How often do meteors enter Earth’s atmosphere?
Observers reported the sighting on the American Meteor Society’s website, saying it was bright, as it bounced, flickered and then disappeared.
The daytime meteor over the tri-state area was quite the sight on Tuesday morning.
It’s not often we see them during the daytime.
Observers reported the sighting on the American Meteor Society’s website, saying it was bright, as it bounced, flickered and then disappeared.
It burned up in our atmosphere, like most meteors normally do. So how rare is this exactly?
According to NASA, the Earth gets hit a lot.
There are more than 100 tons of dust and small sand-sized particles that try to come through the atmosphere daily.
Most go unnoticed, unless there is a very active meteor shower going on.
Occasionally, there are huge football-sized meteors, and those hit every 2,000 years or so.
Then there are somewhat smaller ones the size of automobiles and those can hit as often as once a year and produce a bright fireball.
The meteor seen earlier this week, according to NASA Meteor Watch, was approximately a foot in diameter, much smaller than a car but was still large enough to be seen during the daytime and also produce a sonic boom.
The speed was determined to be about 38,000 mph as it burned up 29 miles above NYC. No meteorites were produced, as it did not hit the ground.
Meteors of this size are too small to be tracked, but the larger ones that can make it all the way to the ground certainly are.
The ones that are larger than 30-50 meters and tracked by the Planetary Defense Coordination Office.
Next month is the famous Perseid meteor shower and many observers wondered if this was part of that shower.
Technically, the shower starts up in late July, but the peak of it isn’t until the second week of August.
You never truly know when you’ll see a “shooting star,” so you may just want to keep looking up!
