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At least dozens of people said they saw a brilliant fireball over Colorado on Sunday morning (October 3).
The American Meteor Society (AMS) listed more than 40 reports in three states, primarily in the Denver area, around 4:30 a.m. CDT (5:30 a.m. EDT; 10:30 a.m. GMT). Observers saw the meteor at least as far south as Santa Fe, New Mexico; the two cities are separated by approximately 400 miles (640 kilometers).
Video: Fireball over Colorado captured by multiple cameras
Related: 5 amazing fireballs captured on video
A resident of Evergreen, Colo., Reported that the flash was so bright it charged his solar-powered lights, according to a local CBS report. A robotic astronomical observatory in the Colorado Rockies called Cloudbait Observatory captured the footage on its cameras, the report added – and various Colorado doorbell cameras also spotted the flash.
The fireballs are the result of slightly larger meteors – fragments of space dust – that hit Earth’s atmosphere at high speed. Pieces of a meteor rarely make it to the ground, and these pieces are called meteorites.
No one has reported meteorites from this Colorado fireball yet, although local scientists are watching and asking the public to report anything they find. Suspicious meteors should not be touched with bare hands so as not to contaminate them, as oils and microbes on your skin can degrade space rock, according to NASA. Our sister site LiveScience has a brief guide to finding meteorites.
“Whether or not something is found remains to be seen, but there’s a good chance there are at least several pounds of material on the ground,” Chris Peterson, associate researcher at the Denver Museum of Nature, told CBS. also works at Cloudbait. .
Peterson estimated that the fireball shattered about 10 to 20 miles (16 to 32 km) above the ground, a relatively low altitude compared to the typical flash of light at around 60 to 70 miles (97 113 km). More generally, fireballs can enter the atmosphere at speeds far exceeding the sound barrier – between 25,000 and 160,000 mph (around 40,000 to just under 260,000 km / h), according to the AMS.
While most fireballs (like this one) are harmless, large fireballs that are very close to the ground can cause serious damage. A 2013 meteor over the city of Chelyabinsk in central Russia created an explosion equivalent to about 400 to 500 kilotons of TNT, about 26 to 33 times the energy released by the Hiroshima bomb . Fragments of the fireball are said to have damaged buildings, shattered windows and injured more than 1,200 people.
NASA has a network of telescopes and partner institutions that regularly scan the skies for larger asteroid threats, as part of its Planetary Defense Coordination Office. Asteroids are larger space rocks that orbit the sun, and some of these space rocks are approaching Earth. Fortunately, no imminent threat to Earth has been found, although the agency continues to search just in case.
Follow Elizabeth Howell on Twitter @howellspace. Follow us on Twitter @Spacedotcom and on Facebook.
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