By The newspaper
19 Jul 2024, 01:22 AM EDT
The US Space Agency (NASA) confirmed that a meteor flew over New York City moving at 38,000 miles per hour before descending at a steep angle and disintegrating on Tuesday morning.
Several people reported feeling a tremor and/or seeing a fireball in the sky. The American Meteor Society website shows about 20 reports of fireballs in New Jersey, New York and Connecticut, with additional reports in Delaware, Pennsylvania and Maryland between 10 a.m. and noon Tuesday, it said. NBC News.
NASA had originally considered the event a “preliminary and unfinalized estimate” while it continued to gather data and reports. The space agency later confirmed that the meteor originated over New York City and moved westward to New Jersey. It also increased its speed from 34,000 to 38,000 mph.
NASA explained that it does not track meteors of this small size far from Earth “so the only time we know about them is when they hit the atmosphere and generate a meteor or fireball.”
Daytime fireballs are quite rare and New Yorkers were able to see one”
“You have to have one bright enough and it has to be right over New York to get all that attention. Daytime fireballs are pretty rare and New Yorkers got to see one this morning,” Bill Cooke of NASA’s Meteoroid Office said Tuesday.
The space agency originally estimated that the meteor had passed over the Statue of Liberty before disintegrating 47 kilometres (29 miles) above midtown Manhattan without producing any meteorites. It later updated that estimate after receiving more eyewitness accounts.
Several residents in the tri-state area reported feeling a tremor or hearing a loud boom Tuesday morning. Reports hit social media shortly after 11 a.m. with some users saying it felt like an earthquake and others thought they heard thunder. Some of the reports included parts of northern New Jersey, Brooklyn and Queens.
The U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) website did not have any records on its maps showing recent earthquakes of magnitude 2.5 or greater. A spokesperson said it received reports of shaking in northeastern New Jersey and Staten Island on Tuesday, but “an examination of seismic data in the area showed no evidence of an earthquake. The USGS has no direct evidence of the source of the shaking.” It was also thought that simultaneous military activity in the area may have been the cause of the shaking or noise felt by residents.
2024 has been a leap year and one full of natural phenomena. In May, planet Earth experienced the biggest solar storm in decades, a phenomenon that causes serious geomagnetic disturbances, but also offered a spectacle of the northern lights in New York and other states of the country.
Other natural phenomena in New York and the tri-state area in April included a series of hundreds of earthquakes and a total solar eclipse.