By Christine Haines
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If you were one of the people who spotted the bright flash in the sky around 6:25 Wednesday morning, you can add it to the list of rare occurrences of your lifetime.
While the occurrence of fireballs isn’t rare, most go unseen by most people, according to Robert Lunsford, the fireball coordinator for the American Meteor Society.
“It was a meteor that was larger and brighter than usual and we call it a fireball. Most people see only a few in their lifetime. They happen every day. You have to be in the right place at the right time and looking in the right direction,” Lunsford said.
Adam Resosky of New Eagle posted on the New Eagle and Mon City Area Scoop Facebook page asking if anyone else had seen the flash.
“Anyone else outside at 6:26 a.m. and see the meteor? I seen a flash of light then a trail of fire then it was out. Only lasted a few seconds!” Resosky asked.
Resosky said he initially thought it was lightning or a street light flashing. Resosky’s post prompted 31 responses, including one from Mark Behanna of Forward Township.
“I was driving on the turnpike a little east of Harrisburg. The whole sky lit up. It was a blue green color then turned red,” Behanna shared.
A similar post on the All About Elizabeth Forward Area Facebook page elicited 71 responses. Initially, most observers weren’t certain what they had seen. Some described it as lightning, others said they thought it was headlights they saw in the corner of their eye.
The cameras at the Allegheny Observatory in Pittsburgh, which is operated by the University of Pittsburgh, turned off shortly before the event occurred, so it wasn’t captured locally, according to Louis Coban, president of the Amateur Astronomer Association.
Coban said in ancient times the fireball generated more than social chatter.
“The appearance of a comet used to really just freak the ancients out. It really sowed chaos back in the day. To the ancients the skies were something constant,” Coban said.
Lunsford said most fireballs are seen by people who are sitting in traffic during early morning or evening rush hour. More than 260 people reported Wednesday’s fireball to the American Meteor Society and more posted to social media about the event.
The National Weather Service confirmed that it was not a weather-related event or anything else to do with their service.
“It wasn’t one of our weather balloons, I can tell you that,” said Myranda Fullerton, a meteorologist in the Pittsburgh office of the National Weather Service.
Some described it as an orange color, others orange with green.
“They have some exotic metals in them, so you can get greens and oranges,” Lunsford said.
Reports came from a wide area, Lunsford said, stretching from the Great Lakes, almost to the east coast, south to Tennessee and west to Illinois.
“Hundreds of eyewitnesses in the states of Pennsylvania, Ohio, West Virginia, Indiana, Kentucky, Virginia, New York, and Michigan, as well in southern Ontario, reported seeing a bright fireball,” William J. Cooke of the NASA Meteoroid Environments Office, wrote in a NASA analysis of the event.
According to Cooke, the event was caught on video cameras operated by NASA and the Southern Ontario Meteor Network.
“Analysis of the video data from these systems indicates that the fireball (which was caused by an asteroidal fragment weighing over 2 pounds) was at least as bright as the crescent moon at its peak, and first appeared 76 miles above Hanover Township in Pennsylvania, moving to the NW at 74,000 miles per hour.,” Cooke wrote.
The incident ended in a brilliant flash of light above East Liverpool, Ohio at an altitude of 53 miles, Cooke reported.
Lunsford said most meteors are very small and burn up before striking the earth. Every now and then a larger one will survive entering the lower atmosphere and scientists will try to track down the fragment for analysis.
“You don’t have to send a probe out to space to find out what’s there,” Lunsford said.