A fireball was witnessed shooting across the sky yesterday morning somewhere over Lake Pontchartrain at 7 a.m. The strange incident caused a good deal of furor among people and later NASA said that it was most likely a meteor traveling at a high speed.
The flying fireball was witnessed by a lot of people in Louisiana as they saw something passing through the sky, reports WWL TV. The sighting gave rise to a wave of panic and the curiosity-stricken people sent reports to the local TV and radio stations. The National Weather Service and the office of St. Tammany Parish Sheriff also received news of the fireball.
Later, NASA was contacted to solve the mystery and the space agency said that the fireball was most likely a meteor that was traveling at about 90,000 miles per hour and broke up just as it entered the atmosphere of Earth. NASA also released a statement with regard to the incident and revealed the reason why it was not 100% sure about the identity of the fireball being a meteor.
It said that unfortunately, all the sky cameras of the region had shut down earlier to save themselves from the bright Sun. Therefore, the scientists did not have any other option than to rely solely on the reports of the eyewitnesses for analysis of the trajectory. Sadly, even the cameras of the eyewitnesses could not capture the mysterious light.
So, they studied the reports and based on the analysis of the reports, they said that the meteor was first witnessed about 65 miles above the town of Sawyersville in western Alabama. Later, it moved northwest at about 89,000 miles per hour and ultimately broke up 41 miles above Louisville, Miss. The brightness led them to estimate that the meteor weighed about 5 lbs and was about 5 inches in diameter.
Notably, more than 100 eyewitnesses reached out to NASA after the fireball was seen passing through the sky. They included people from Louisiana, Tennessee, Alabama, Mississippi, and Georgia. The National Weather Service also tweeted out a link showing the places where people reported witnessing the fireball and it was revealed that the map covered a lot of region lying in the southeast.
