While delivering food for Doordash, driver Steve Salmasian was on East Torino Parkway about 8:30 p.m. April 7 when his dashcam caught a bright blue-green meteor illuminating the evening sky.
Meteors — also called fireballs, falling stars or shooting stars — are common occurrences in the Earth's atmosphere. Every day, there are several thousand meteors of "fireball" magnitude, meaning -4, which is about as bright as the planet Venus in the morning or evening sky, according to the American Meteor Society.
However, seeing them is uncommon because:
They often occur over the ocean or uninhabited regions
They can be masked by sunlight during the day
Fewer people are outside to see them during the night.
"If it wasn't for me being on Torino at the time with the wide open — nothing to the left or to the right — and it just finished burning out just right," Salmasian said. "It was just perfect. It was like the Cinderella story of viewing."
(Video here)
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