HANOVER, Pa. — The bright fireball seen flying over southern York County Sunday night was a disintegrating meteor, NASA Meteor Watch said this week.
The fireball was observed over Maryland and Pennsylvania at about 9:20 p.m., according to NASA.
It disintegrated about 22 miles above Gnatstown, an unincorporated community just to the northwest of Hanover, having achieved a brightness equal to that of a quarter moon after traveling about 55 miles through the atmosphere, according NASA Meteor Watch.
The fireball first became visible about 47 miles over Forest Hill, Maryland and moved northwest at an approximate speed of 36,000 miles per hour before disintegrating, NASA said.
The event was reported by hundreds of witnesses across both states and was captured by several publicly accessible cameras in the region, according to NASA.
The agency's Fireball Network and Southern Ontario Meteor Network cameras also captured the event from a distance, NASA said.
An orbit calculated from the meteor's trajectory showed the object that produced it was a small fragment of an asteroid, probably originating in the Asteroid Belt between Mars and Jupiter, according to NASA.
The meteor was estimated to be about 6 inches in diameter, NASA said.
Several members of the Hanover community reported seeing the meteor Sunday night. In a post about the event on the Hanover Evening Sun's Facebook page, witnesses described seeing a "bright blue light" followed by what "sounded like thunder."
Others described hearing what sounded like a "distant explosion" and speculated that it could have come from a gas leak.
