RELATED ARTICLE: Neil DeGrasse Tyson: Refrigerator-Sized Asteroid Could Hit Earth SoonĬheck out more news and information on Space on Science Times. When a meteoroid survives a trip through the atmosphere and hits the ground, it's called a meteorite."
Think of them as 'space rocks.' When meteoroids enter Earth's atmosphere at high speed and burn up, the fireballs or 'shooting stars' are called meteors. Video captured from a Parkland home shows a flash in the sky that burst into light. "Meteoroids are objects in space that range in size from dust grains to small asteroids. A strange sight lit up the South Florida skies Monday night. Here's how NASA defines meteoroids, meteors, and meteorites, according to its website: According to the International Meteor Organization, these astronomical items go unnoticed when they fall over uninhabited areas throughout the day or under cloud cover. said fireballs are any meteor that appears in the atmosphere at least as brightly as Venus fireballs fall to Earth every day. It's a normal fireball and nothing to do with GW4- Jonathan McDowell April 13, 2021 "It's a normal fireball and nothing to do with GW4," he tweeted. It’s a chunk of an asteroid, per Jay O'Brien April 13, 2021Įven though 2021 GW4 passed close by the Earth, astronomer Jonathan McDowell of the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics disagreed with Covey's hypothesis. He said in a now-deleted tweet that the asteroid is known as 2021 GW4 – a space rock set to travel by Earth that night. CBS meteorologist Zach Covey said the fireball was most likely a "chunk of an asteroid." Jay O'Brien, a CBS News anchor in West Palm Beach, tweeted a screenshot of the explosion burning in mid-air shortly later. said the comet's measurement is about 14 feet (4 meters) across and left the Earth at a distance of 16,300 miles (26,200 kilometers). Others argued that the timing was purely coincidental.ĪLSO READ: Fireball With Whopping Force of 440 Pounds Explodes Over Vermont Sky Some skywatchers thought that the asteroid 2021 GW4, which is as large as a van, caused the fireball. But whatever survived is most likely cooling off at the ocean's floor. The Geostationary Lightning Mapper (GLM), a satellite-borne instrument that watches for brightness variations to keep track of lightning occurrences, detected the bright flash, they tweeted.Īmerican Meteor Society said per CNet that the blazing space rock most probably flew south to north across the Atlantic Ocean between Florida and the Bahamas. National Weather Service Tampa Bay also captured the fireball blowing up off the Florida coast. American Meteor Society also noted around 200 eyewitness reports, with a few dozen reporting hearing a sound. NPR said the meteor fell from the sky and disintegrated in a brief burst of light around 10 p.m. The noise may have been caused by a shock wave from the bolide breaking off or a sonic boom when it slammed into the atmosphere at high speed.
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