
A fireball is when a cosmic rock enters our atmosphere, burning up upon entry creating brief, but bright light. We get occasional, regular meteor showers in the sky, but those come from predictable comet fragments; this fireball likely comes from a different source.
Richard Sanderson, curator at the Springfield Museums, told 22News, "Many of the bright fireballs we see are chunks of asteroids that have been flung out of the asteroid belt when two asteroids collide and shatter each other and those can occur without warning at any time."
Fireballs usually last for less than a minute and most of the pieces disintegrate before reaching the ground, at that point they would be called meteorites.
If you have any pictures or video of Tuesday night's meteor fireball, please send them to reportit@wwlp.com.



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