Western U.S. Skies Light Up From Midnight Meteor

Brian Neudorff @ 10:04 am November 19th, 2009 · No Comments

At exactly 12:07 am Mountain Standard Time last night a bolide meteor crashed into Earth’s atmosphere above the western United States. Witnesses in Colorado, Utah, Wyoming and Idaho say the fireball “turned night into day” and issued shock waves that “shook the ground” when it exploded. This flooded phone lines for 9-1-1 and local television stations. SpaceWeather.com reports that the fireball was so bright “it actually turned the sky noontime blue.”

When a meteor enters the atmosphere, it gives off a lot of heat and light. Folks at the Clark Planetarium in Salt Lake City, UT say this rock was big–between the size of a microwave and washer-dryer unit.

Although the fireball appeared during the Leonid meteor shower, it was not a Leonid. Infrasound recordings of the blast suggest a small asteroid hitting Earth’s atmosphere and exploding with an energy of 0.5 to 1 kiloton of TNT.

For more news on this fireball click here