US skies lighten up due to meteor showers
Researchers say Comet Hartley-2 could have showered over the US skies on two consecutive days.
The comet passed within 12 million miles of Earth and tiny pieces of the celestial object could have showered over the Earth's atmosphere. Fireballs, as the bright meteors are called, occurs when comet dust burns up in Earth's atmosphere.
Helga Cabral in Seascape, California reported after 9 pm last night, "I saw a bright white ball and tail, arcing towards the ocean. It was quite beautiful and it looked like it was headed out to sea and so picture perfect it could have been a movie!" Three thousand miles away just north of Boston, Teresa Witham witnessed a similar cosmic event.
"I was in the Revere area about 7:15 last night, driving north on Route 1, when a brilliant object with a tail passed in front of me - very similar in appearance to a shooting star but it appeared much lower to the Earth than a typical shooting star would be. If it weren't for the fact that I had my daughter with me, I'd begin to believe I'd imagined it."
"Many people don't realize that the famous periodic meteor shower in August, the Perseids, is the remains of Comet Swift-Tuttle and the Orionids, appearing in late October, are leftovers from Comet Halley," said Tim Spahr, Director of the Minor Planet Center at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics in Cambridge, MA.