Many residents of the Greater Toronto Area (Canada) claim to have seen a “fireball” in the sky over the city on the afternoon of December 2, local media report.
Images recorded by the real-time camera service EarthCam show an object passing near a tower in Toronto. In other images, it is possible to see a strong flash over the city in broad daylight.
The American Meteor Society (AMS) recorded dozens of reports of sightings of the phenomenon also in New York and, to a lesser extent, in other states across the country, including Virginia, Michigan, Maryland and Ohio.
According to the AMS, the fireball, which also caused a loud bang in some regions, was actually a meteor.
“Traveling westward at 56,000 miles per hour (90,000 km/h), it broke into pieces at an altitude of approximately 22 miles (35 km), producing a bright flash reported by the public and caught in videos”
the agency explained on its website.
It is estimated that the astronomical object entered the Earth ‘s atmosphere at an angle of 45 degrees, about 50 kilometers north of Syracuse, New York, reports Denis Vida, a member of the Department of Physics and Astronomy at the University of Western Ontario CTV News. According to the expert, before disintegrating, the meteor was the size of a basketball.
