A mysterious fireball streaked across the sky in Colorado on Sunday morning, leaving onlookers scratching their heads at what the glowing ball could have been.
The object has since been identified as a meteor after video and photos of the fireball were quickly shared online. One video came from a person’s doorbell security camera that caught the light show.
The event happened at around 3:30 a.m. local time.
NASA received numerous reports of loud booms and shaking in the area caused by shockwaves when the meteor disintegrated in the sky, CNN shared in a report.
The American Meteor Society also received nearly 100 reports about the event, mostly coming from residents in Colorado, though it was seen and recorded in Nebraska, New Mexico, Utah, and Wyoming.
“The interesting thing and the excitement for this one was that it was observed by so many people,” Margaret Landis, a research scientist with the University of Colorado, shared with 9News. “So, it was not a particularly small one.”
NASA described the meteor as a fireball and estimated that the meteor was moving through the sky at approximately 41,000 mph.
The term “fireball” is used when describing meteors that are extremely bright and “spectacular enough to be seen over a very wide area.”
Landis shared that there is a good chance the fireball came from a piece of the comet 109P/Swift-Tuttle, which is the comet that caused the Perseid meteor shower that happens every August.
NASA says the meteor shower produces more fireball meteors than any other known shower.
But the question of where the fireball came from is still unanswered, and Landis says it could have come from several things.
“The best way to figure out a meteor’s origin is to recover a piece that makes it to Earth,” Landis said. “But other types of analysis can also tell you that information. If you can figure out the meteor’s velocity, that would give you a clue to the angle it entered the atmosphere, and then you could trace it back to its origin.”
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