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Half Of The East Coast Saw A Bright, Green Meteor Last Night

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meteor in us

At about 6:20 p.m. ET on Monday, reports started trickling in that a brilliantly bright, green meteor was tracing its way across the night sky.

Over the course of the night, the American Meteor Society (AMS) received more than 250 reports of meteor sightings.

Some of the first tweets that came in about the meteor indicated it was certainly a sight worth seeing:

"Folks in Virginia say it was huge — it looked like a bottle rocket,"Drew Curtis tweeted.

Another twitter user going by @BIONIC_OLE said: "I just saw the biggest "shooting star" meteor ever. It was insane!!"

And NASA's Bill Cooke confirmed with ABC's Good Morning America that the object did indeed appear to be a meteor.

The sightings occurred all over the eastern US — from South Carolina up to Ohio.

Here's a video caught on a Benwood, Virginia, police department dash camera:us meteorThe reports came from as far west as Indiana, reaching as far east as the Virginia coast.

Below is a heat map from the AMS showing the expanse of the reports across the Midwest and east coast. Red indicates the highest volume of reports.

heat map of meteor siting from AMS websiteThe meteor could be part of the Taurid meteor shower that is happening all month. The meteor most likely entered Earth's atmosphere above western West Virginia and then traveled eastward across the sky, eventually impacting between Webster County and Randolph County in West Virginia.

The AMS predicted this path and impact site from the reports it received. The projection is shown below.

meteor pathAccording to Sean Sublette, chief meteorologist at a Virginia ABC affiliate, the green coloring is an indication of magnesium molecules in the meteor.

There were other reports Monday night of a bright meteor-like light in the skies over Chicago. However, both NASA's Cooke and AMS said the light was moving too slowly to be a meteor and was probably a piece of space junk burning up.

Check out both events in the video below:


Did you see a meteor last night? Send us a picture or video.

SEE ALSO: This Comet Stinks

SEE ALSO: This Scientist Opened A New Era In Astronomy

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