RALEIGH, N.C. (WNCN) — A fireball broke up in the sky over North Carolina this week, with witnesses across the state reporting seeing an object that crackled like fireworks.
According to NASA's meteor watch, the fireball was last spotted around 9:30 p.m. on June 25 near the North Carolina-Virginia border.
Witnesses in North Carolina, South Carolina, West Virginia, Virginia, Delaware, Maryland, Pennsylvania and New Jersey reported the bright meteor they saw last night to the American Meteor Society's website.
NASA's Meteor Watch said the event was also detected by NASA's meteor camera at Pisgah Institution of Astronomy in western North Carolina, as well as several publicly accessible cameras in the area.
“I saw this while driving and it was clearly visible in the sky – no clouds or trees blocking my view,” a North Carolina woman told NASA.
She described a glowing train with a fireworks-like trail.
Another person in Knightdale reported that it “looked like sparks of many colors and the flash was swift and beautiful.”
In Pittsboro, a witness described seeing “a bright flash towards the end just before hearing a crackling sound.”
“My first thought was fireworks. It was the lowest and closest meteor I'd ever seen. I quickly realized it wasn't a firework, but a bright green and orange thing flying very fast towards the ground. It lasted about a second,” the Charlotte man said in his report.
NASA Meteor Watch, after analyzing available data, announced that the fireball was first spotted 48 miles above the town of Allen Grove in upstate North Carolina.
According to NASA, the object was traveling west of North at 32,000 miles per hour, descended at a steep angle of 53 degrees to the horizontal, and traveled only 40 miles through the atmosphere before breaking up 28 miles above Lake Roanoke Rapids, just south of the North Carolina-Virginia border.
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