Bright meteor passes over Texas, provides residents free fireball show

Craig Lloyd - Dec 7, 2012, 3:36pm CST
Bright meteor passes over Texas, provides residents free fireball show

Many residents in Houston, TX have reported an extremely bright light in the sky today, and no, they weren’t talking about the sun. It turns out that other people as far away as Dallas were also seeing the bright flashes. It turns out that it was only a meteor the size of a basketball passing by, according to NASA.

One of the witnesses in Dallas said he saw a green trail in the sky, paired with a loud boom. At about 6:45 am, residents saw the flashes of light coming from the sky. Of course most of them thought it was a comet or other type of space rock, but the National Weather Service guessed that it “may have been debris from Russian satellite COSMOS 2251 re-entering atmosphere.”

While some people were seeing green-colored light, a Houston resident said it was mostly orange and white. That same witness ended up taking a picture of the spectacle, as seen above. The American Meteor Society received 30 reported sightings, and based on the descriptions they received, it was believed to be a larger-than-normal “fireball” meteor.

Mike Hankey, from the American Meteor Society, said that “most meteors are only the size of small pebbles.” He continued by saying that “a meteor the size of a softball can produce light equivalent to the full moon for a short instant.” However, this one was the size of a basketball, so the light it emitted was probably around 3 to 4 times brighter than moonlight.

[via DallasNews]

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