New Yorkers were going about an otherwise normal Tuesday morning when dozens of eyewitnesses say they saw a curious sight in the sky: a flaming streak of light.
At the same time, loud booms could be heard that shook buildings and had some residents wondering if an earthquake had hit Manhattan.
According to NASA, the culprit behind the startling incident was a “fireball” meteor that likely soared over the Statue of Liberty and west into New Jersey around 11 a.m.
A fireball meteor is another term “for a very bright meteor,” according to the American Meteor Society. Tuesday’s light show was, more specifically, a “daylight fireball” because it was so bright it could be viewed by the naked eye during daylight hours.
Going off eyewitness accounts, NASA Meteor Watch initially reported that the fireball was first sighted 49 miles above the Upper Bay of New York Harbor travelling about 34,000 miles per hour. It then passed over the Statue of Liberty before disintegrated above midtown Manhattan just 29 miles above New Yorkers’ heads.
In an updated assessment, NASA Meteor Watch said late Tuesday that it now believes the meteor was travelling at 38,000 miles per hour and likely originated over New York City before moving west into New Jersey.
Indeed, it wasn’t just New Yorkers who caught a glimpse of the fireball meteor. More than 40 people across the northeastern seaboard of the U.S. reported seeing the fireball to the American Meteor Society. Reports came in from New Jersey, Connecticut, Rhode Island, Pennsylvania and Delaware.
Two eyewitnesses, one in Connecticut and one in New Jersey, also provided videos to the American Meteor Society of what appears to be the Tuesday fireball streaking across the sky.
Notably, NASA says the reports of loud booms and shakings in New York may not have been caused by the fireball after all, but perhaps by the U.S. military.
“There are reports of military activity in the vicinity around the time of the fireball, which would explain the multiple shakings and sounds reported to the media,” the space agency said.
Thankfully for residents of the northeastern U.S. seaboard, the meteor that travelled overhead on Tuesday was not big enough to crash into Earth. Instead, it burned up in the atmosphere, creating the fireball that was visible to witnesses on the ground.
“(S)mall rocks like the one producing this fireball are only about a foot in diameter, incapable of surviving all the way to the ground,” NASA writes. “We do not (actually cannot) track things this small at significant distances from the Earth, so the only time we know about them is when they hit the atmosphere and generate a meteor or a fireball.”
Aries Dela Cruz, an official with New York City emergency management, wrote on X, formerly Twitter, that the agency “has received no reports of damage or injuries related to” the fireball event.
NASA tracks and assesses the danger of larger space rocks like asteroids that come close to Earth through the Center for Near Earth Object Studies at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory.