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Home security cameras in the Denver area captured the moment a fireball shone in the sky early in the morning on Sunday.
The American Meteor Society has received more than 40 reports of the meteor, which could be seen by those who wake up around 4:30 a.m.
Doug Robinson, from Boulder, said: “It was all in the dark, and all of a sudden it lit up.”
Robinson told KCNC-TV that he initially thought the fireball was lightning.
More than 40 people reported the sighting of a fireball to the American Meteor Society early Sunday morning as it soared into the Colorado skies.
This rare sighting, which has been determined to be a superbolid, only occurs every few years as it reaches a magnitude 100 times brighter than a full moon.
“We didn’t know if it was something else, could it be space debris?” He added.
Sightings of the fireball were also seen in Wyoming and New Mexico with 12 other videos recorded in those areas.
Six of those reports told the organization that they had also heard a boom.
Chris Peterson, of the Cloudbait Observatory, told KCNC the sound meant the meteor was unusually close to the ground.
“It’s unusual for such a big object and I guess it was something on the order of a ton of rock,” the network said.
Peterson also added that most of the fireball’s debris would have turned to dust, but tiny fragments could have fallen to the ground.
“Whether or not something is found remains to be seen,” he said.
Witnesses reported the sighting not only in Colorado, but also parts of Wyoming and New Mexico.
This rare sighting, which only occurs every few years, was determined by Peterson to be a supersolid, believed to have reached magnitude 100 times brighter than a full moon, according to The Coloradoan.
“So it’s that kind of event of a lifetime. Something, an amazing little piece of nature that you should savor to have seen, ”he added.
American Meteor Society fireball report coordinator Robert Lunsford said the fireball may have been part of the South Taurids meteor shower.
The South Taurids meteor shower is heaviest during the fall season between September and November, the time of year when the planet passes through the meteor stream, according to Earth Sky.
Doug Robinson of Boulder and his wife Kate captured the moment with their home security camera
The annual Gemunid meteor shower is expected to peak in Colorado between December 13 and 14 for those who missed the fireball.
“If people want to come together, they will have another opportunity to make another wish,” Lunsford said.
The scientific organization also said that several thousand undetected fireballs pass through Earth’s atmosphere every day and travel at speeds between 25,000 and 160,000 miles per hour.
These sightings go undetected because they occur in daylight and across vast oceans and uninhabited areas as well as at night when no one is around to see them.
Large numbers of fireballs, however, disintegrate before they reach the ground to cause significant damage.
Another fireball had been reported a week earlier along the North Carolina coast at a speed of 32,000 miles per hour with 148 reports to the American Meteor Society from a handful of states. the east coast such as Maryland, South Carolina, Virginia and West Virginia.
A recent map from the Center for Near Earth Object Studies (CNEOS) at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory compiled data from 1988 to 2021 on fireballs detected by government sensors.
The world map shows points, of four different sizes and colors, which are proportional to the impact energy (kinetics) of each fireball, the total energy that the meteoroid brought into the atmosphere due to its speed.
Scientists use the kinetic energy given off by the fireball, sound waves, and energy at other wavelengths to determine size before it even enters Earth’s atmosphere.
Using such calculations helped scientists determine the fireball meteor that fell on Chelyabinsk, Russia on February 15, 2013 was 65 feet in diameter, which is the largest shown on the map.
The world map shows points, of four different sizes and colors, which are proportional to the impact energy (kinetics) of each fireball, the total energy that the meteoroid brought into the atmosphere due to his speed
This fireball exploded over the Ural Mountains, causing a shock wave that shattered windows, damaged buildings and injured 1,600 people.
The meteorite shattered into several pieces when it entered the atmosphere, dispersing debris and creating a shock wave estimated at 20 atomic bombs from Hiroshima.
The second largest cluster of fireballs shown on the map mainly fell around the Pacific Ocean and neighboring countries, such as Fiji and other islands surrounding Asia.
The United States has been hit by smaller meteorites, but not as much as other parts of the world.
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