Tuesday evening, around 9:45 pm. a large number of people all over the region saw a bright flash of light move quickly across the sky.  What they saw was a kind of glorified meteor called a fireball.  Most meteors are made of a rock from space smaller than a pea.

As they enter Earth’s atmosphere at an extremely high velocity, these pebbles burn up quickly, usually at an altitude of 40 to 75 miles, producing what we call a shooting star.  A fireball happens when a larger rock, fist-sized or larger, moves into the atmosphere.  These produce a more spectacular, fiery display as they burn up.  Only very rarely do meteors reach the ground.  The Barringer Crater near Flagstaff, AZ, is a mile wide, 500 foot deep hole from a meteor impact some 50,000 years ago.

That meteor is thought to have been about the size of half a football field before the impact.