Midwest meteor: NASA says 'rare' shooting star seen over Michigan

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A meteor flared over Michigan on Jan. 16, exploding with enough force to register as the equivalent of a 2.0 magnitude earthquake, the U.S. Geological Survey confirmed. (Taylor Turner/The Washington Post)

Thunder and lightning?

Some sort of midair explosion?

An enemy airstrike?

With a rumble, a bright burst of light illuminated the sky over southeastern Michigan on Tuesday night, leaving locals wondering what in the world just happened.

“I went to turn and I noticed a ball of flame coming at an angle,” Danny McEwen Jr. told the Detroit News. He said he was driving when “it just blew up into a bunch of sparks. I didn’t even know what to think. It was kind of odd how orange the sky was behind me and this blaze of flame out of nowhere.”

NASA officials had a simple explanation, telling the Detroit News that a meteoroid entered Earth’s atmosphere at 8:08 p.m., appearing as a white light that exploded and illuminated the dark sky.

[China’s 9½-ton space lab will soon crash to Earth. No one knows where it will hit.]

“It is definitely a meteoroid,” Bill Cooke, with NASA’s meteoroid environment office in Alabama, told the newspaper.

“Over Michigan, they’re rare,” Cooke added. But in other places, “they happen a few times every month.”

The United States Geological Survey reported that the meteoroid entered about five miles from New Haven, Mich., registering as the equivalent of a magnitude 2.0 earthquake.

After reviewing several observational datasets, the NWS can confirm the flash and boom was NOT thunder or lightning, but instead a likely meteor. We continue to monitor feeds from astronomical agencies for official confirmation of a meteor. #miwx

— NWS Detroit (@NWSDetroit) January 17, 2018

Here’s how NASA explains meteors:

Shooting stars, or meteors, are bits of interplanetary material falling through Earth’s atmosphere and heated to incandescence by friction. These objects are called meteoroids as they are hurtling through space, becoming meteors for the few seconds they streak across the sky and create glowing trails.

And meteorites are the pieces that survive the trip and land on the ground, according to the agency.

In the case of the Michigan meteor, no confirmed pieces had been found as of Wednesday morning, NASA said. But agency officials expected meteorite hunters to be out in force, searching for the remnants.

On Tuesday and early Wednesday, social media users posted videos from dashboard cameras and home surveillance systems, showing the moment the meteor burst into light.

“#meteor scared the buhjesus out of us,” one person wrote on Twitter.

Yoooo did Michigan just get hit with a meteor? A bomb? A UFO? WHAT IS GOING ON

— slashley (@dundunduntonnn) January 17, 2018

I survived the Michigan meteor of 2018. Thank you for your support during these difficult and scary times.

— Joel (@NobodyEpic) January 17, 2018

Then “The Michigan Meteor” even got its own Twitter handle.

Hope you’re doing well. That first step into earth’s atmosphere is a doozy.

— David Smith (@agentsmith885) January 17, 2018

Bob Trembley, a former outreach officer for the Warren Astronomical Society and volunteer NASA/JPL solar system ambassador, told the Detroit News that although meteoroids are not rare, the fireballs that come with them are.

“Anybody that saw it is lucky,” he said.

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