Fireball Spotted Over Southern Mississippi, NASA Confirms
upstart writes:
Fireball spotted over southern Mississippi, NASA confirms:
More than 30 people in Arkansas, Louisiana and Mississippi reported seeing the exceptionally bright meteor in the sky around 8 a.m. Wednesday after hearing loud booms in Claiborne County, Mississippi, and surrounding areas, NASA reported. It was first spotted 54 miles (87 kilometers) above the Mississippi River, near Alcorn, Mississippi, officials said.
"This is one of the nicer events I have seen in the GLM (Geostationary Lightning Mappers) data," said Bill Cooke, lead of NASA's Meteoroid Environments Office at Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Alabama.
The object, which scientists called a bolide, moved southwest at a speed of 55,000 miles per hour (88,500 kilometers per hour), breaking into pieces as it descended deeper into Earth's atmosphere. It disintegrated about 34 miles (55 kilometers) above a swampy area north of the unincorporated Concordia Parish community of Minorca in Louisiana.
[...] At its peak, the fireball was more than 10 times brighter than a full moon, NASA said. "What struck me as unusual was how few eyewitness reports we had given the skies were so clear," said Cooke. "More people heard it than saw it."
Citation: Fireball spotted over southern Mississippi, NASA confirms (2022, April 29) retrieved 29 April 2022 from https://phys.org/news/2022-04-fireball-southern-mississippi-nasa.html
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