Radiant Alabama fireball was '40 times as bright as full moon,' NASA says
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A luminous fireball streaked across the Alabama night sky Friday, setting off NASA sensors and capturing the attention of on-lookers.
The fireball was seen by spectators and NASA cameras around midnight at an altitude of 58 miles above Turkeytown, Alabama. It rocketed across the sky traveling at 53,700 miles per hour before fragmenting 18 miles above the town of Grove Oak, according to NASA officials.
"It was an extremely bright event, seen through partly cloudy skies and triggering every camera and sensor operated by the Meteoroid Environment Office in the region," Bill Cooke of the NASA Meteoroid Environment Office based in Alabama, said in a statement.
Cooke said the fireball was "at least 40 times as bright as the full moon" and was caused by a small asteroid 6 feet, or 2 meters, in diameter.
The size of fireballs can range from 1 cm, about the size of a pea, to two meters and above — although Earth is typically hit with fireballs around 1 meter large. Fireballs are broken off from meteoroids, a type of small asteroid, according to the American Meteor Society.
Around two to three fireballs enter Earth's orbit weekly across the world. But the brighter the fireball, the more the event, according to the American Meteor Society.
https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation-now/2018/08/20/alabama-fireball-nasa-meteor-moon/1040078002/
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