Community Corner

Look: Tellus Video Shows Meteor, Maybe the Brightest in Years

The 90-pound fireball passed over the southeast traveling 14 miles per second.

Perhaps one of the brightest meteors in some time passed over the southeastern United States about 3:30 this morning and Tellus Science Museum's NASA fireball camera in Cartersville captured video of the object traveling 14 miles per second. 

Yes, that's 14 miles per second.

Tellus has one of the cameras in NASA's All-sky Fireball Network, which was initiated by NASA's Meteoroid Environment Office "with the goal of observing meteors brighter than the planet Venus, which are called fireballs," according to NASA's website.

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Described as more brilliant than the last quarter moon, the fireball that lit the sky early this morning was a little more than a foot in diameter and weighed about 90 pounds, Tellus spokesman Joe Schulman said in an email.

Described as a "very bright" meteor, it "was possibly the brightest one in five years," Schulman said. "It was so bright, the camera had to be re-calibrated." 

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NASA is working to determine from where in the solar system it originated.


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