Video: Fireball Lights Up Night Sky

*Video above taken by a home security camera in Thurmont, Md.

Bright lights in the sky: that’s what people across the east coast Friday night reported seeing.

The American Meteor Society said those lights came from a incoming meteor, or fireball, still high in the sky.

The meteor was so high it was seen from Boston to Washington, and that sent people tweeting and posting to Facebook, as well as notifying the American Meteor Society which posted more info on what people saw:

The American Meteor Society has received over 500 reports of a bright meteor that occurred near 2000 (8:00pm EDT) on Friday evening March 22, 2013. The witnesses range from along the Atlantic coast ranging from Maine to North Carolina. This object was also seen as far inland as Ohio. Individual reports may be viewed in the 2013 AMS Fireball Table. Refer to event #667 for 2013.

For those not familiar with meteors and fireballs, a fireball is a meteor that is larger than normal. Most meteors are only the size of small pebbles. A meteor the size of a softball can produce light equivalent to the full moon for a short instant. The reason for this is the extreme velocity at which these objects strike the atmosphere. Even the slowest meteors are still traveling at 10 miles per SECOND, which is much faster than a speeding bullet. Fireballs occur every day over all parts of the Earth. It is rare though for an individual to see more than one or two per lifetime as they also occur during the day, on a cloudy night, or over a remote area where no one sees it. Observing during one of the major annual meteor showers can increase your chance of seeing another one of these bright meteors.

The meteor was seen as far away as Ohio and Canada, and it’s expected to have entered the atmosphere somewhere near Wilkes-Barre, Pa. and was no longer visible as it crashed the Atlantic Ocean off the coast of New Jersey.

See maps of the path of the meteor and cities and locations that reported seeing the fireball