SALT LAKE CITY — In a flash of light, dozens of lucky viewers got a glimpse of a real phenomenon Saturday night: a meteor barreling through the Earth's atmosphere — so big that our NASA solar system ambassador called it a fireball.
It's not that often you get to see one, happening in just the blink of an eye. But late Saturday night, FOX 13 News had viewers calling in and even more posting their pictures and videos that captured the phenomenon as this meteor was spotted throughout northern Utah and other states.
So, we took your questions about what you saw to the expert: Jason Trump, a NASA solar system ambassador and the education coordinator at Clark Planetarium.
"What they're seeing is what's called a fireball, and the fireball is a shooting star, but a really, really big one," Trump said.
Trump said 49 reports were officially filed with the American Meteor Society Saturday night by people who spotted this unique light phenomenon.
"They're going to look at all those reports and see what direction is this going and try to figure out where it may have landed, so that they can be recovered," he said.
In August 2022, a meteorite was actually recovered in Salt Lake City, but Trump said this weekend's phenomenon was spotted in at least seven states and it's still too soon to know if anything was left behind or where.
FOX 13 News viewers shared their videos of the meteor from doorbell cameras and dashcams. The sightings ranged from West Valley, Box Elder, Ogden, Layton, Centerville, Eagle Mountain, Grantsville and Salt Lake.
"When the object starts in space, it starts pretty large and then as it comes down it starts to vaporize and fragment and have an explosion and go into different pieces," Trump said. "It's very possible there could be some pieces of this that could be recovered. It just might not be in Utah."
Some witnesses said the fireball seemed to have a green hue to it.
"It's going to have different colors that are going to be seen in that fireball, and the green is actually from nicke,l which is a very common metal to find in objects that are natural from space," Trump said.
Scrolling the American Meteor Society's fireball report website, more and more observers continue to add their sightings of this meteor that certainly piqued a lot of interest by stargazers this weekend.
Trump says this may have been a part of a meteor shower going on right now — the Aquariid meteor shower, which peaks here Monday night into Tuesday morning, so maybe you'll get a shot of seeing one yourself!
He says he hopes this excites Utahns to find out more about what's going on up there up above. There's a lot up there, and if you'd like to learn more when it comes to our solar system, Trump said they'd be glad to help you out at the Planetarium in the Gateway in downtown Salt Lake — open seven days a week, and admission is free.
