014
Just saw the lowest, biggest, & brightest shooting star I’ve ever seen. Huge. As in “that might have a little kid from Krypton in it” huge.
— Stephen Huntsman (@ThirdandVermont) November 21, 2014
After some investigation, the following video and information was released by Bill Cooke of the Meteoroid Environments Office at Marshall Space Flight Center:
“Bright fireball at 8:18:52 PM CST – well to the south of our cameras, but still detected in all of them. It is too close to the horizon for the automated solution to be any good, so a manual solution will have to be done tomorrow. I can tell you the following:
1) It was not a member of the Leonid meteor shower.
2) Was at least the size of a baseball.
3) Very crude trajectory puts it to the southwest of Tuscaloosa. Moved northwest.
The video is from the Dalonega, GA camera….”