Community Corner
Baseball-Sized Meteor Passes Over Georgia, Alabama
The fireball lit up the sky and disintegrated in 3 seconds, creating sonic booms.
By Brande Poulnot
Brilliant light and loud booms reported last night across Georgia and Alabama were the result of a meteor seen as far away as Tennessee.
The fireball—a meteor brighter than the planet Venus—was captured on one of NASA's fireball cameras at Tellus Science Museum in Cartersville.
Tellus Astronomer David Dundee said the probable comet fragment "came in over Alabama last night at 9:18 pm," entering the Earth's atmosphere at 76,000 mph.
In 3 seconds, the baseball-sized fireball, which was 15 times brighter than Venus, "broke up" 25 miles above Woodstock, Alabama, according to Dundee.
Sonic booms resulted because the meteor penetrated so deep into the Earth's atmosphere, the Associated Press reports.
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