A super-bright, blue meteor put on a show while shooting across Pennsylvania

Did you see a bright blue light shoot across the night sky this weekend? Some people also reported feeling a thunder-like rumbling. 

There is a logical explanation: It was a meteor. 

If you're reading this in southcentral Pennsylvania, it may have traveled right over your head. 

The fast-moving hunk of space rock could be seen up and down the East Coast as it shot through the Pennsylvania sky just before 12:30 a.m. Saturday night, according to NASA.

The American Meteor Society, which operates cameras specifically designed to capture these fireballs, said it received more than 240 reports from witnesses. Videos showed a bright blue ball with a tail streaking across the sky. The meteor was seen as far south as South Carolina, as far west as Kentucky, and as far north as Quebec, Canada. 

In Pennsylvania, most of the reports came from right here in the southcentral and central parts of the state. 

According to NASA meteor expert Bill Cooke, the meteor first became visible 55 miles above Greenstone, which is just above the Pennsylvania-Maryland border in Adams County, and traveled northwest for 38 miles before fizzling out 28 miles above Newburg, Cumberland County. It was moving at 51,000 mph. 

This meteor was a "very significantly bright event," and was probably the brightest fireball seen in this region in about three years, according to Mike Hankey, operations manager with the American Meteor Society. Four of the organization's own cameras captured the fireball. 

He added that a friend of his who has cameras in the Washington, D.C./Virginia area reported the meteor was so bright that it completely saturated his cameras' shots. 

"In meteor world, we gauge how awesome something is by how bright it is," Hankey said. 

They may not be as noticeable as this one, but there are a "few nice fireballs" captured in this general region each month, Hankey said. To give some more perspective: The organization logs tens of thousands of reports of fireballs around the world every year. Of those, 300 to 500 are "substantial" events reported by multiple people.  

According to Cooke, who leads NASA's Meteoroid Environments Office, the orbit and brightness of the meteor indicate that it was caused by a piece of an asteroid about 5 inches in diameter and weighing about 7 pounds.

Why was the meteor blue?

Meteors can be different colors depending on what material they are made of, according to AccuWeather. The faster a meteor is moving, the brighter and more vivid its color. 

"(This meteor) was very fast," Hankey said. "That was one negative about it, visually it moved fast. It only lasted about 4 seconds." 

The chunk of asteroid that created the meteor was probably made of magnesium. 

Meteors made of nitrogen and oxygen are red; ones made of iron are yellow; calcium-made meteors are purple; and orange meteors are made of sodium. 

“Among fainter objects, it seems to be reported that slow meteors are red or orange, while fast meteors frequently have a blue color,” AccuWeather quoted the American Meteorological Society (not to be confused with the American Meteor Society). 

Meteor created a sonic boom

This was the rumbling you may have heard.

Meteors usually cause sonic booms since they travel many times over the speed of sound (just over 767 mph). But in this case, the vibration was amplified because the meteor traveled deep into the earth's atmosphere and hit thick air before burning up, Hankey said. 

Space starts at 100 km above the average sea level, and this meteor likely penetrated the atmosphere by nearly 50 km before breaking up. Most meteors burn up just around 20 km in. 

"(The rumbling) tells us it made it pretty deep into the atmosphere," he said. 

That there was rumbling also suggests that surviving bits of the meteor - or meteorites - may have made it to the ground. 

However, if the meteor originated from a comet, it was made of ice and there are certainly no remnants, Hankey said. 

Was there a meteor shower? 

Although there were two other meteors reported in the continental United States on Saturday - there were multiple sightings in Florida and in the Southwest - they were not part of a meteor shower. 

"Most of these big meteors like this are sporadic or random. There's no origin or common origin that we know of or understand," Hankey said of this weekend's event. 

The next best chance to possibly catch a sighting of a meteor is next month. During the Lyrid meteor shower April 21-22, up to 10 meteors on average should be visible per hour in clear, dark skies, according to the Old Farmers Almanac. It will be most active in the northern hemisphere. The best time to view the meteors will be between moonset and dawn on April 22. 

Amber South can be reached at asouth@publicopinionnews.com.