Fireballs
You called us from all over the state Sunday evening, reporting a loud boom and a body-rattling vibration. Well, we found out you were hearing and feeling a meteor hit the atmosphere!
We caught it happen on our camera at the Burlington International Airport -- a bright fireball flying over northern Vermont around 5:40 p.m.
NASA Meteor Watch says it was moving at 47,000 miles per hour. It traveled 33 miles from above Mount Mansfield State Forest to Beach Hill near Newport, before burning up.
The time was recorded by our good friend in Japan, who in turn let me know and I found it. Please follow our pal: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCD7E...
We performed follow-up measurements of this object while it was still on the PCCP webpage.
Stacking of 5 unfiltered exposures, 90 seconds each, obtained remotely on 2021, February 22.2 from X02 (Telescope Live, Chile) through a 0.6-m f/6.5 astrograph + CCD, shows that this object is a comet with a compact coma about 8" arcsecond in diameter. (Observers E. Guido, M. Rocchetto, E. Bryssinck, M. Fulle, G. Milani, C. Nassef, G. Savini, A. Valvasori).
Our confirmation image (click on it for a bigger version; made with TYCHO software by D. Parrott):
The huge space object was spotted lighting up the night sky at just before 10pm on Sunday.
The UK Meteor Network, which monitors meteor sightings in Britain, said it had received hundreds of reports - with many people taking to social media to share their videos.
It said in a post on Twitter: "The reports are flooding in, 120 so far and counting. From the two videos we saw it was a slow moving meteor with clearly visible fragmentation."
Sightings of the meteor falling from the sky were reported in London, Manchester, Milton Keynes, Birmingham, Bath, Liverpool and Devon and Cornwall.

Observers in Ontario reported seeing a bright fireball on February 26 at 10:07 PM EST (2021 February 27 3:07 UTC). This event was captured by several all sky meteor cameras belonging to the NASA All Sky Fireball Network and the Southern Ontario Meteor Network operated by Western University. Via NASA government website
This event was captured by several all-sky meteor cameras belonging to the NASA All Sky Fireball Network and the Southern Ontario Meteor Network, operated by Western University.
Peter Brown, Professor and Canada Research Chair of Meteor Physics Western Institute for Earth & Space Exploration, reported on Twitter the fireball was as bright as the moon and passed directly over Chatham, Ont.
He said the event happened Friday at 10:07 p.m. and that the fireball ended at 30 km height just north of Lake St. Claire near Fair Haven, Michigan.
In a tweet, he wrote "very small or no meteorites likely."
Steve Arnold of Eureka Springs is looking for video to help triangulate the location.
Arnold, who was a host of the Discovery television show Meteorite Men, thinks there's a good chance the meteorite landed on Earth, possibly in the vicinity of El Dorado or north Louisiana.
"There is a slight chance that it totally burned out," he said. "I'm optimistic that there's pieces. It was bright. The more shallow angle, it's a more gentle process. When it's coming down and getting into the thick part of our atmosphere quickly it will more often break up into a bunch of little pieces. This one is more likely to have stayed intact or broken into a couple of pieces."
"We have one good video that a dash cam in Dallas picked up," said Arnold. "We need one more from somewhere else."
Francesc Xavier Salas from Deya described it as "an impressive fireball that showed very powerful sky blue light inside and an outer layer and tail with a greenish hue.
Thousands of meteors enter the earth's atmosphere every day but most of them are not seen by the public because they fall over the ocean or in remote areas.
Comment: Eh, but those aren't fireballs, which are much larger bolides than the ones they're talking about.
A fireball is a very bright meteor which ranges in colour from red to blue and its composition determines its colour; sodium produces a bright yellow light, nickel is green and magnesium is blue-white.
"This is the second one I've seen in my life, the last time was 43 years ago," said one witness.
ENORME BÓLIDO CON MÚLTIPLES FRAGMENTACIONES #SPMN230221 ayer tarde a las 20h27m03s TU (21h27m hora local). Asociado a las Líncidas y captado desde múltiples estaciones, aquí registrado a color por @vicent_ibanyez desde Benicàssim (Castelló). Más detalles: https://t.co/CRfB0fblVv pic.twitter.com/BLGi5Ovnl8
— Red de Investigación Bólidos y Meteoritos (SPMN) (@RedSpmn) February 24, 2021

Lea Storry was in her home office in downtown Edmonton when she saw the flash of light streak across the sky Monday morning.
The meteor darted across the sky around 6:30 a.m. MT, startling early risers who were lucky to catch a glimpse of the sudden glow.
The light was captured by security cameras across Edmonton, and social media soon lit up with reports from observers who caught a glimpse of it.
The spectacle was seen in at least two provinces, with scattered reports from Jasper to Saskatoon.
As of 8:30 a.m., there were 42 unverified reports of fireball sightings on the American Meteor Society (AMS) website.
This meteor was recorded in the framework of the SMART project, operated by the Southwestern Europe Meteor Network (SWEMN) from the meteor-observing stations located at Sevilla, La Hita (Toledo), Sierra Nevada, La Sagra (Granada), and Calar Alto (Almería). The event has been analyzed by the principal investigator of the SMART project: Dr. Jose M. Madiedo, from the Institute of Astrophysics of Andalusia (IAA-CSIC).
Comment: The American Meteor Society (AMS) has received 766 reports of the event, the most widely reported in the UK since event 5538-2017 on December 31st 2017.
Update: On 2nd March BBC News reports: The American Meteor Society (AMS) has now received 1066 reports, which makes it the most widely reported event in the UK since their modern database system began in 1980.