Hundreds of Californians reported seeing a bright light streak across the sky late Thursday in what officials believe was a meteor shower.
Several witnesses described the 10:35 p.m. sighting as a ‘green fireball,’ while others said it appeared white and some even said they saw streaks of blue.
‘There was extreme detail of this fireball from my location,’ Leslie A. of La Crescenta reported to American Meteor Society. ‘I actually saw flames with a trail of glowing lime green attached to it. Very large in size. We are up toward the mountains.’
This photograph of the fireball was submitted to the Southern California Weather Authority
Witnesses reported seeing the fireball as far north as Sacramento and as far south as Malibu – cities that are approximately 400 miles apart.
The sighting comes several weeks after a meteor blazed across sky in western Siberia and crashed into the Earth which such force that it injured more than 1,000 people.
On the same day, a 50-foot asteroid estimated to weigh 143,000 tons made a historically-close fly-by to Earth.
Other fireball sightings were reported this month in San Francisco and Florida.
Scientists say the frequency of these meteor showers is not abnormal.
In this frame grab made from dashboard camera video, a meteor streaks through the sky over Chelyabinsk, about 1500 kilometers (930 miles) east of Moscow on Feb. 15, 2013
Russian policemen stands near an eight-meter hole where the meteorite fell
‘Somewhere on the planet there is an object like that entering the planet at least once a day,’ Ed Krupp, director of the Los Angeles Griffith Observatory, told NBC Los Angeles.
He said the object that caused the fireball over California Thursday was likely no larger than a basketball.
‘What you are really seeing is a glowing column of gas,’ he said. ‘It’s extremely visible because of the tremendous heat that is generated.’
seems to me all of these metorites are coming from a distant planet crashing into another and causing all of these rocks to come to earth. seems the most logical idea to me.