FEW. BRADFORD. THANK YOU. A FIERY OBJECT WAS SEEN FALLING FROM THE SKY THIS AFTERNOON ACROSS THE SOUTHEAST. NASA CONFIRMED THE PROBABLE METEORITE FELL IN BLACKSVILLE, GEORGIA TODAY. CHECK OUT THESE VIDEOS. A MYSTERIOUS STREAK OF LIGHT THROUGH THE SKY. SHOCKING ONLOOKERS. A METEOR IS DESCRIBED AS WHEN A SMALL SPACE ROCK BURNS UP IN THE EARTH’S ATMOSPHERE. A METEORITE IS THE SPACE ROCK ITSELF. LANDING ON THE EARTH’S SURFACE. I HAPPENED TO LOOK OUT THE WINDOW OF MY OFFICE OVER HERE AND SAW A GREAT BIG FIREBALL COME DOWN JUST OVER THESE TREES. RIGHT HERE. AND I DIDN’T KNOW WHAT IT WAS AND HAPPENED TO CATCH IT ON CAMERA. AND THEN TO MAKE SURE I SAW WHAT I SAW. AND THE AMERICAN. AMERICAN METEOR SOCIETY SAYS THIS CAN HAPPEN IN THOUSANDS EVERY DAY, BUT THEY’RE USUALLY HARDER TO SPOT BECAUSE ON WHERE THEY FALL AND WHAT TIME. THIS AFTERNOON WE SPOKE WITH A FURMAN UNIVERSITY PROFESSOR ABOUT HOW RARE SIGHTING LIKE THIS IS. DAVID MOFFAT, AN ASTROPHYSICIST WHO OVERSEES THE UNIVERSITY’S PLANETARIUM AND OBSERVATORY, SAYS TODAY’S METEOR. TODAY’S METEOR IS THE BRIGHTEST. HE CAN RECALL FALLING DURING THE DAY IN THE U.S., MOFFAT DESCRIBED WHAT WHAT WE WERE ABLE TO WITNESS WAS THE METEOR BEING SUPERHEATED, CREATING A TRAIL OF PLASMA OR METAL BEING TURNED TO GAS. HE ALSO ESTIMATED THAT THE SIZE OF THE METEOR WAS NO LARGER THAN A METER. LESS THAN A METER, BUT BIGGER, BUT PROBABLY AS BIG AS A TENNIS BALL. ANYTHING BIGGER THAN THAT, IT WOULD MAKE A MUCH MORE DRAMATIC EFFECT FROM PREVIOUS OBSERVATIONS THAT PEOPLE HAVE MADE. SOMETHING THAT SIZE BEING VISIBLE IN THE DAYTIME IS A LARGER OBJECT, SO IT’S TENNIS BALL SIZE OR BIGGER. AND TONIGHT NASA IS SHARING WHAT THEY KNOW ABOUT THE PROBABLE METEORITE SEEN FALLING FROM THE SKY. A FIERY OBJECT WAS SEEN FALLING FROM THE SKY AROUND 12:20 P.M., TRAVELING AT A RATE OF. LISTEN TO THIS. 30,000MPH. NASA SAYS THE FIREBALL WAS PRODUCED BY AN ASTEROIDAL FRAGMENT ABOUT THREE FEET IN DIAMETER AND WEIGHING ABOUT A TON. THEY SAY WHEN IT DISINTEGRATED, IT UNLEASHED ENERGY OF ABOUT 20 TONS OF TNT, CREATING BOOMS HEARD ACROSS THE AREA, ACCORDING TO NASA. IT LANDED NEAR BLACKSVILLE, GEORGIA, WHICH IS IN HENRY COUNTY. THE EVENT WAS REPORTED IN AT LEAST FIVE STATES. MEANWHILE, AUTHORITIES IN HENRY COUNTY, GEORGIA, SHARED THESE PHOTOS SHOWING A HOLE IN THE ROOF AND CEILING OF A HOME. WE’RE TOLD THEY ARE INVESTIGATING IF A PIECE OF THE METEORITE CAUSED THIS DAMAGE. WE HAVE COMPLETE COVERAGE FROM TODAY’S REPORTS OF THE PROBABLE METEORITE. YOU CAN FIND IT O

Advertisement Could more meteors be on the way? Astrophysicist weighs in on timing and rare events Editorial Standards ⓘ

Questions remain after a meteor traveling at 30,000 mph hurtled toward a community in Georgia on Thursday afternoon.WYFF News 4 talked with astrophysicist David Moffett, who oversees Furman University’s planetarium and observatory, to see if the meteorite was just a random event or if more might be on the way.”I thought maybe this is associated with the meteor shower, like current one, but it’s not,” Moffett said. A minor meteor shower is currently passing through the atmosphere. June Bootids typically lasts from June 11 to July 2 with its peak occurring usually around June 21, according to the American Meteor Society.This type of meteor shower only produces strong activities on rare occasions and is typically observed with rates of one visible meteor a night. It is also best seen during the evening hours.”The thing is that time ranges when those meteors could occur,” Moffett said. “It could be associated with that meteor shower, or it could just be a completely random instance.”Bill Cooke, lead, NASA’s Meteoroid Environments Office at the agency’s Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Alabama later determined the fireball was not a Bootid or Taurid meteor based on speed and direction, so what could this be?Moffett said, “This could be a random object that’s floating around in the solar system for four billion years and just happens to be hitting Earth at just the right time, the right angle. So we see it in the daytime here.”He explained that seeing a meteor in the daytime sky is rare, “I was surprised, seeing fireballs in the daytime. You can see them, but like I say, it is a rare occurrence.” Moffett said normally in a meteor shower, the meteors themselves are like little grains of sand. At that size, you can see a brief streak in the night sky, but they are typically a lot higher, around 100,000 feet or less. The streak is from the particles burning up in the atmosphere.For a meteor to be seen across multiple states in broad daylight, the size would need to be much larger. NASA later revealed the meteor to be produced from an asteroidal fragment 3 feet in diameter, weighing over a ton. The meteor disintegrated about 27 miles above West Forest, Georgia, and landed near Blacksville. In February 2013, a much larger meteor than the one seen Thursday exploded over Chelyabinsk Oblast, Russia, which created a large shockwave. The meteor was produced by a 60 foot near Earth asteroid, and upon atmospheric impact, generated an explosive yield equivalent of 400-500 kilotons of TNT. The meteorite in Georgia only generated about 20 tons of TNT.