A New Jersey police officer accidentally photographed a meteorite that swept through the night sky.
Sergeant Michael Virga was on patrol when his camera was recorded by a bright meteor at 03:09 am local time on December 2. “It took me by surprise,” says Virga. “He colored the whole sky in the color of lime.”
The American Society for the Study of Meteors posted a video on Twitter on December 7 to confirm that the object is in fact a meteor. The organization received similar messages from 146 people. Most of the eyewitnesses lived in Pennsylvania, but the meteor was observed in 12 other states: New York, Maryland, Virginia, Ohio, Delaware, Connecticut, New Jersey, Rhode Island, West Virginia, New Hampshire, Massachusetts and Washington.
Based on eyewitness accounts, the American Society for the Study of Meteors believes that the fireball flew from the northeast to the southwest and disappeared next to New Buffalo in Pennsylvania. “We traced the meteor path and it crossed the constellation of the Gemini, a region of the sky in which the Geminid meteor shower can be observed,” says Mike Henki, of the American Society for the Study of Meteors.
