Hundreds report seeing a bright fireball in northeastern U.S.

Less than two weeks after a bright fireball lit up the sky above the Great Lakes, scattering space pebbles on their shores, another spectacular meteor impressed skywatchers in the Northeast. 

The streak of light that sliced through the sky on Thursday (Dec. 1) at about 7:30 p.m. EST (0030 GMT on Dec. 2), was seen by at least 737 witnesses across the states of Michigan, Indiana, Ohio, New York, Pennsylvania, Virginia, Maryland, Tennessee, and South and North Carolina according to the American Meteor Society (AMS). Sightings in Canada's Ontario province were also reported.

Quite a few doorbell cameras as well as meteocams (cameras aimed skyward to capture fireballs) captured the meteor, prompting their owners to proudly share the footage with the AMS as well as on Twitter. 

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A bright streak of light caused by a meteor passing above north-eastern U.S. (Image credit: American Meteor Society/ Elizabeth S. /https://fireball.amsmeteors.org/members/imo_photo/view_photo?photo_id=13897)

"Just watched a gorgeous green & orange bolide zoom to Earth east of Granville — anyone else see a meteor tonight in eastern Ohio?" Twitter user Jeff Gill shared shortly after the event. 

His tweet elicited quite a few responses from other lucky witnesses. 

Phil Haddad from Pittsburgh was even luckier, catching the fireball on his doorbell camera.

"I don’t often tweet, but when I do it’s because I captured a meteor on my doorbell cam #pittsburgh #meteor," he said, sharing the footage proudly on Twitter.

Another Twitter user, Robert Tinney from Cleveland, responded by sharing his doorbell cam footage. 

No further information about the nature of this space rock, which AMS labeled 9579-2022, has been made available so far, including whether any of it could have reached the ground. 

On Nov. 19, fragments of a 3-foot (1 meter) space rock fell in the same region on the shores of Lake Ontario. Astronomers detected that space rock three hours before it entered Earth's atmosphere and were able to calculate where it might hit the ground. The rock was only the sixth ever detected before smashing into our planet. 

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Tereza Pultarova
Senior Writer

Tereza is a London-based science and technology journalist, aspiring fiction writer and amateur gymnast. Originally from Prague, the Czech Republic, she spent the first seven years of her career working as a reporter, script-writer and presenter for various TV programmes of the Czech Public Service Television. She later took a career break to pursue further education and added a Master's in Science from the International Space University, France, to her Bachelor's in Journalism and Master's in Cultural Anthropology from Prague's Charles University. She worked as a reporter at the Engineering and Technology magazine, freelanced for a range of publications including Live Science, Space.com, Professional Engineering, Via Satellite and Space News and served as a maternity cover science editor at the European Space Agency.