When a meteoroid crashes through the Earth's atmosphere, it heats up due to friction from the air, creates a streak of light in the sky, and becomes a meteor. People often refer to meteors as fireballs, shooting stars, or falling stars because of the bright light they create. National Geographic said that even the smallest meteors could be visible from miles away because of their brightness and how fast they travel.
The fastest meteor they recorded traveled at 44 miles (71 kilometers) per second. The faster and larger a meteor is, the brighter it glows. But the meteor that lit up Colorado's night sky last Friday, February 18, seemed to deviate from the typical speed of a meteor based on the analysis conducted by astronomers.
Atypical Speed for A Meteor
Last Friday night, the American Meteor Society was flooded with 30 reports of a bright and long-lasting fireball across the Colorado sky at around 8:30 PM.
UPI reported that astronomers had analyzed the speed at which the meteor streaked across the night sky and discovered it had an unusually long path and was moving at a slower rate than a meteor would typically travel. Fiske Planetarium director John Keller said that the meteor that sparked the dozens of reports was a bolide or a large meteorite.
Astronomer Chris Peterson from the Cloudbait Observatory also told local news outlet CBS Denver that the instruments that tracked the meteor's path seen in Colorado started to follow it from Steamboat, Colo to the border of New Mexico. He added that it was unusually slow and had an atypical long path.
Peterson gave two possible explanations: the meteor might have bounced off the atmosphere and headed back to space, or the meteor may have burned up completely. The space rock is estimated to have traveled about 60,000 miles per hour, which is considered unusually slow for a fireball. He believes that none of the meteor's fragments could have landed on Earth.
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Different Types of Meteors
According to National Geographic, meteors can be categorized based on their size, brightness, and proximity to Earth. Meteors are earthgrazers that bounce off the upper atmosphere and re-enters the space, while some break up and streak through the sky in bright light.
The most famous earthgrazer "1972 Great Daylight Fireball," entered Earth's atmosphere and streaked through the sky of Utah and traveled at 9 miles per second (15 kilometers per second). The meteor exited the atmosphere over Alberta, Canada, witnessed by thousands of people.
One of the types of meteors is the fireballs, which could range in size from a basketball to a small car and are probably the most common type. Some experts claim that fireballs are bright and longer-lasting than any planet.
Meanwhile, a bolide is even brighter and more massive and often explodes in the atmosphere, where sounds can be heard and felt on Earth's surface. Some of them are classified as fireballs that produce a sonic boom as they streak through the sky.
Lastly, a superbolide is brighter than a bolide and creates a large explosion that can become a natural hazard and pose a danger to people. In 2013, a superbolide passed over Chelyabinsk, Russia, wherein the explosion could be compared to 500 kilotons of TNT.
Check out more news and information on Meteors in Science Times.
