NEW YORK – A meteor streaked over the New York City skyline before disintegrating over nearby New Jersey, according to NASA.
William Cooke, the head of the space agency's Meteoroid Environments Office, said the fireball was first sighted at an altitude of 51 miles (82 kilometers) above Manhattan at around 11:17 a.m. Tuesday.
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The meteor passed over the southern part of Newark, New Jersey, before disintegrating 31 miles (50 kilometers) above the town of Mountainside, he said. No meteorites or other fragments of space debris reached the planet's surface.
The space rock moved at a speed of about 41,000 mph (66,000 kph) and descended at a relatively steep angle of 44 degrees from vertical, Cooke said.
Its exact trajectory is uncertain, since reports are based only on eyewitness accounts and no camera or satellite data is currently available, he said.
As of Wednesday morning, there had been approximately 40 eyewitness reports filed on the American Meteor Society website, which the agency used to generate its estimates, Cooke said.
The fireball was not part of the Perseid meteor shower, and reports of loud booms and shaking could be explained by military aircraft in the vicinity around the time of its appearance, he said.
Cooke said the New York City area gets treated to a daylight fireball every year or two.
NASA’s Meteoroid Environments Office said in a Facebook post that small rocks like the one that produced Tuesday’s fireball are only about a foot (a third of a meter) in diameter and can’t remain intact all the way to the ground.