Fireball Lights Up Tampa Bay's Night Sky; Takes Spotlight in Baseball Game

It wasn't a grand slam that lit up the crowd at a baseball game in Florida Wednesday evening. But last night, a meteor streaked through the sky and stole the show.

People throughout Tampa Bay and the rest of Florida reported seeing a fireball streak across the sky at around 9:50 p.m. local time.

Residents from Naples to Ft. Lauderdale and north to Jacksonville used Twitter to share videos of the event. The fireball, according to witnesses, emitted an extraordinarily intense light.

@twitter|https://twitter.com/RicKearbeyWTSP/status/1403030989295656962

As of Thursday morning, the American Meteor Society had received almost 70 reports.

Jonathan Tidwell claims the fans went crazy at a game above in Jacksonville. Tidwell said, "I heard people saying What!!! Where!!!? Is that a UFO!? Did you see that? That's so cool!!"

@twitter|https://twitter.com/RicKearbeyWTSP/status/1403032026412994565

News4Jax said the fireballs heat up rapidly as they broke apart between 30 miles and 70 miles up in the sky and traveled at tens of thousands of miles per hour, causing them to explode. This may be seen in the video.

It was greenish in hue, which you can't see. This indicates that it was manufactured of nickel, which is a green-burning metal.

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What is a Fireball?

A fireball is observed when a meteor is unusually bright and stunning enough to be seen across a large region. Meteors, often known as shooting stars, are the visible tracks of meteoroids that have sped through the Earth's atmosphere.

A meteor is produced when a small piece of an asteroid or comet, known as a meteoroid, enters Earth's atmosphere and burns up. Objects that cause fireballs can be as large as three feet in diameter.

Bolides are the technical term for fireballs that erupt in the atmosphere.

Fireballs usually generate light brighter than magnitude -4, which is about the same magnitude as the planet Venus in the morning or evening sky, according to the American Meteor Society as reported by WTSP.

The International Meteor Organization, a non-profit, claimed these astronomical objects go undiscovered when they fall over deserted places during the day or behind cloud cover.

NASA defines meteoroids as objects in space that range in size from dust grains to small asteroids. "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. When a meteoroid survives a trip through the atmosphere and hits the ground, it's called a meteorite."

According to Science Times, around 5,200 tons of cosmic debris, including micrometeorites and fireballs, fall on Earth each year. At the very least, that's 5.2 million kilograms every year, or 14 tons each day. That's the weight of a garbage truck every day.

However, there's no reason to be concerned. Micrometeorites, according to experts, slow down from high speeds in the atmosphere before drifting down to Earth. It poses no danger and, in fact, reveals a great deal about what's going on in space.