Earthgrazer skims over 100 miles across the atmosphere

 


On November 9th around 6:30 p.m. (EST) if you lived in Georgia or Alabama and were looking skyward, you might have caught a rare phenomenon in the sky.

An earthgrazer not only passed over but may have set a record in doing so. An earthgrazer is a fireball meteor that has a shallow trajectory which allows it to "skim" across our atmosphere. 

This particular one went so long that equipment used to view and measure it weren't enough.

"The meteor was first seen at an altitude of 55 miles above the Georgia town of Taylorsville, moving northwest at 38,500 miles per hour," NASA says. Taylorsville is about 55 miles northwest of downtown Atlanta.

"Its path was so long that our automated software could not handle all the data. So we ran another analysis code this morning (Nov. 10) and discovered that the fireball traveled ... a whopping 186 miles through the air," according to NASA. "The revised calculations put the end point 34 miles above the town of Lutts, in southern Tennessee."

It was "a rare meteor for those fortunate enough to see it," NASA officials say.

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