New York City, home to shows of all kinds, saw a different kind Tuesday when a meteor streaked across the city’s skyline and disintegrated over nearby New Jersey.
NASA Meteor Watch posted on Facebook that the “daylight fireball” originated over the city and traveled an estimated 61,000 kilometers per hour (38,000 miles per hour) as it moved west into neighboring New Jersey.
Videos posted on social media showed quick streaks of light across the sky.
Scientists were unable to determine the meteor’s exact path because reports were based on eyewitness accounts without official camera or satellite input.
The meteor was first seen late Tuesday morning about 82 kilometers (51 miles) above Manhattan, according to William Cooke, head of NASA’s Meteoroid Environments Office.
Eyewitness reports on social media said the meteor’s traveling show was accompanied by loud booms and shock waves.
“We are in Red Hook, Brooklyn,” one person posted on NASA Meteor Watch’s Facebook page. “We thought yet another transformer blowing, a not uncommon feature of heat waves.”
Another person posted that she “felt it in Tinton Falls,” New Jersey. “Thought it was thunder. Windows shook.”
Cooke said the noise and vibrations could be explained by military aircraft near the meteor.
New York’s sky show was not unusual, said Cooke, who added that the city hosts a meteor show every year or two.
The meteor posed no danger to Earthlings. NASA Meteor Watch said on Facebook that “small rocks like the one producing this fireball are only about a foot in diameter, incapable of surviving all the way to the ground.”
When meteoroids — small space rocks ranging in size from a grain of dust to a small asteroid — enter Earth’s or another planet’s atmosphere at high speed and burn up, the fireballs, or “shooting stars,” are called meteors, according to NASA.