Watch meteor momentarily turn night into day as fireball streaks across Colorado night sky
If you weren't awake to catch a glimpse of the unusually bright meteor that streaked across the Colorado sky on Sunday, you're in luck: plenty of video was captured of the astrological event.
Around 3:30 a.m. Sunday morning, doorbell and security cameras captured a fireball illuminating the night sky with a glow some reported as being green-ish or yellow, while others said it appeared red.
The American Meteor Society received more than 90 reports about the event, many of which were from Colorado. Sightings were also recorded in Nebraska, New Mexico, Utah and Wyoming and social media quickly populated with videos and photos.
According to NASA, the term "fireball" is used to describe particularly bright meteors that are "spectacular enough to be seen over a very wide area."
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A meteoroid is a fragment of an asteroid - a rocky object that orbits the sun like a planet but is too small to be a planet - or comet - a large object made of dust and ice that orbits the Sun. By extension, meteors, also known as shooting stars, are the visible paths meteoroids leave behind when entering Earth's atmosphere at a high velocity.
Fireballs are even bigger and brighter, giving off an unusual level of light, making them easily viewable from the ground. The term "fireball" is often used interchangeably to refer to a "bolides," which is a fireball that explodes in the atmosphere.
While objects that cause fireballs can exceed one meter, or more than three feet, in size, they are usually too small to survive passing through the Earth's atmosphere in one piece, thought fragments are sometimes recovered.
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