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A Bright Meteor Lit Up the New England Sky Before Exploding With a Loud Boom—and Its Pieces May Have Landed in Cape Cod Bay
Key takeaways
- NOAA via NASA Many residents of eastern Massachusetts were startled by a thunderous boom on Saturday afternoon.
- The explosive event occurred on May 30 at 2:06 p.m.
- Quick fact: What are super bright meteors called?
NOAA via NASA Many residents of eastern Massachusetts were startled by a thunderous boom on Saturday afternoon. It wasn’t a tree falling, nor—despite the shaking—an earthquake. The resounding noise came from a bolide, an ultrabright meteor that broke apart in the atmosphere.
The explosive event occurred on May 30 at 2:06 p.m. Eastern Daylight Time, as detected by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s GOES-19 weather satellite and observed by eyewitnesses, according to a social media post by NASA. The meteor was about three feet wide, and people reported seeing the glowing space rock, hearing its explosion or feeling the tremors from Delaware to Montreal, Robert Lunsford, fireball report coordinator for the American Meteor Society, tells the Associated Press.
Quick fact: What are super bright meteors called?