Something unusual was spotted over north Alabama on Sunday night.
Storm tracker Drew Richards shared on X (formerly known as Twitter) a video of a bright object streaking across the sky in north Alabama just after 9:30 p.m. Sunday:
There was no definitive ruling on what the object was, but according to information from the American Meteor Society meteoroids can create a brief flash of moving light in the sky as they descend through the Earth’s atmosphere.
The definition of a fireball, according to the AMS, is “a very bright meteor, generally brighter than magnitude -4, which is about the same magnitude of the planet Venus in the morning or evening sky.”
The AMS keeps a log of fireball reports, and while Sunday’s has not been added yet, there were two separate sightings on March 2. Those reports came from Alabama as well as several other Southern states.
Meteoroids are the smallest members of the solar system, according to the AMS, and range in size from large fragments of asteroids or comets to extremely small micrometeoroids.
It’s not a big time of the year for spotting meteoroids, according to the AMS. March is typically the slowest month of the year for spotting fireballs in the Northern Hemisphere.
The next meteor shower on the calendar will be the Lyrids, which the AMS calls a “medium strength shower. The Lyrics will happen from April 14-30.
Dr. Sarah Adams is a scientist and science communicator who makes complex topics accessible to all. Her articles explore breakthroughs in various scientific disciplines, from space exploration to cutting-edge research.
