Akron-area residents got a chance to wish on a real “shooting star” Wednesday night as a bright meteor was seen crossing over the northeastern United States into Canada around 6:50 p.m.
The American Meteor Society received more than 335 reports by 5 p.m. Thursday of a large fireball glowing over 11 states and into Ontario. A majority of the sightings lasted between one and seven seconds, but an observer in West Virginia documented a 20-second sighting.
Observers said the meteor had a colorful tail, and some recorded seeing fragments split from the meteor, but it is unconfirmed whether any fragments fell to the earth as meteorites.
An observer in Kent, Ohio, said, “It seemed very large in the sky with a long trail.”
Under a Facebook post from Akron media site 330ToGO, residents expressed their excitement about seeing the phenomenon. One commenter shared a car dashboard camera video of the meteor.
“Several thousand meteors of fireball magnitude occur in the Earth’s atmosphere each day,” according to the American Meteor Society. But daylight can mask fireballs that don’t occur over oceans or uninhabited areas.
What is a meteor?
According to NASA, when meteoroids – rocks in outer space – enter Earth’s atmosphere at a high speed and burn up, they are classified as meteors. The meteoroids break off from larger bodies such as asteroids, moons or other planets, and can range in size from dust grains to small asteroids.
Meteroroids smaller than a football field typically break apart in the atmosphere, but it is estimated that 48.5 tons of meteoritic materials fall to earth each day.
If a meteoroid makes contact with earth, it is called a meteorite, and these typically range between the size of a pebble and a fist.
