Daytime Fireball Map (via), and a still from Deep Impact
Did you see something flying through the sky yesterday afternoon? Don't worry, they aren't coming for us (yet!), turns out it was just a rare mid-day meteor. The sightings quickly accumulated on Twitter, where one woman declared, "Just saw a weird comet-like thingy go over Roosevelt Island." It was also spotted over Manhattan, and as far away as Pennsylvania.
NASA scientist Bill Cooke says it was likely traveling at a speed of 33,500 m.p.h. as it entered the Earth's atmosphere. He added, "My crude estimate of the energy of this fireball is about 100 tons of TNT, which means it was capable of producing a crater 125 feet in diameter and about 15 feet deep." As a comparison, the comet in Deep Impact was almost 3 miles wide!
The American Meteor Society (AMS) confirmed, and noted, "With it terminating over the Atlantic Ocean, there is no hope for recovering any possible debris." Don't even bother looking for the debris of the UFO meteor, nothing to see here!
