Midwesterners got a day-after-Christmas surprise when a blazing fireball shot across the sky.
The "extremely bright meteor" made an appearance of Dec. 26 at about 5:30 p.m CST, an American Meteor Society (AMS) news release reported.
"Witnessed described a fireball as bright as the Sun that fragmented into many parts. Several witnesses reported sonic effects associated with the meteors including at least three reports of delayed booms," the report stated.
The AMS has received over 1050 reports of fireball sightings; the reports spanned Minnesota, Wisconsin, Iowa, Illinois, Kansas, Missouri, Nebraska and West Virginia, the Weather Channel reported.
The high number of witnesses made the event the third most reported fireball in the "history of the AMS online reporting system," AMS reported.
"Like neon green, like a laser-pointer green, like bright green, big ball with a big tail of sparks or whatever flying out behind it, it was neat," Eagle Scout T.J. Howard told Kansas radio station KCTV5.
People who filled out AMS sighting reports left mixed reviews on the fireball's color. Some wrote on the site that it appeared to be red, while others perceived it to be blue.
"I first noticed a bright green blue flash on the house then looked up to see the object falling," one AMS report written by a Solon, Iowa resident stated.
"Thought it was fireworks first but this was going horizontal. [It] looked like a shape of a star with bright lines behind it. it was awesome," an Iowa City resident wrote.
The sighting prompted Howard to encourage others to look up more often.
"There's so much more up there than there is down here that we all take for granted. You know it's above us every day, every night and we forget it's even there sometimes," Howard said.
Spotting such a bright fireball in a well-populated area is a rare event.
"We can't see every direction every minute of the day and night," Joe Wright, operations Director at the University of Missouri-Kansas City's Warkoczewski Public Observatory and vice president of the Astrological Society of Kansas City told KCTV. "So this totally caught us off guard, just like the one in Russia and the one over Arizona."
WATCH:
