Dazzling meteor captured over Pittsburgh sky
Mishelle Jarosz was driving along Route 19 near South Hills Village mall Thursday night when she saw a sudden flash of light she initially thought to be fireworks.
But it turns out Ms. Jarosz, of Bethel Park, had witnessed a meteor streaking across the night sky.
“It was too bright to truly be a firework, so when I read it was a meteor, awesome,” Ms. Jarosz said.
According to the American Meteor Society, almost 850 people across 13 states including Pennsylvania and parts of Canada reported seeing a “big fireball” Thursday night.
The nonprofit scientific organization defines a fireball as another term for a very bright meteor. It is generally brighter than magnitude -4, which is about the same magnitude as Venus in the morning or evening sky. Some fireballs are referred to as bolides, a special type of fireball that explodes in a bright terminal flash at its end, often with visible fragmentation.
“Meteor showers are common,” said Mike Hennessy, manager of learning and programs at Moonshot Museum in Pittsburgh’s Chateau neighborhood. “When you have celestial fireworks I think on the caliber of what we saw this week it’s a little more rare and exciting. Meteors are always burning up in our atmosphere, but sometimes we see meteors that are called bolides, which are bigger and brighter fireballs exploding in our sky and it caused the kind of, I think, cosmic excitement that we saw this week as people are looking at their cameras at their homes or even looking up in the sky and seeing that.”
While several thousand meteors of fireball magnitude happen
in Earth’s atmosphere each day, many are not seen because they occur over uninhabited parts of the earth or are masked by daylight.
The American Meteor Society noted that an experienced observer can expect to see about one fireball of magnitude -6 or better every 200 hours of meteor observing, while a fireball of magnitude -4 can be expected once every 20 hours.
Across the Pittsburgh region, several people who reported seeing the meteor took to social media where they expressed their surprise at the sighting, with some calling it a “huge ball of flame” while others suggested it looked green and broke into pieces.
Shannon Hefferan, a meteorologist with the National Weather Service in Moon, said the night was clear, allowing for an easy view of the meteor.
Mr. Hennessy noted that two meteor showers named for constellations in the sky happen each December, which might have led to last night’s show. The first is the northern taurids, which happens early in the month. The second, the geminids, occurs around mid-December.
“It’s a chance to think about where meteors come from,” Mr. Hennessy said. “They’re often named for constellations but they usually come from comets, sometimes debris from asteroids. Every year as Earth makes its lap around the sun we pass through the cosmic breadcrumbs left by these comets or asteroids and as they are ignited in our atmosphere and move through at great speeds, that’s what puts on these great holiday shows in early December.”
He noted that if people were unable to see the meteor, another event is coming up next week.
A lunar occultation will occur around 10: 30 p. m. Wednesday where the moon passes in front of Mars. To those watching, Mars will disappear behind the moon for about 45 minutes before reappearing on the other side.
“I think it’s exciting to think that even if folks maybe missed it live yesterday there’s still a great chance this month that they’ll see some exciting colors in the sky and to know that you can count on that every year,” Mr. Hennessy said.