Fireball Outshines Moon For A Spectacular Sky Show (VIDEO)

A fireball outshines the moon in the predawn hours of Aug. 28 as the meteor makes a streak on the skies.

“Recorded by all six NASA cameras in the Southeast, this fireball was one of the brightest observed by the network in 5 years of operations,” Bill Cooke, head of the Meteoroid Environment Office at NASA’s Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Ala., wrote in a blog post Tuesday (Sept. 3). “From Chickamauga, Georgia, the meteor was 20 times brighter than the full moon; shadows were cast on the ground as far south as Cartersville.”

The asteroid that sparked the sky show was probably about 2 feet wide and weighed more than 100 pounds, Cooke added. The space rock hit Earth’s atmosphere above the Georgia/Tennessee border at 3:27 a.m. EDT (0727 GMT) on Aug. 28, moving northeast at 56,000 mph.

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