A meteor entering the earth’s atmosphere exploded in the night sky over Michigan on Tuesday — burning so brightly that it was seen in Ontario.
The meteor swept over the sky around 8:10 p.m. ET and registered a force equivalent to a magnitude-2 earthquake, according to the United States Geological Survey.
READ MORE: 5 things to know about a meteor
Some Michigan residents reported their homes shaking.
Videos of the meteor flooded social media, showing a flashing light streaking through the sky before fading into the darkness.
Bill Cooke with NASA’s Meteoroid Environment Office told The Detroit News it was “definitely a meteoroid” and a rare sight for Michigan.
The American Meteor Society said the reports suggest a space rock penetrated deep into the Earth’s atmosphere before it broke apart.
One Michigan resident told the Detroit News, he spotted “an extremely bright light illuminating his dark room.”
“All of a sudden, the whole yard started getting brighter, kind of yellowish-orange, like a flashbulb, then got black,” he told the media outlet. “It was something big and it was something up in the air.”
Other residents took to Twitter to describe the sparkling display.
Difference between meteor and meteorite
A meteor is a piece of space dust or debris that burns up in our atmosphere. It only becomes a meteorite if it hits the ground. A meteoroid is space debris. And if you’ve heard the word “bolide” to describe a meteor, it just means that it was an extremely bright meteor. It can also be called a fireball.
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