A fireball in the sky shocked Georgia drivers as they looked up to the sky on June 26. Several people caught the burst on dash cam, and CBS News shared a compilation of incredible meteorite footage on TikTok.
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“A fireball, or a bright meteorite, was seen across the southeastern United States on Thursday and later exploded over Georgia, creating booms heard by residents in the area, according to NASA,” CBS News Explained. “The American Meteor Society said it received more than 160 reports of a fireball sighting from observers in Georgia and South Carolina at 12:25 p.m. ET. The meteor was first seen at an altitude of 48 miles above the town of Oxford, Georgia, moving southwest at 30,000 miles per hour, said Bill Cooke, a lead at NASA’s Meteoroid Environment Office.”
Seeing A Meteorite During the Day Is Rare
Space.com contacted an expert to learn more about seeing a meteorite in the sky during the day.
“Daylight fireballs are rare in that it takes a large object (larger than a beachball compared to your normal pea-sized meteor) to be bright enough to be seen during the day,” Robert Lunsford of the American Meteor Association shared in an email to Space.com. “We probably only average one per month worldwide, so perhaps one out of every 3,000 reports occurs during the day.”
Some TikTokers admitted that seeing a meteorite in broad daylight would probably frighten them.
“My heart would’ve dropped thinking A-bomb,” someone wrote.
The meteorite video reminded this person of an old TV ad. “Looks like a ‘The More You Know..’ commercial from the 90’s.”
This person remembered seeing a similar site a while back, but at night.
“I saw one just like that at 2am in my front yard walking to my neighbors last summer. never spoke about it but was cool as hell.”
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