Meteor lights up sky over Georgia, Alabama

9/10/2013

ATLANTA  — NASA officials say brilliant lights in the sky and loud booms reported in Alabama and Georgia came from a meteor that streaked across the South.

Officials at the Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Ala., say a baseball-size fragment of a comet entered Earth’s atmosphere above Alabama at 8:18 p.m. CDT Monday.

NASA officials say the meteor traveled at a speed of 76,000 mph. They say just three seconds after hitting the atmosphere, it disintegrated 25 miles above the central Alabama town of Woodstock, producing a flash of light.

NASA spokeswoman Janet Anderson says that because it penetrated so deep into Earth’s atmosphere, eyewitnesses heard sonic booms.

Music fans at a Mumford & Sons concert in Pelham, Ala., Monday night also reported seeing a flash of light.