If you saw fire in the night sky around Charlotte, Raleigh, it wasn’t your imagination
At least 19 people from the Carolinas, Virginia and Maryland reported seeing a mysterious fireball in the night sky Thursday, according to the American Meteor Society.
They included a Lake Norman man who reported seeing the fireball darting “from up right to down left” in the skies above Cornelius for 1.5 seconds at 8:46 p.m., according to the man’s report on the society’s website.
The fireball was blue, light-blue and white, a Fort Mill resident reported.
“The bright light separated into 2 lights I think,” the Fort Mill resident wrote. “I’m not sure if it started out as 2 lights or not but I saw 2 lights”
A North Carolina woman reported a “green big flash, split in half looked bluer, then gone.” The woman didn’t say where she lives in the state.
A man in Wendell said he saw a white fireball. “Split into two halves that became smaller particles,” the man reported.
N.C. residents in Lexington, Thomasville and Beaufort also logged reports of the fireball with the society.
The society encourages people to report anything they see that’s “bright and fast” in the sky and may look like a shooting star. “Report it: it may be a fireball,” society officials say.
Filing a report is important because it alerts the society “to potentially scientifically significant events that occur, and contributes to the general database of knowledge about meteors.”