Fireball Flies Across NJ Skies, Rattles Residents With Boom

Residents across New Jersey caught a glimpse of a fireball streaking across the sky Tuesday afternoon.

The fireball,confirmed as a meteor by NASA and the American Meteor Society, captured attention across much of the area and was accompanied by at least one loud boom as it moved through.

Robert Lunsford, fireball report coordinator with the American Meteor Society, confirmed the object was a meteor.

"Yes, this was a fireball, which is a meteor that is larger and brighter than normal," Lunsford said in an email to Patch.

The first visibility of the fireball was 48 miles above the Atlantic Ocean off Mastic Beach on Long Island, NASA said in a report on the event.

It was moving to the southwest at 30,100 miles per hour, NASA said, based on an analysis of publicly available videos. The fireball traveled 117 miles through the upper atmosphere before disintegrating 27 miles above Galloway, the NASA report said.

Cory Anzalonecosta of Toms River, who shared photos with Patch of the meteor that her daughter captured of the fireball, said they saw it zip past, followed by the booms.

"It was 60 seconds before multiple big bangs," she said.

Robert Lunsford, fireball report coordinator with the American Meteor Society, confirmed the object was a meteor.

"Yes, this was a fireball, which is a meteor that is larger and brighter than normal," Lunsford said in an email to Patch.

"One unusual aspect of this fireball, besides occurring in daylight, was the fact that so many people reported a distinct green color," he said. "Bright meteors can be colorful at night, but this is unusual to notice this during the day. The green color could also signify a high concentration of the element nickel in this meteor."

The society had received 230 reports about the fireball from Pennsylvania and Delaware to New York and Connecticut along with dozens from all over New Jersey, Lunsford said. Videos and photos were submitted by several people to the society.

Tri-County Scanner News published a video of the fireball as it was seen flying over Jackson. Robynne Kaufmann, who shared the video with Patch, said the video is a slow-motion version of the event.

Meteorologist Justin Godynick of NBC Philadelphia had received nearly 400 comments about the fireball. One woman described it as "silver bluish green with a long tail that then started to disintegrate into pieces." She said it lasted 10 to 15 seconds.

Nick Brucato of Whiting shared video of it in The Pine Barrens group on Facebook and with Patch. That video is published at the top of this article.

"Took this video as fast as I could today in Whiting at 2:34 PM. Heard the loud boom minutes later," he said.

"We were out on our deck and my wife saw it," a Waretown resident said on the Tri-County Scanner News post. "She said it was bright white ball and then it broke apart into several pieces and then it was gone. Then the sonic boom hit!"

Some residents (this reporter included) heard the boom and thought it was military training at nearby Joint Base McGuire-Dix-Lakehurst.

A meteor is the flash of moving light that becomes visible when a meteoroid — a chunk of an asteroid or a comet — hits the Earth's atmosphere, according to the American Meteor Society.

In mid-March, a meteor seen across Ohio sparked a booming sound. NASA officials said the sound was a pressure wave that reached the ground set off when the asteroid broke apart. In that instance it "unleashed an amount of energy equivalent to 250 tons of TNT when it fragmented," NASA told CBS News.