Green ball of fire: Twitter reacts to reports of mysterious streaking object over US
Excited stargazers got themselves into a lather Friday night after a mysterious green fireball was seen streaking over northeastern areas of the US.
The object, reported in the skies above 10 states, including Pennsylvania and Washington DC, was captured by the UTSC astronomical observatory in Toronto.
The #UTSC meteor camera just captured this video. Note: automated tweet of unverified raw data, might not be a #meteor. 🔭🌠 pic.twitter.com/YQWyLCRSuK
— UTSC Observatory (@UTSCObservatory) August 26, 2017
The American Meteor Society (AMS) said that it had received more than 300 reports from people who had seen the object.
“The fireball was seen primarily from Pennsylvania but was also seen from Ohio, West Virginia, Virginia, Maryland, New Jersey, New York, Connecticut, Rhode Island, Pennsylvania, Washington DC, and Massachusetts,” the group added in a statement.
Thrilled observers took to social media to discuss what they had seen.
Did anyone just see a green fireball go across the sky? #dc
— Evan Roseberry (@evanroseberry) August 26, 2017
Did anybody just see a bright green fireball over DC? Moving maybe east to west? @capitalweather
— Brian Reitz (@flipperman75) August 26, 2017
Anyone else just see a large green fireball flying over the sky in DC? #ufo#dc
— Jessica John (@CordeLisse) August 26, 2017
People still recovering from the barrage of Friday’s news events, which included Hurricane Harvey making landfall in Texas and US President Donald Trump’s pardoning of former Arizona Sheriff Joe Arpaio, found it difficult to digest the fireball’s appearance.
Adding green fireball in the skies to this very normal series of events https://t.co/yLNaTEK5W9
— Jennifer Green (@JelitaJane) August 26, 2017
Leave twitter for like 2 hours and come back to
— Christopher Ingraham (@_cingraham) August 26, 2017
Gorka firing
NK missile
Arpaio pardon
Massive hurricane
Green fireball on east coast https://t.co/uMlYEy9V7m
It is not yet known for certain what the green object was, but according to the American Meteor Society, most fireballs are most likely very bright meteors.
About 10 to 15 meteorites fall to Earth each day. However, sightings are rare since they often fall over the ocean or during daylight hours.
