Meteor brings sonic booms and brilliant flashes of light to sky over southern states

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truebluefan

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NASA officials say brilliant lights seen at an outdoor rock concert in Alabama and by eyewitnesses as far away as Georgia and Tennessee came from a meteor that streaked across the night sky.

Officials at the Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville said a baseball-size fragment of a comet entered Earth's atmosphere above Alabama at 8:18 p.m. Central Time on Monday.

NASA officials say the meteor traveled at a speed of 76,000 mph. They say that just three seconds after hitting the atmosphere, it disintegrated 25 miles above the Alabama town of Woodstock, producing a flash of light. Woodstock is about 30 miles southwest of Birmingham.

Video from NASA shows brief bursts of bright light -- flares -- shooting out from the fireball as it breaks apart.

"Because it penetrated so deep into Earth's atmosphere, sonic booms were produced, which were heard by eyewitnesses," NASA spokeswoman Janet Anderson said in a statement.

Read more http://www.therepublic.com/view/sto...81ee8e92d20a/US--Travel-Brief-Southern-Meteor
 

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