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Giant Fireball Spotted Over Eastern US

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fireball meteor WASHINGTON (Reuters) - A blazing meteor lit up the night sky like fireworks across a dozen eastern US states and prompted more than 200 sighting reports, the American Meteor Society said on Monday.

The meteor entered the Earth's atmosphere over central Pennsylvania late on Sunday and wowed observers from Virginia to Massachusetts in a "random fireball event," society spokesman Mike Hankey said.

Most of people who reported the fireball on the American Meteor Society website said it began as a brilliant white color and then turned yellow, green and orange.

A witness in Aliquippa, Pennsylvania, said the meteor "traveled like a bottle rocket from the clouds to the ground. The eastern sky it lit up and it went off like a firework and was gone."

"Biggest I've ever seen!" said an observer in The Plains, Virginia. "It looked like a transformer blew up," said another in Mt. Wolf, Pennsylvania. 

Other observers said the fireball looked like a plane plummeting to the ground or that it pulsed and appeared out of nowhere.

Here's what the meteor looked like from an Accuweather camera in York, PA:

meteor york

In some places, the flash was so bright it lit up the whole night sky:

You can also watch a full video of the fireball over New Jersey, as captured by the News12 New Jersey team.

A fireball is a meteor that is brighter than the planet Venus, and several thousand of them take place daily. The great majority take place over oceans or uninhabited areas, and many are masked by daylight, according to the society website.

The meteor over the US East Coast came a day after a fireball over the Pacific Northwest drew almost 200 comments on the website.

 

(Reuters reporting by John Clarke; Editing by Doina Chiacu)

SEE ALSO: Missed The Perseid Meteor Shower? This Time-Lapse Video Is Even Better Than Seeing It Yourself

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