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A 'Fireball' 40 Times Brighter Than the Moon Shoots Across Alabama Skies
By Mindy Weisberger, Senior Writer | August 20, 2018 09:58am ET
This past weekend, a fiery meteor about 40 times brighter than the full moon streamed across the skies over Alabama during the early hours of Friday (Aug. 17).
The event took place at 12:19 a.m. local time, according to NASA Meteor Watch, which captured video of the event and shared the footage to Facebook, dubbing the meteor the "Alabama Fireball."
Six NASA cameras in the region captured the blazing object — a small asteroid measuring approximately 6 feet (2 meters) in diameter, a NASA representative wrote in the Facebook post. The fireball was big enough and bright enough to be easily seen by the naked eye, even through clouds, and it triggered "every camera and sensor operated by the Meteoroid Environment Office in the region," according to NASA. [Space-y Tales: The 5 Strangest Meteorites]
The meteor was first spotted at an altitude of 58 miles (93 kilometers) above Turkeytown, Alabama. From there, it burned a fiery trail in the sky as it headed west at an estimated 53,700 mph (86,422 km/h), disintegrating about 18 miles (29 km) over Grove Oak, Alabama, NASA reported.
More:
https://www.livescience.com/63379-nasa-spots-fireball.html?utm_source=notification
5 replies
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Wetumpka Meteor Crater
If you ever go to the Wind Creek Wetumpka Casino, when you turn around after looking at the river, you are staring at the crater rim overlooking the city. Most visitors have no idea.
When we have local meteor showers, I kind of duck them.
About 83 million years ago, a cosmic object (an asteroid or comet estimated to have been about 1,250 feet, or 380 meters, in diameter) struck what is now Elmore County on the eastern side of the city of Wetumpka. All that remains of the meteoritic impact crater formed by the collision is a crescent-shaped ridge of hills rising up to 300 feet above the surrounding river plains. Bald Knob, the highest point on the rim, and other parts of the crater remnant are clearly visible to travelers entering Wetumpka on US Highway 231 and Alabama Highway 14.
The Wetumpka impact was the greatest natural disaster in Alabama history. Energy released by the impact was roughly 175,000 times greater than the nuclear explosion in Hiroshima in 1945. The collision produced a huge earthquake, a tsunami, an atmospheric blast wave (hurricane-force, straight-line winds), and a cascade of falling rocks that would have blasted out of the developing crater bowl. Many thousands of living things, including dinosaurs, other reptiles, and aquatic life, along the Gulf shoreline of Elmore County were decimated by this event. The Wetumpka impact did not have global consequences, however, and is not linked to any global extinction of animals or plants in the geological record.
If you ever go to the Wind Creek Wetumpka Casino, when you turn around after looking at the river, you are staring at the crater rim overlooking the city. Most visitors have no idea.
When we have local meteor showers, I kind of duck them.
looking out the window facing North. It was huge and bright and I heard it go by. I immediately checked the net and someone from Nebraska was commenting on it. I guess it ended there. It was really cool but nothing, NOTHING as big a deal as this one and many of the others.
I saw a big space junk episode happen when I was driving home late after a rehearsal and not but a few weeks or months, I just cannot remember, after 9/11. Scared the crap out of me.
While I get bored watching through a telescope or studying the stars I get really excited about these and the showers. 
Thanks for this and the video.
