Friday, November 20, 2009

Meteor turns night into day

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By EXPRESS STAFF

A speeding meteor lights up the sky at Friedman Memorial Airport early Wednesday morning. This image was extracted from a video recorded by an airport security camera.Image courtesy of Friedman Memorial Airport

A meteor that burned up in a brilliant flash before remnants struck the ground in northern Nevada early Wednesday morning lit up Western skies for hundreds of miles, including in the Wood River Valley. The rare occurrence was videotaped on a fixed time-lapse security camera at Friedman Memorial Airport in Hailey. Reports indicate that a number of valley residents saw the explosion in the sky at about 12:07 a.m.

Seth Jarvis, director of the Clark Planetarium in Salt Lake City, estimated that the meteor was probably about the size of an oven and traveled through the sky at about 80,000 m.p.h. Jarvis said the fireball was likely visible from several Intermountain West states.

The meteor sighting roughly coincided with the annual Leonid meteor shower, which occurs when the Earth passes through the debris trail of the comet Tempel-Tuttle.

The Associated Press contributed to this report.