Bright object seen streaking across night sky over Texas, video shows. What was it?
_fitted.png "A bright fireball was seen shooting across the night sky over Texas, with reported sightings coming in from the southern border and up into Oklahoma.")
A bright object streaking across the night sky caught the attention of many Texans overnight on Tuesday, Jan. 10, with reports of the luminous orb coming in from a large swath of the state.
From Brownsville, to Houston, to Fort Worth and north into Oklahoma, some lucky enough to be outside and looking skyward glimpsed it — a blazing fireball.
Fireballs are “unusually bright” meteors, according to NASA, with the space rock burning up upon entering Earth’s atmosphere.
In Texas and Oklahoma, 146 people reported seeing the fireball on the American Meteor Society website.
To be defined as a fireball, a meteor must have a “visual magnitude” of at least -3, NASA says. According to reports from observers, the magnitude of Tuesday night’s fireball well surpassed that.
In a social media post by Houston TV station KTRK, many more recounted their fireball sightings and shared video.
“Dang, I saw it! I thought it was a firework!” a commenter wrote.
Some said the fireball appeared green as it zipped past.
“I saw it in the Katy/Richmond area,” wrote another. “Thought I was crazy because I blinked and it was gone.”
One person claimed the fireball landed in a field near the small town of Groesbeck, which is roughly 111 miles southeast of Fort Worth.
Most fireballs are destroyed before they hit the ground, NASA says. The “shooting stars” we see are their final moments, a bit of drama before they’re reduced to dust.
But occasionally they do survive the atmosphere’s trial by fire, the agency said, and sometimes meteors are found and recovered.
This story was originally published January 11, 2023 at 4:37 PM with the headline "Bright object seen streaking across night sky over Texas, video shows. What was it?."