Bright blue fireball captured on video over Colorado

More than 40 people reported sighting a fireball Sunday morning, mostly over Colorado. The fireball was also seen in Wyoming and New Mexico, and 12 people submitted videos to the American Meteor Society.

In a video, captured on a porch camera in Commerce City, Colorado, the fireball appears to fall from the sky in a blue flame.

Another video, taken by Josh Ellis in Evergreen, Colorado, was shared with CBS Denver. Ellis said the fireball was so bright that she charged her solar lights.

“It was all in total darkness, and all of a sudden it lit up like it was a brightly lit moon,” said Doug Robinson, who captured video of the ball. fire over Boulder, Colorado.

Fireballs are bright meteors classified as brighter than the planet Venus, according to the company, a nonprofit that monitors meteors.

About six people described hearing a boom when observing a fireball in Colorado, a company employee told CBS Denver.

Chris Peterson, who works at the Cloudbait Observatory in central Colorado’s Rocky Mountains, said the fireball spotted Sunday “was descending very deep.”

“Ten or 20 miles may not seem very close to the ground, but when we think of the typical burning stars, we see things that are burning up to 60 to 70 miles high,” Peterson told CBS Denver. The observatory also recorded the fireball.

Peterson said such a single area event only occurs every few years.

“It’s unusual for such a large object,” said Peterson, associate researcher at the Denver Museum of Nature and Science. He said that usually 90 to 95 percent of meteors turn to dust and the pieces that reach the ground are between the size of gravel and the size of a baseball.

Peterson said there was a good chance there were at least several pounds of material on the floor, according to CBS Denver.

Last week, NASA said a fireball fell on the coast of North Carolina at about 32,000 miles an hour. It was one of at least five fireballs seen over the United States that same night.

The American Meteor Society received 148 fireball reports from Maryland, North Carolina, South Carolina, West Virginia, and Virginia, and the North Carolina fireball had the largest cluster of testimonies eyepieces, with more than 80 people. The fireball has been captured in at least two different videos.

Every day, several thousand fireball magnitude meteors occur in Earth’s atmosphere, according to the organization. However, the vast majority occurs over oceans and uninhabited areas and during the day, making them difficult to see.

It is also difficult to detect the fireballs that occur at night as not many people are around to notice them.

The brighter the fireball, the rarer the event. Fireballs are generally brighter than magnitude -4, which is roughly the same magnitude of the planet Venus in the morning or evening sky, depending on the organization.

“Experienced observers can expect to see only about 1 fireball of magnitude -6 or better every 200 hours of meteor observation, while a fireball of magnitude -4 can be expected every 200 hours. 8 pm or so, ”the organization said.