A meteor weighing over 450 kg, traveling at a speed of 72,400 km/h, exploded upon entering the Earth’s atmosphere on January 1st.
Bright flash from the meteor recorded by satellites on January 1. (Photo: Twitter/NWSPittsburgh)
Residents in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, USA, heard a loud explosion in the sky just before 11:30 AM local time (23:30 Hanoi time) on January 1. Many reports described windows and household items shaking. The cause was a large meteor exploding in the Earth’s atmosphere with an energy equivalent to 30 tons of TNT, according to the Meteor Watch organization of NASA.
Experts estimate the meteor was about 0.9 meters wide and weighed 453 kg. It was likely traveling at a speed of over 72,400 km/h when it exploded in the Earth’s atmosphere. If the sky had been clear, the explosion could have been about 100 times brighter than a full moon and still visible in daylight.
Some people described the meteor explosion as a flash of light with a slightly purple hue when seen through the clouds, according to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA). NOAA reported that the GOES-East Earth observation satellite also recorded this event.
The event in Pittsburgh occurred just a few months after a fireball was spotted over West Virginia on September 17, 2021. Experts later determined that this fireball was a meteor burning up in the atmosphere. It caused a loud explosion and shook the ground, leading some to believe an earthquake had occurred.
One of the most impressive meteor explosions in recent decades was the Chelyabinsk meteor explosion in 2013. The house-sized meteor lit up the sky in Russia for a moment. It exploded high above, releasing energy 20 to 30 times stronger than the atomic bomb dropped on Hiroshima.
