Around midnight on Monday, a dazzling astronomical phenomenon literally called a “fireball” ripped across the sky over New England. Cameras at Burlington, Vermont’s little international airport caught the best views of it I’ve seen anywhere.
Operations Manager at the American Meteor Society Mike Hankey told CNN that fireballs like the one witnessed Monday night “happen pretty regularly when debris hits the Earth’s atmosphere and creates friction and heat.”
“Debris from space hits Earth all the time,” he added. “The bigger the debris, the bigger the flash of light.” Hankey postulated that the object lighting up New England’s sky was most likely a piece of an asteroid and about the size of a car.
Of course, the fireball was captured by quite a few cameras around the region. It even showed up in dashcam footage from a Portland, Maine police cruiser and that clip seems to have permeated around the internet most.
But the Burlington Airport cameras got three amazing, unobstructed angles on the thing which looks straight out of an apocalyptic Hollywood scene. Or maybe a real apocalypse, too. We’d have to ask the dinosaurs.